The New Land Grab in Africa – An Alarming Scramble for the Continent Is On

Multinational corporations are buying enormous tracts of land in Africa to the detriment of local communities. Agazit Abate warns that the land grab puts countries on the path to increased food insecurity, environmental degradation, increased reliance on aid and marginalisation of farming and pastoralist communities.

The recent phenomenon of land grab, as outlined in the extensive research of the Oakland Institute, has resulted in the sale of enormous portions of land throughout Africa. In 2009 alone, nearly 60 million hectares of land were purchased or leased throughout the continent for the production and export of food, cut flowers and agrofuel crops.

Land grab was in part spurred by the food and financial crisis of 2008 when international bodies, corporations, investment funds, wealthy individuals, and governments began to re-focus their attention on agriculture and food as a profitable commodity. As outlined in the reports, the consequences of land grab include increased food insecurity, environmental degradation, community repression and displacement, and increased reliance on aid.

While media coverage has focused on the role of countries like India and China in land deals, the Oakland Institute’s investigation reveals the role of Western firms, wealthy US and European individuals, and investment funds with ties to major banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Investors include alternative investment firms like the London-based Emergent that works to attract speculators, and various universities like Harvard, Spelman and Vanderbilt.

Several Texas-based interests are associated with a major 600,000 hectares South Sudan deal which involves Kinyeti Development LLC, an Austin, Texas-based ‘global business development partnership and holding company’ managed by Howard Eugene Douglas, a former United States Ambassador at Large and Coordinator for Refugee Affairs. A key player in the largest land deal in Tanzania is Iowa agribusiness entrepreneur and Republican Party stalwart, Bruce Rastetter.

US companies are often below the radar, using subsidiaries registered in other countries, like Petrotech-ffn Agro Mali which is a subsidiary of Petrotech-ffn USA. Many European countries are also involved, often with support provided by their governments and embassies in African countries. For instance, Swedish and German firms have interests in the production of biofuels in Tanzanian. Addax Bioenergy from Switzerland and Quifel International Holdings (QIH) from Portugal are major investors in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone Agriculture (SLA) is actually a subsidiary of the UK based Crad-1 (CAPARO Renewable Agriculture Developments Ltd.), associated with the Tony Blair African Governance Initiative.

As the media has reported, Indian firms are involved in land grab with relation to Ethiopia in particular. Food insecure nations like those of the gulf region are also participating in these land deals for the purpose of food production for their home countries.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?

A major argument by governments and investors is that these investments will lead to economic development for the home countries. The Oakland Institute reports reveal, however, that the land transactions are either for free (in the case of Mali) or very cheap (in the cases of Ethiopia and Sierra Leone). These transactions are largely unregulated with no stipulation or guarantees that they will help the local populations or create infrastructure. While land grab actors focus their rhetoric on foreign direct investment, there is no evidence to show that foreign direct investment will come into the countries in any substantial amount.

Most of these deals come with huge tax breaks and other investment incentives which is a great deal for the investors, but means less money coming into the country that could possibly go to infrastructure or social services. For instance, Sierra Leone allows 100 percent foreign ownership; there are no restrictions on foreign exchange, full repatriation of profits, dividends and royalties and no limits on expatriate employees.

Another justification for the land deals includes the idea that they will increase employment in the areas involved. Again, the lack of stipulation and on-the-ground research reveals that this is overstated at best and completely untrue at worst. The Emvest Matuba investment project summary and staff at Emergent and Emvest promise job creation with majority employment from the local community. A recent head count provided by Emergent reveals that currently only 17 permanent positions are in security (36 staff). In Mali, the area targeted by recent large land deals which could easily sustain 112,537 farm families (over half a million people, 686,478) is instead in the hands of 22 investors and will create at best a few thousand jobs.

To make matters worse, the limited employment created by these land deals is low wage, seasonal and primarily benefits the investors with cheap labour to compliment cheap land.

COMMUNITY DISPLACEMENT

While those involved firmly contend that communities are not being forcibly removed from their lands and those that are asked to move are being compensated, the opposite proves true. Ethiopian government officials, for instance, have stated that the lands being leased are unused or abandoned. Meanwhile, there is a villagisation process that has relocated 700,000 indigenous people who lived in a land that was targeted for investment.

In 2010 in Samana Dugu, Mali, bulldozers came in to clear the land and when the community protested, they were met by police forces who beat and arrested them. In Tanzania, the land investments of AgriSol Energy are focused on Katumba and Mishamo refugee settlements. The MOU between AgriSol Energy and the local government stipulates that these settlements, which house 162,000 refugees that fled Burundi in 1972 and have been farming the land for 40 years, have to be closed. In June 2009, Amnesty International reported refugees being pressured to leave camps. Some of them lost their homes to a fire set by individuals acting under the instructions of the Tanzanian authorities to get them to vacate the camp. Refugee leaders who have attempted to organize affected refugees have been arrested and detained.

Investment sites in various African countries visited by the Oakland Institute revealed a loss of local farmland where the lands held a variety of different uses and social/ecological value. Some of the lands that are claimed to be unused are those where the communities practice shifting cultivation (where plots of land are left idle after periods of cultivation in order to re-vegetate), pastoralism, and those considered communally used areas.

Forests and national reserves that are home to vital animal, fish and plant species and is a place where communities have found alternative sustenance in times of food scarcity have been burned and cleared out. These lands are being destroyed without an understanding of their significance and without assessments to determine how this will affect local communities.

Many of the communities interviewed stated that there was no prior notification of the land investments. They only realized what was happening when the bulldozers arrived in their communities.

FOOD INSECURITY

While most of the countries and regions targeted suffer from food insecurity, these land deals focus on producing export commodities, including food, biofuels and cut flowers for foreign consumption. In Mali, half of the investors with large land holdings in the Office du Niger intend to grow plants used to produce agrofuels such as sugarcane, jatropha or other oleaginous crops. In Mozambique, most of the investments concern timber industry and agrofuels rather than food crops. Food crops represented only 32,000 hectares of the 433,000 hectares that were approved for agricultural investments between 2007 and 2009.

In Ethiopia, much of large scale land deals have focused on food production for a foreign market. Because land grab throughout Ethiopia has led to the clearing of communal lands and plots used for shifting cultivation as well as forests, the communities’ primary source of sustenance along with their buffer systems are threatened.

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