In many African countries and especially in the highlands of Ethiopia—the investigation site of this paper—agricultural land is highly fragmented. Small and scattered parcels impede a necessary increase in agricultural efficiency. Land consolidation is a proper tool to solve inefficiencies in agricultural production, as it enables consolidating plots based on the consent of landholders. Its major benefits are that individual farms get larger, more compact, contiguous parcels, resulting in lower cultivation efforts. This paper investigates the determinants influencing the willingness of landholder farmers to participate in voluntary land consolidation processes. The study was conducted in Gozamin District, Amhara Region, Ethiopia. The study was mainly based on survey data collected from 343 randomly selected landholder farmers. In addition, structured interviews and focus group discussions with farmers were held. The collected data were analyzed quantitatively mainly by using a logistic regression model and qualitatively by using focus group discussions and expert panels. According to the results, landholder farmers are predominantly willing to participate in voluntary land consolidation (66.8%), while a substantive fraction of farmers express unease with voluntary land consolidation. The study highlighted the following four determinants to be significant in influencing the willingness of farmers for voluntary land consolidation: (1) the exchange should preferably happen with parcels of neighbors, (2) land consolidation should lead to better arranged parcels, (3) nearness of plots to the farmstead, and (4) an expected improvement in productivity. Interestingly, the majority of farmers believes that land consolidation could reduce land use conflicts. The study provides evidence that policymakers should consider these socio-economic, legal, cultural, infrastructural, and land-related factors when designing and implementing voluntary land consolidation policies and programs.

In Ethiopia, expropriation and compensation measures have become a great concern due to horizontal urban expansion and development induced projects. Especially in peri-urban areas, the livelihood of farmers is affected by expropriation without fair and comparable compensation. This paper investigates the impacts of expropriation and compensation activities on livelihood of peri-urban smallholders taking Debre Markos Town as a case study area. Mixed research methods were employed. Quantitative data were gathered using a structured questionnaire and by interviewing about 100 smallholders. Qualitative data were collected in focus group discussions and by analyzing legal documents. The analysis showed a high trend of expropriation without fair and appropriate compensation as result of ignoring legal procedures of expropriation and compensation. Expropriated farmers also complained that they did not get any support from the government to use compensation money properly for further investments. Due to incomparable compensation and lack of advice, peri-urban farmers faced multi-faceted problems, such as food insecurity and social and family disintegration. The government has to enable families of expropriated households to earn suitable livelihood, which could be achieved by fair compensation and appropriate guidance.

Land cover patterns in sub-Saharan Africa are rapidly changing. This study aims to quantify the land cover change and to identify its major determinants by using the Drivers, Pressures, State, Impact, Responses (DPSIR) framework in the Ethiopian Gozamin District over a period of 32 years (1986 to 2018). Satellite images of Landsat 5 (1986), Landsat 7 (2003), and Sentinel-2 (2018) and a supervised image classification methodology were used to assess the dynamics of land cover change. Land cover maps of the three dates, focus group discussions (FGDs), interviews, and farmers’ lived experiences through a household survey were applied to identify the factors for changes based on the DPSIR framework. Results of the investigations revealed that during the last three decades the study area has undergone an extensive land cover change, primarily a shift from cropland and grassland into forests and built-up areas. Thus, quantitative land cover change detection between 1986 and 2018 revealed that cropland, grassland, and bare areas declined by 10.53%, 5.7%, and 2.49%. Forest, built-up, shrub/scattered vegetation, and water bodies expanded by 13.47%, 4.02%, 0.98%, and 0.25%. Household surveys and focus group discussions (FGDs) identified the population growth, the rural land tenure system, the overuse of land, the climate change, and the scarcity of grazing land as drivers of these land cover changes. Major impacts were rural to urban migration, population size change, scarcity of land, and decline in land productivity. The outputs from this study could be used to assure sustainability in resource utilization, proper land use planning, and proper decision-making by the concerned government authorities.