Title: The contested borderland economy along the Ethiopian Moyale town and its implications for sustainable local development

Authors: Yetebarek Hizekeal Zekareas; Ongaye Oda Orkaydo; Randi Marie Dahl Haugland

Addresses: Institute of Indigenous Studies, Dilla University, Ethiopia ' Institute of Indigenous Studies, Dilla University, Ethiopia ' Department of Child Welfare and Social Work, UiT-Norwegian University of the Arctic, Trømso, Norway

Abstract: This paper analyses the contested borderland economy and its implications for sustainable local development in the context of competing actors by taking the Ethiopian Moyale town as a case. Philosophical, institutional and practical divergence between the state and local actors complicates the implication of border economies for sustainable local development. While the state builds on the detrimental notion, local actors construct on the asset discourse of the borderland economy for their development. Rather than approaching the borderland economy from a judgmental perspective (i.e., either an asset or detriment view) and through a single theoretical lens, we employed a critical and holistic lens. Accordingly, we found that state-local actors' contentions have resulted in the development of fused institutions which are better than state institutions in distributing benefits and rents from border economy to representatives of contending actors. However, such institutions are not developmental for they support the 'haves' than workers.

Keywords: borderland economy; contraband; state institutions; fused institutions; critical lens; sustainable development; local community; Moyale; Ethiopia; Kenya.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCA.2021.116350

International Journal of Critical Accounting, 2021 Vol.12 No.3, pp.187 - 205

Accepted: 28 Jan 2021
Published online: 20 Jul 2021 *

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