Land rental deal collapses after backlash against ‘colonialism’

One of the world’s largest land deals, a scheme to lease African farmland to rich countries to grow their own crops, has collapsed amid accusations of ‘neo-colonialism’.

Madagascar was poised to sign a 99-year agreement to rent 1.3 million hectares of land to South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics Corporation to plant maize and palm oil for export.

Food-importing countries with little arable land, mainly in Asia and the Middle East, are increasingly looking overseas to secure food supplies after the prices of staple foods rocketed last year.


But the practice has drawn criticism that it harks back to colonial-era “plantation agriculture” where rich outsiders force subsistence farmers off fertile land to grow export crops.

Now the Daewoo plan, the largest in Africa covering an area of roughly half of Madagascar’s current arable land, has been put on hold after the Malagasy people protested that it would make them a “South Korean colony”.

“We are in big trouble with the government of Madagascar,” said Shin Dong-hyun, the general manager of planning and finance at Daewoo Logistics Corporation.

Telegraph