$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')ntil last year, people in the Ethiopian settlement of Elliah earned a living by farming their land and fishing. Now, they are employees.
Dozens of women and children pack dirt into bags for palm seedlings along the banks of the Baro River, seedlings whose oil will be exported to India and China. They work for Bangalore- based Karuturi Global Ltd., which is leasing 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of local land, an area larger than Luxembourg.
The jobs pay less than the World Bank’s $1.25-per-day poverty threshold, even as the project has the potential to enrich international investors with annual earnings that the company expects to exceed $100 million by 2013.
“My business is the third wave of outsourcing,” Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, the 44-year-old managing director of Karuturi Global, said at the company’s dusty office in the western town of Gambella. “Everyone is investing in China for manufacturing; everyone is investing in India for services. Everybody needs to invest in Africa for food.”
Workers in Elliah say they weren’t consulted on the deal to lease land around the village, and that not much of the money is trickling down.
At a Karuturi site 20 kilometers from Elliah, more than a dozen tractors clear newly burned savannah for a corn crop to be planted in June. Omeud Obank, 50, guards the site 24 hours a day, six days a week. The job helps support his family of 10 on a salary of 600 birr per month, more than the 450 birr he earned monthly as a soldier in the Ethiopian army.
Obank said it isn’t enough to adequately feed and clothe his family.
“These Indians do not have any humanity,” he said, speaking of his employers. “Just because we are poor it doesn’t make us less human.”
Obang Moe, a 13-year-old who earns 10 birr per day working part-time in a nursery with 105,000 palm seedlings, calls her work “a tough job.” While the cash income supplements her family’s income from their corn plot, she said that many days they still only have enough food for one meal.
Buntin Buli, a 21-year-old supervisor at the nursery who earns 600 birr a month, said he hopes Karuturi will use some of its earnings to improve working conditions and provide housing and food. “Otherwise we would have been better off working on our own lands,” he said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aeuJT_pSE68c&pos=11To be fair, it's not just Indians but also investment funds from Russia and the US getting in on the act. I think the Indians especially stand out for the cheapness, paying their child workers just to enough to eat once per day (if that). Is there any humanity left in the world? I mean come on, if you're running a crop export plantation, then you can at least afford to properly feed the employees (slaves).
These poor people are wondering what the heck happened, before they were just farming the land themselves and then this company comes along and announces they own all the land now and the villagers are hungrier than before.
As for the larger picture here, African development is the third wave of outsourcing. The is the grand scheme -- manufacturing goes to China, India gets the service jobs (IT, call centers, legal document reviews, all manner of back office work), and Africa is targeted for the agricultural outsourcing. (so what does that leave the US? government jobs, I guess)