Privatization and development: the case of the Dirol Plain

The first part of this chapter examines local tenure, the political economy of the Dirol Plain, and the proposed development. The second part draws out the specific and general development implications of the case. The contention is that the privatization ideology pushed by international funding agencies, although in this case it eventually was minimized by USAID, was seriously misguided and led to significant waste of resources. In the Dirol case, pushing this simple solution involved a serious undervaluation of the risk management benefits of collective tenure. -from Author