The Ethnography of the Manja Hunters, Southwest Ethiopia

The Manja people are one of the last indigenous hunters and foragers in the dense forests of south-western Ethiopia. They prefer to call themselves ‘people of the forest’ because their livelihood is closely intertwined with the forest and its products through hunting and gathering. Due to their small settlement on the land between the farm and the forest, there is almost no data about them. Even the available scanty literature is highly skewed towards the social stigma and marginalization of the Manja. This paper focuses on the hunting tradition and human-environment interaction, using data from interviews with key experienced Manja hunters and a secondary literature review. The study found that the Manja people historically practiced hunting as their primary livelihood. In recent years, the tradition has been alarmingly declining, and people have been forced to diversify their livelihoods, including farming. Some of the major factors in the decline of hunting include the loss of forest areas, the introduction of the modern system, and the ever-increasing pressure, which forced the youth to migrate to nearby urban centres. Thus, the apparent reversal (of the Neolithic revolution) and the development of its trajectory are worth studying.