Ploughing

The Auvergne yoke attached to the horns of the oxen

Three years later again, 398 farmer families were installed on their farms and 91 technicians trained and operational in various fields. SED proposed to increase the number of settled farmers to 1910 during the next five years.

The Project was governed by the Agreement which the Imperial Ethiopian Government signed with the Foundation “Solidarite et Developpement” (SED) on September 2nd 1971. Herein, the Government allocated 22.000 ha of clearly identified uninhabited Government land (bareha) in the Northern part of the Angar Valley, while the Foundation would invite and assist landless farmers to build a prosperous future on their own farms in this area. The Agreement was signed for an initial period of five years and, by mutual agreement, extendable for additional five-year periods.

On September 21st 1977, the Derg Administration nationalized the Project and continued its development by applying mechanization. In the aftermath, the earlier humanistic development model was erased. Installed farmers lost their farms, oxen and animal traction ploughs disappeared and the technicians were told to either become labourers or to return to their original villages.

Considering the relevance of the SED model for rural development, in particular in nowadays Gutin/Highroad 32 environments, the undersigned decided in 2017 to write the history of the initial settlement activities in Angar-Gutin during the 1969-1977 period. He had been at the origin of the SED Project and had managed it from the start until the end. He disposed of all relevant documents in support of his writing. The result was the Essay “The Angar-Gutin Settlement… Adventure and Challenges”. The copyright was registered on July 28th 2019 and 50 copies were printed and offered to a selected group of individuals and Organizations. However, Covid-19 complications blocked any further action.

In the beginning of 2023, the Amharic and Oromiffa translations of the Essay were commissioned to two experienced Ethiopian rural development technicians and a website was established. At present, the Essay is available on this Website in three languages: English, Amharic and Oromiffa.