State, Governance and the Creation of Small Towns in Ethiopia

This paper is based on data collected from fieldwork in 2003 and 2013 in and around the small town of Bora in the Oromiya Zone of the Amhara Region in north-eastern Ethiopia. When Bora was first visited in 2003 it was an isolated place with a population of less than 1000. There was a police station, a health centre dependent upon a diesel generator, and a small weekly market. The town lacked electricity and the town’s water-supply pump did not work. By 2013, following wider changes at the national level introduced by Ethiopia’s developmental state model, the fortunes of Bora had changed dramatically as a result of its administrative upgrading to a politically-powerful woreda (district) capital town and greatly improved connectivity. Finally, the paper demonstrates how livelihoods in the new Dewa Harewa woreda, of which Bora is the capital, have been transformed by the rapid adoption of khat, (catha edulis), a mild narcotic plant, which has now become the dominant cash crop, positively impacting both rural and urban livelihoods.