How to look over rural overpopulation in Ethiopia Overpopulation is a multi-causal phenomena primarily relating to economical and political spatial organization, rather than strictly depending on high human densities. Ethiopian rural societies, and especially those living in the south, are accustomed to high population pressure that used to lead them to agricultural intensification. Nowadays, economical context has changed and peasants find themselves incapable of supporting such densities. Compared to previous decades, reacting capacity of rural societies has decreased, thus weakening rural spaces. Overpopulation seems to define Ethiopian’s countryside situation. But this situation is less due to high pressure population than to the political and economical context created by the modern Ethiopian State ; the impact of agricultural development politics decided by the central government are partly responsible for this evolution. The aim of this article is therefore double : describing the complexity of Ethiopian overpopulation process, the decreasing of rural societies’ adaptabilities, while pointing out that this kind of overpopulation is not mainly linked to population pressure but rather to frame structures. In the first part, we will measure the lack of arable land and its consequences on agrarian practices, then, we will present some aspects of this overpopulation, stressing on those depending on economical and political frames evolution. In the last part we will focus on a specific answer to such land pressure, the migration process, including the population resettlement programs put into effect since Derg’s government.