Abstract:
This thesis tries to construct about the history of Wushwush tea plantation from its establishment in 1954
to its privatization in 2001.The study mainly depends on the careful historical analysis of primary
archival sources and oral testimonies gathered through interviews. Geographically, Wushwush tea
plantation is located in one of the Ethiopian tropical regions particularly, in the Southwestern part of
Ethiopia. It is one of the highland areas that are suitable for growing quality highland tea plant from
which most organic tea production can be attained, that attracted the Emergence of tea plantation at
Wushwush beginning from the imperial regime of Ethiopia. Following the 1974 Ethiopian revolution by
the socialist Därg, the plantation was nationalized in 1975. Following this, the plantation was highly
expanded in the 1980s. Though the regime succeeded at huge hectares tea plantation expansion, it was
not efficiently effective at attaining an economic profit. Some of the factors for the failure of the period
were poor planning and centralized management structure, inefficient utilization of the existing man
power beyond shortages of human resource, the failure to control the widespread inefficiency of the
management and organizational capacity of the plantation. Following political change in 1991, the
EPDRF, which replaced the socialist Därg, made efforts in those areas such as institutional, structural
and administrative reforms and improvements’ focusing at maximizing processed made tea production
and profitability of the plantation. However, the plantation during the regime was not also free from
problems. The economic policy change of the post 1991 period encouraged the expansion of private
investments. It allowed the hiring of labor forces on private farms. This created good opportunities for
competition to labor forces legally in the open market. This directly or indirectly challenged the
plantation easy access to get human resources. Therefore, due to problem of man power and others, the
plantation was transferred to private ownership in 2001. The establishment and subsequent expansion
and development of Wushwush tea plantation have brought various impacts on the socio-economic
development and ecological settings of Wushwush areas.
