Tsega Etefa Livres

Ethnic violence in Africa is often mischaracterized as arising from ancient hatreds or resource competition. Tsega Etefa examines conflicts in Darfur, Western Oromia, and the Tana Delta to reveal that these disputes stem from political issues rather than ethnic divisions. He highlights the historical coexistence of diverse communities and argues that such conflicts are fueled by non-inclusive political systems, resource monopolization, and the exploitation of ethnic identities for political advantage, all exacerbated by the absence of democratic avenues for addressing grievances.

Mätäkkäl is a large region in Northwest Ethiopia along the Sudanese border. In former times it comprised nearly half of Goggam, although not counting more than 250.000 Inhabitants, who belonged to different ethnical groups. Members from all four Ethiopian language families (Semitic, Kushitic, Omotic, and Nilo-Saharian) inhabit the area. Mätäkkäl represents thus from ethno-linguistic view a pattern of Ethiopia. The special ethnical variety of this region goes back to demographic and political changes in the Horn of Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 16th century large subpopulations came into the region and led to an ethnical enriching. While Oromo, Sinasa and Agäw assimilated in most areas of Goggam to the dominant Amharic speaking population, in Mätäkkäl the same subpopulations retained their ethnical identity to a large extent. The investigation is based on interviews with informants and fi eld research, as well as on documents and archives. The study is an interdisciplinary work, which combines history, anthropology and peace research. It deals with cultures and history of the peoples in the border area between Ethiopia and the Sudan from the last decade of the 19th century up to the end of the Ethiopian Revolution in 1991.