Recent foreign agricultural investment in Africa has generated a great deal of interest and
criticism, with western media warning of a neo-colonial ‗land grab‘. This paper moves
beyond this narrow assessment by examining the political and social dynamics of foreign
agricultural investment in Ethiopia, a country which has figured prominently in recent
debates. The paper links macro level analysis regarding the types of projects and their role
in the Ethiopian economy to case studies of investments at the micro level which examine
changing patterns of land use and implications for displacement, employment and
technology transfer. The paper concludes that the expansion of foreign investment in
Ethiopia is part of a government move towards an export-led development strategy. As such,
macro benefits in terms of increased foreign exchange earnings come at the cost of
increased risks at the micro level to people living in the vicinity of new investments, in
particular, politically marginal pastoral populations in remote regions.