Enclaves urbaines et stratégies territoriales dans l’Éthiopie contemporaine

In 1991, the highly centralized state of Ethiopia was transformed into a federal state with large transfers of administrative powers to the regional states. At the same time, Eritrea gained de facto its independence and Ethiopia became landlocked. Ethiopia was under the rule of the provisional government that had created 14 regional states. The number of these states was later reduced to 9 by the constitution of 1995. The constitution has also created two metropolis that are directly accountable to the federal level. These metropolis are Addis-Ababa, the capital city, and Dere-Dawa the second largest city of the country. The two cities are hence federal urban enclosures inside the regional states. By considering the case of these two urban enclosures, three level of analysis are proposed in the following paper. First, the evolution of territorial and political aims are examined by analysing their strives to open up Ethiopia especially by means of cities’ development. The emergence of the regional states and their identities’ recognition in the newly established federation are also studied so as to assess the real impact of the current decentralization process. At last, the new stakes linked to the federal cities in the context of the Ethiopian cities network are analysed. The evolution of this network seems to be a new way of tackling the problem of being a landlocked state for contemporary Ethiopia