State, Governance and the Creation of Small Towns in Ethiopia

This paper is based on data collected from fieldwork in 2003 and 2013 in and around the small town of Bora in the Oromiya Zone of the Amhara Region in north-eastern Ethiopia. When Bora was first visited in 2003 it was an isolated place with a population of less than 1000. There was a police station, a health centre dependent upon a diesel generator, and a small weekly market. The town lacked electricity and the town’s water-supply pump did not...