Salute, sviluppo e lotta alla povertà: vecchie e nuove forme di mobilitazione nelle campagne del Tigray (Etiopia)

Abstract

The Ethiopian Federal government is implementing a process of health care decentralization, with the aims of spreading the primary health care and achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals. The ethnographic research conducted in the district of Kilte Awlaleo (Tigray Regional State) has shown the continuity between the health care programmes directed at the rural areas and the practices of mobilization of the peasant population developed by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) during the civil war against the Derg. Under this experience, TPLF legitimates the current strategies to “fight poverty”, that merge with transnational discourses on community empowerment and participatory development, engendering creative governmental techniques. Starting from two specific health care programmes – the Health Extension Programme and the Women Development Army –, the article focuses on the processes of governance observed in the area under investigation, and on the ways in which subjects involved in development interventions embody the State.