The Materialization of “Developmental State” in Ethiopia: Insights from the Gibe III Hydroelectric Development Project Regime, Omo Valley
Over the last decade, large scale investments in hydraulic infrastructural projects are a cornerstone of the current Ethiopian government’s strategy of state building through hydro-energy modernization. This study, seeks to understand how does making of the EPRDF’s “developmental state” takes materi...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Université de Reims Champagne-Ardennes
2018-10-01
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| Series: | L'Espace Politique |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/4985 |
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| Summary: | Over the last decade, large scale investments in hydraulic infrastructural projects are a cornerstone of the current Ethiopian government’s strategy of state building through hydro-energy modernization. This study, seeks to understand how does making of the EPRDF’s “developmental state” takes material form through the practices of dam building and with what effects by taking the Gibe III hydropower project as a case study. To this end, drawing on fieldwork in this project, the paper makes a detailed analysis of the State’s concrete practices and materiality in making this dam project. Our analysis points at contradictory processes regarding the materialization of the “developmental state” in the Omo Valley. On the one hand the central government increases its capacity of resource control and extraction in this periphery as “developmental state effects” and the garnering of legitimacy through delivering the dam [“development”] -at least at the national scale. On the other hand increasingly an authoritarian form it takes in this process and its failure to recognize the affected peoples’ claims seemingly jeopardizes its political legitimacy. |
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| ISSN: | 1958-5500 |