Resettlement and villagization in Ethiopia has been an issue from the late nineteenth century up to the present, due to the overcrowded population of the Ethiopian highlands.
The government conducted most of these resettlement programs under the auspices of the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
In 1984 Addis Ababa announced its intention to resettle 1.5 million people from the drought-affected northern regions to the south and southwest, where arable land was plentiful.
More than 250,000 went to Welega; about 150,000 settled in the Gambela area of Illubabor; and just over 100,000 went to Pawe, the largest planned resettlement in Gojjam and largely sustained by Italian financial support.
[3] He claimed resettlement would resolve the country's recurring drought problem and would ease population pressure from northern areas where the land had been badly overused.
The objectives of the program, which grouped scattered farming communities throughout the country into small village clusters, were to promote rational land use; conserve resources; provide access to clean water and to health and education services; and strengthen security.
Although the government had villagized about 13 million people by 1989, international criticism, deteriorating security conditions, and lack of resources doomed the plan to failure.
In early 1990, the government essentially abandoned villagization when it announced new economic policies that called for free-market reforms and a relaxation of centralized planning.
These donors maintained that experiences elsewhere in Africa and in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had shown that state farms were inefficient and a drain on scarce resources.