Urban-Rural Dichotomy: A New Analytical Framework to Illegal Land Market in Mekele City, Ethiopia

Abstract

This article discusses about the scale of illegal land market and its causes in Mekele City^[1]. It is interesting to find that the derivers of the illegal land market extend well beyond the conventionally known factor – formal market failure. The urban-rural dichotomous land use rights has played a central role. In Ethiopia, the rural-urban dichotomous rights on land constitutes a central position in the illegal land market analytic framework. Therefore, the article argues that today’s methodological approach in analysing illegal land transaction in Ethiopia is immature in that neither the supply nor the demand aspect has been adequately addressed.

Key terms: illegal land market, dichotomous land rights, supply side, demand side adjudication, regularization

[1] Mekele’ is the second largest city in Ethiopia