About the time when the Standing Conference was being formed in London Yona Bogale, in Ethiopia, was presented with an opportunity which he seized with enthusiasm. The Ethiopian Government, with the assistance of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and the World Bank, had drawn up an agricultural scheme in the area to the north-west of Gondar, adjoining the Sudanese border, which was known as the Setit-Humera Development project. The intention was to provide holdings for landless peasants and to develop a potentially rich but practically uninhabited area. The stretch of land, similar to the cotton-growing country on the other side of the frontier, ran from Humera (Um Hagar) on the Setit (or Takazze) river in the north to Metemma in the south and was not too far from the Falasha villages in the Wolkait and Armachoho districts, though, as it lay in the lowlands, the climate was much more torrid.

In the absence of any prospect of an organised aliyah Y ona saw in this scheme the possibility that his people could once again secure farming land in their own right, free from the oppression of greedy landlords, where they could found their own settlements. The chance was too good to be missed and he realised that squatters' rights must be established without delay if the Falashas' claims were to be favourably considered by the authorities. Schemes of this kind demand adequate preparations but the impoverished Falashas had virtually no resources at their disposal. Nevertheless, with high hopes and a determination to succeed, a gallant attempt was made which deserves a place in Falasha history. For five years, in the face of great hardship and in strange and inhospitable surroundings, some one hundred young men struggled to clear and cultivate over 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of tropical bush with mechanical equipment to which they were unused, and to bring unaccustomed crops to harvest. They succeeded in marketing cotton, sesame and sorghum (millet), which made a small but welcome contribution to the incomes of the families they left behind in the mountains. At one point, owing to the absence of frontier demarcation, they clashed with an armed patrol of the Sudanese Army and withdrew in good order. Later they were harassed by tribesmen who claimed that they were infringing their customary grazing rights, while at all times they had to guard against shiftas, or armed bandits. And then, in September 1974, the emperor was deposed and the country was