Maru Shete Bekele

Maru Shete Bekele is a PhD fellow at the Netherlands Academy for Land Governance for Equitable and Sustainable Development (LANDac), hosted by the African Studies Centre (ASC) at Leiden University.

He is working on a research topic: Impact of Large Scale Land Acquisition on Equitable and Sustainable Development in Ethiopia. He is being supervised by Prof. Ton Dietz (ASC, Leiden University), Prof. Annelies Zoomers (IDS, Utrecht University), and Dr. Marcel Rutten (ASC, Leiden University).

He did three different master’s degrees: MA degree in Regional and Local Development Studies from Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia) in 2004; MSc degree in Development and Resource Economics from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway) in 2007; and a third Msc degree in Tropical Ecology and Natural Resource Management again from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 2010. He obtained his bachelor degree in Agricultural Extension from the former Alemaya University of Agriculture in 1998 (Currently re-named as Haromaya University).

He has over eight years of research and teaching experience and published articles in the field of development studies. In 2010, he won a research fellowship from the Future Agricultures Consortium Early Career Fellowship Program to work on land deal issues in Ethiopia. He served as a Research Director with the rank of Assistant Professor at St. Mary’s University College in Ethiopia until he started his doctoral studies in August 2011.

His main area of research interest includes: land tenure and land deal issues for commercial agriculture, impact and livelihood studies, poverty and food security issues in Africa.