Shaggar city is an ideal laboratory for this kind of investigation. Established in 2022 from the former Oromia Special Zone Surrounding Finfinne, the city encircles Addis Ababa across roughly 160,893 hectares and is home to an estimated 2.1 million people. Its industrial landscape spans food and beverage processing, textiles, chemicals, leather goods, metalworking, and construction materials, with industrial zones concentrated in subcities such as Gelan, Melka Nonno, Koye Feche, and Gefersa Guje. These are the areas that have historically borne the brunt of industrial waste mismanagement, and the city’s ambition to become a model smart city built on urban agriculture and environmental sustainability makes the question of technology access especially urgent.

The scale of the underlying problem extends far beyond one Ethiopian city. Across sub-Saharan Africa, annual waste generation is projected to rise from 174 million tons in 2016 to 269 million tons by 2030, a trajectory that dramatically exceeds existing collection capacity. Population growth, urbanization, and industrialization are straining municipal systems throughout the region, and uncollected waste accumulates fastest in low-income neighborhoods. Poorly managed solid and liquid industrial waste threatens soil and water resources, contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, and imposes disease burdens that fall disproportionately on the urban poor, making the question of which firms adopt modern treatment technology a matter of public health as much as industrial policy.

To untangle the factors driving adoption, researcher Urgessa Tilahun Bekabil of Oromia State University surveyed a stratified random sample of 303 registered manufacturing firms drawn from ten of the city’s twelve subcity administrations. Firms were stratified by size into small-scale operations with fewer than 50 employees, medium-scale firms with 50 to 99 employees, and large firms with 100 or more. Structured questionnaires were administered to managers, owners, or designated environmental officers by five trained enumerators, and the instrument was piloted with 30 firms before full deployment. The analysis employed logistic regression, a statistical technique that models the probability of a binary outcome, in this case whether a firm has access to modern waste management technology or not, as a function of firm characteristics, environmental practices, financial conditions, and policy variables.

The statistical foundations of the model proved sound. Variance inflation factors, which measure how much multicollinearity among predictors inflates the uncertainty of coefficient estimates, never exceeded 2.1 and averaged just 1.41, well below the conventional threshold of 10. A link test confirmed correct model specification, with the squared prediction term statistically insignificant at p equals 0.562. The overall model was highly significant, with a likelihood ratio chi-square of 106.926 and a pseudo R-squared of 0.351, meaning the included variables explain roughly 35 percent of the variation in the log odds of technology access, a respectable figure for a binary outcome in a developing country setting.

Several determinants stood out with strong statistical significance. Firm age carried a negative coefficient of 0.098, indicating that each additional year of firm age reduces the log odds of accessing modern waste technology, a pattern the author attributes to organizational inertia and lock-in to legacy production systems. Firm size showed the opposite effect: medium-sized firms had significantly greater log odds of access than small firms, with a coefficient of 1.439, and large firms showed an even stronger effect at 2.379. The bivariate data reinforced this gradient, with 51 of the 61 firms lacking access, or 83.6 percent, being small-scale operations. Operating at a deficit also mattered significantly, with deficit firms showing a coefficient of minus 1.437 relative to surplus firms, consistent with the pecking order theory of finance, which holds that financially distressed firms cannot fund discretionary investments such as environmental equipment.

Environmental practices emerged as powerful predictors as well. Firms possessing a solid waste disposal facility showed a positive coefficient of 1.115, while participation in wastewater treatment produced the strongest multivariate effect at 1.533. The descriptive statistics were striking: among the 181 firms that treat their wastewater, 92.8 percent also had access to modern waste management technology, compared with only 60.7 percent of non-treating firms. This pattern suggests what the author calls environmental management complementarities, the idea that firms investing in one component of environmental infrastructure tend to build the technical knowledge and organizational capacity that make further adoption easier. Wastewater treatment in particular demands sophisticated process control, and firms that master it appear better positioned to absorb additional waste technologies.

Perhaps the most counterintuitive finding concerns environmental protection costs, which showed a significant negative association with technology access, with a coefficient of minus 0.123. Rather than signaling environmental commitment, high compliance spending appears to crowd out technology investment. Firms already paying heavily for nontechnological compliance methods, such as manual sorting, contractor disposal, or remediation, may simply lack the resources or motivation to fund capital-intensive advanced equipment. This substitution effect carries an important policy lesson: regulations that merely raise compliance costs may paradoxically delay the technological upgrades that would ultimately reduce pollution, whereas well-designed instruments should channel spending toward structured, lasting investment.

Equally telling were the variables that failed to reach significance. Access to credit, government incentives, innovation practices, and research and development spending all showed no statistically significant relationship with technology access in the multivariate model, despite theoretical expectations and some supportive bivariate patterns. The author interprets these null results as evidence that the current design, targeting, and disbursement of these policy instruments are ineffective in this setting, a finding with direct implications for the Shaggar City Administration, the Oromia Investment and Industry Bureau, and the Environmental Protection Authority, all of which are advised to review how support programs actually reach firms.

The policy recommendations flow directly from the evidence. Because small, older, and deficit-operating firms are systematically excluded, the study calls for differentiated adoption programs featuring subsidized technology packages, technical assistance, and phased compliance schedules tailored to smaller and more entrenched establishments. Concessional green credit lines, loan-guarantee schemes, and shared treatment facilities that allow clusters of small firms to spread fixed costs could address the financial barriers the data reveal. Requiring solid waste disposal facilities as a condition of industrial licensing, and prioritizing wastewater treatment capacity as a low-cost entry point before larger capital outlays, offers firms a practical sequencing strategy. The author also notes the study’s limitations and future directions: longitudinal data would reveal how access evolves over time, in-depth interviews could explain why incentives go unused, and comparative analyses across other Ethiopian cities and industrial zones would test whether these patterns generalize. For a young city aspiring to smart, sustainable industry, the message is clear that closing the technology gap requires deliberately designed support for the firms least able to help themselves.

Subject of Research: Determinants of manufacturing firms' access to modern waste management technology in Shaggar city, Ethiopia

Article Title: Factors affecting manufacturing firms’ access to modern waste management technology in Shaggar city, Ethiopia

Article References: Bekabil, U. T. (2026). Factors affecting manufacturing firms’ access to modern waste management technology in Shaggar city, Ethiopia. Discover Global Society, 4(1), Article 244. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-026-00611-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44282-026-00611-3

Keywords: waste management technology, manufacturing firms, Ethiopia, Shaggar city, logistic regression, technology adoption, environmental management, firm size, wastewater treatment, Porter hypothesis, industrial pollution, policy instruments

The research combined satellite-based land change analysis with extensive fieldwork in three peripheral kebeles, or administrative wards, of Burayu: Burayu Gafarsa, Malka Gafarsa and Gafarsa Guje. On the geospatial side, the authors processed multi-temporal Landsat imagery spanning the years 2000 to 2023, classifying each scene into land cover categories and then applying post-classification comparison, a technique in which independently classified maps are compared across dates to quantify how much land moved from one category to another. Post-classification methods are widely regarded as robust for detecting change because each date is classified separately, allowing analysts to trace the full matrix of conversions between classes rather than merely measuring aggregate shifts in reflectance. The approach was supported by ground-truthing validation, in which field observations were used to confirm that the satellite-derived categories accurately matched conditions on the ground.

The numbers that emerged are stark. Built-up land in the study area expanded by 50.99 hectares every year on average across the 23-year record, a net growth rate of 31.85 percent, as concrete, roofing sheet and graded roadbeds spread outward from the urban core. Cropland absorbed the brunt of this expansion, suffering a net loss of 59.312 hectares per year, equivalent to a 39.14 percent decline over the study period. In other words, for every hectare of new construction, more than a hectare of cultivated land was effectively sacrificed, a relationship that identifies agriculture as the primary spatial donor to the city’s horizontal growth. The authors describe the outcome as the conversion of vital agricultural spaces into fragmented urban zones, with the surrounding landscape broken into a patchwork of residual plots, access roads and half-built structures.

What makes this trajectory consequential is not simply the loss of hectares but the way that loss intersects with livelihoods. The study’s socioeconomic component was built on a defined institutional frame of 4,832 systematically displaced farming households across the three kebeles. From this frame the researchers drew a structured survey of 145 households, supplemented by 12 key informant interviews with local officials, elders and experts, and 6 focus group discussions with affected residents. This mixed-methods design allowed the team to pair the statistical weight of the survey with the explanatory depth of interviews, tracing not only how many households lost land but how they interpreted, negotiated and survived that loss.

The survey results document a livelihood system in free fall. A decisive majority of displaced households, 73.1 percent, reported a total collapse of their agrarian income following displacement, meaning the farming revenues that once anchored family economies simply ceased. Layered atop that loss is heightened tenure insecurity: even after giving up their fields, many families remained uncertain of their legal standing on the land they still occupy, exposed to further expropriation without the protection of formal, documented rights. In Ethiopia’s peri-urban zones, where customary tenure and state land ownership overlap in complicated ways, farmers often hold use rights rather than freehold titles, which weakens their bargaining position when developers and municipal authorities arrive with compensation offers or eviction notices.

Confronted with the collapse of farming income, affected families have assembled survival strategies that the study characterizes as precarious and non-formal. Households have turned to petty trade, daily labor, rental of spare rooms and reliance on informal social networks of kin, neighbors and former farming associations. These coping mechanisms buffer the immediate shock of displacement, but the authors find they fail to fully mitigate the socio-ecological vulnerability that displacement creates. Families that once produced their own food now buy it in volatile urban markets; skills honed over generations in agriculture have limited market value in construction and informal commerce; and the social fabric that once pooled risk at the community level has been thinned by dispersal and the pressures of urban poverty.

Behind the spatial data, the researchers identify a distinctive driver profile. Speculative land markets top the list: as Addis Ababa’s expansion raises land values along the corridor, investors and intermediaries buy and hold farmland in anticipation of appreciation, accelerating conversion regardless of planning designations. Weak institutional planning enforcement compounds the problem, with zoning rules and master plans routinely overridden, ignored or circumvented through informal transactions. Top-down infrastructure development, in which roads and utility corridors are extended into peri-urban areas by central decision-makers with limited local consultation, then anchors and legitimizes the sprawl, effectively redrawing the urban boundary ahead of any participatory planning process. Together these forces create a self-reinforcing cycle in which infrastructure attracts speculation, speculation pressures landholders, and weak governance ensures the conversions proceed without coordination or compensation adequate to rebuild displaced livelihoods.

The governance deficit the study documents extends beyond Ethiopia. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, rapid, uncoordinated horizontal sprawl repeatedly collides with the preservation of peri-urban agricultural systems, producing severe governance failures, landscape fragmentation and socioeconomic marginalization of indigenous farming communities. Peri-urban zones are among the most productive agricultural landscapes on the continent, benefiting from proximity to urban markets and often from richer soils favored by earlier settlement. Their conversion is therefore not a marginal loss but a structural one, undermining urban food security even as cities grow. The Shaggar City corridor, a vast new administrative construction ringing Addis Ababa, has become a laboratory for this dynamic at exceptional scale, and Burayu sits squarely within it.

The authors argue that the remedy requires integrating what has too often been separated: spatial monitoring and social protection. They call for integrated spatial-social monitoring systems that track land conversion and livelihood outcomes together, so that planners can see not only where the city is growing but who is being dispossessed in the process. They urge participatory land governance that gives peri-urban residents a genuine voice in decisions about expropriation, compensation and resettlement, rather than subjecting them to top-down decrees. And they emphasize formal protections for customary tenure, ensuring that families with generations of use rights are not rendered landless and undocumented by the mere arrival of the urban frontier. Ethics approval for the fieldwork was granted by Wollega University’s Research Ethics Approval Committee, and the study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki with informed consent from all participants.

The significance of the Burayu case lies in its warning about trajectory. A growth rate exceeding 31 percent in built-up land over 23 years, purchased at the cost of nearly 40 percent of cropland and the agrarian incomes of roughly three-quarters of surveyed households, describes a form of urbanization that concentrates risk on those least equipped to absorb it. Without deliberate intervention, the study suggests, the corridor’s remaining farmland will continue to convert plot by plot, and its displaced farmers will continue to drift into informal survival strategies that soften but do not solve their vulnerability. Whether the Shaggar City corridor becomes a model of equitable urban transformation or a cautionary tale of dispossession will depend, the authors conclude, on whether Ethiopia’s planners treat satellite maps and household surveys as parts of a single, urgent question: how African cities can grow without consuming the people and fields on their edges.

The temporal window of the analysis is methodologically significant. Landsat sensors, with a spatial resolution of 30 meters and a revisit interval of roughly 16 days, have provided an unbroken archive of the Earth’s surface since the early 1970s, making them the backbone of land change science in data-scarce regions. For a corridor like Shaggar City, where cadastral records are incomplete and informal subdivision outpaces official mapping, satellite archives often constitute the only consistent record of how the urban edge has moved. The 2000–2023 span chosen by the authors captures the period in which Addis Ababa’s metropolitan influence began reshaping its surrounding Oromia Special Zone settlements most intensively.

The study also illustrates a broader shift in displacement research toward household-level evidence. Earlier assessments of African peri-urban change frequently relied on aggregate land statistics, which could document shrinking farmland but not the distributional consequences of that shrinkage. By anchoring their survey in a complete institutional frame of displaced households, the authors could connect each hectare of conversion to identifiable families, an approach that makes the 73.1 percent income collapse figure interpretable as a population-level outcome rather than an anecdote. The triangulation of satellite classification, structured surveys, key informants and focus groups reflects current best practice in land change science, where biophysical measurement and social inquiry are increasingly treated as complementary rather than separate evidence streams.

Subject of Research: Quantifying peri-urban land conversion and its livelihood impacts on displaced farming households in Burayu Town, Ethiopia's Shaggar City corridor

Article Title: Spatial dynamics of per-urban expansion and livelihood impacts in the suburbs of Shaggar City in Ethiopia’s rapidly urbanizing corridor

Article References: Chimdessa, D., & Tolera, H. (2026). Spatial dynamics of per-urban expansion and livelihood impacts in the suburbs of Shaggar City in Ethiopia’s rapidly urbanizing corridor. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04564-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04564-0

Keywords: Ethiopia, peri-urban expansion, urban sprawl, land use dynamics, livelihood impacts, Shaggar City, Addis Ababa, Landsat imagery, cropland loss, tenure insecurity, displaced households, urban planning