Content area
Full text
Getahun Benti. Addis Ababa: Migration and the Making of a Multiethnic Metropolis, 1941-1974. Trenton, N.J., and Asmara: The Red Sea Press, 2007. xviii + 279 pp. Photographs. Maps. Tables. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. $29.95. Paper.
The basic premise of this book is that the founding and growth of Addis Ababa stemmed from the political domination of the Amhara and their expansion into the vast labor- and resource-rich domain of the Oromo and other oppressed groups in the southern regions of the country. Getahun Benti argues that previous scholars of Ethiopian urbanization have simply ignored the role played by the imperious Amhara and their ethnic, linguistic, and cultural manifestations in the north-south population movements in the country. This failure in scholarship, he believes, is attributable to restrictions imposed on scholars by the Amhara rulers in their attempt to superimpose Amhara cultural identity on other ethnic groups in the country.
The construction of the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway, the building of road networks during the brief Italian occupation, and the extraction of exportable surplus mainly from the Oromo territories facilitated urban growth and development in the country, Getahun writes. In the process, Addis Ababa enjoyed a disproportionate share of the infrastructural development owing to its geographic centrality, its status as the nation's capital, and its road links with the surrounding resource-rich hinterlands. Heavy concentration of commerce and industries in the capital also led to the concentration of water, electricity, health, financial, and educational services. Such services, in turn, attracted people - educated and noneducated, skilled and unskilled - from all over...