From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Tue Apr 20 2010 - 14:31:53 EDT
http://www.frontline.in/stories/20100507270906100.htm
*Volume 27 - Issue 09 :: Apr. 24-May. 07, 2010*
WORLD AFFAIRS
Grabbing Africa
JOHN CHERIAN
The global rush to acquire agricultural land in bountiful Africa evokes
concern and protests.
THE continent of Africa, already facing severe food shortages, has in recent
years been targeted for land acquisition by countries from outside the
region. The trend started in the 1990s when countries such as Sudan allowed
rich Gulf countries to buy agricultural land in the areas irrigated by the
bountiful waters of the White and Blue Nile. The oil bonanza had not yet
materialised in Sudan. Under virtual sanctions from the West, it was facing
severe economic constraints and was caught in a bloody civil war.
However, it is only in the last couple of years that the global rush to grab
land in Africa accelerated. According to the International Food Policy
Research Institute, a Washington-based think tank, since 2006, some 15-20
million hectares of land in poor countries have either been sold or are
under negotiations for sale to foreign buyers. Apart from the oil-rich Gulf
emirates, China, South Korea and India have also made large investments in
land in many African countries. The land has been taken either on the basis
of outright purchases or on 99-year leases. The countries where most of the
land deals are taking place are Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Madagascar,
Mozambique, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Tanzania.
Indian firms have invested around $3 billion in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique,
Senegal and Madagascar to produce a wide variety of food crops and also
crops that would be used to produce biofuel. The Indian government is
actively encouraging investments in land acquisition programmes by providing
cheap lines of credit to the governments of Ethiopia, Senegal, Kenya,
Madagascar and Mozambique. Under a duty-free tariff preference scheme,
Ethiopian farm produce can enter the Indian market on lower tariffs. A
branch of the Nile also flows through Ethiopia.
Unlike most parts of the world, plenty of arable land in still available in
scarcely populated areas of the African continent. Subsistence farmers who
inhabit these areas have no political clout. The countries that acquire the
land also get control of the key resource, water. The fight among
communities and countries over water could be the defining trend in the next
100 years. Authoritarian and corrupt regimes, in alliance with global firms,
can easily swing deals that in the long run could be detrimental to the
sovereignty of the African states.
The Indian government’s stated goal is to limit the purchase of foodgrains
from the international market and source it directly at much cheaper rates
from poorer African countries. At the end of the last decade, prices of
wheat, rice and corn increased threefold. The governments involved in
large-scale land acquisitions claim that their investments will give the
languishing agricultural sector in Africa the much-needed boost besides
providing employment to the local peoples. The Indian government has
provided a soft loan of $640 million to Ethiopia for the next five years to
encourage sugar production. This is the biggest credit line New Delhi has
extended to any country. It has facilitated investment by about 80 Indian
companies in agricultural land in Africa.
An official of Karuturi Global Limited, an Indian company with four
commercial farms in Ethiopia, with his farmworkers in Bako, central
Ethiopia, in November 2009.
But there has been widespread criticism about the large-scale takeover of
African land. The Food and Agricultural Organisation has described the
investments as “land grabbing”. But senior United Nations officials have
also said that investments in land could benefit small farmers in the
developing world. Kanayo Nwanze, the head of the U.N.’s International Fund
for Agricultural Development (FAO) has said that it is wrong to describe the
deals as land grabs. He compared the investments in farmland to “investments
in oil exploration”. Supporters of such deals claim that new seeds,
technology and finance are provided to regions suffering from
underinvestments for decades.
The FAO, in a position paper titled “Land grab or development opportunity”,
criticised some aspects of the land deals being negotiated in Africa but has
also said that foreign investments “could be good news if the objectives of
the land purchasers are reconciled with the investment needs of the (host)
countries”. The FAO study has emphasised that decades of low investments
have meant stagnating productivity and production levels on the continent.
An Indian company, Karuturi Global Limited, acquired 8,50,000 acres
(3,40,000 hectares) of land for cultivation in Ethiopia last year. The
Bangalore-based company has also brought land in neighbouring Kenya.
The company has claimed that it now owns “one of the largest agricultural
land banks” in the world. China has acquired 2.8 million hectares of land in
the DRC. Palm oil plantations will replace the world’s second largest
rainforest. Mozambique has signed a $2-billion deal with China which will
allow 10,000 Chinese farmers to farm on land there. The deal has been
sweetened by an additional $3 million in military aid from Beijing. South
Korea and the United Arab Emirates have acquired 690,000 hectares and 30,000
hectares in Sudan for agricultural operations. British companies have been
investing heavily in big ticket land purchases in Nigeria and Tanzania,
former colonies of Britain, and in Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia.
In fact, in Asia, Pakistan has sold tens of thousands of agricultural land
to UAE investors to grow Basmati rice. UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin
Zayed said that his country was considering large-scale agricultural
projects in Kazakhstan to guarantee a stable food supply for his country.
Paul Vallely, a British expert on Africa and developmental issues, wrote
recently that control of foreign farmland “would not only secure food
supplies but would eliminate the cut taken by middlemen and reduce food
import bills by more than 20 per cent”.
The opposition parties in Ethiopia have been protesting against their
government’s land policies. Some 13 million people are in need of food aid
in that country but the government is offering 3 million hectares of the
best land to foreign companies and countries to grow food for export. The
authoritarian government of Meles Zenawi is, however, known for riding
roughshod over the opposition and public opinion.
AFP
Children at Dambas primary school eating relief food, a meal of maize and
dried peas, usually the only one in 24 hours, in the drought-stricken Wajir
district in Kenya's north-eastern province.
Land is an emotive issue in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Those
opposing the land deals with India and other countries have written angry
letters to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The Ethiopian government claims that only 3-4 per cent of its 76 million
hectares of fertile land is being offered to foreigners and that only 15 per
cent of this land is being cultivated by subsistence farmers. Kenya too has
witnessed large-scale inter-ethnic violence on land-related issues. White
farmers there still own large-sized farms, some the size of countries such
as Cyprus. Zimbabwe, until recently the breadbasket of southern Africa, saw
its economy plummet, mainly as a result of disputes arising out of land
ownership. Whites, who comprised only 1 per cent of the population, had
control of over 70 per cent of the best agricultural land. When the
inevitable land reforms happened, the West turned its opprobrium on the
government led by Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front).
In early 2009, the Madagascar government announced that it had leased 1.3
million hectares of land for 99 years to the South Korean multinational
Daewoo. The people took to the streets and eventually succeeded in removing
the government of President Marc Ravolomanana. One of the first acts of the
new President, Andry Rajoelina, was to cancel the deal with Daewoo. It also
cancelled a deal with an Indian company, Varun International, which had
taken 450,000 hectares on lease. Rajoelina said at the time that
Madagascar’s land was not for “sale or lease” to foreign companies.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, speaking at a “hunger summit” organised by
the FAO in Rome late last year, described the purchase of African farmland
by food-importing countries as a kind of “new feudalism” and warned that the
practice could spread to other parts of the world. “Small farmers are being
bereft of their own land, thanks to new feudal powers coming from outside of
Africa and buying land very cheaply,” he said. The head of the FAO, Jacques
Diouf, said that the sharp rise in land deals in Africa could create a new
form of “neocolonialism”, with poor countries producing food for the richer
ones at the expense of their own citizens.
Critics of the land grab note that the bargaining power will be with the
foreign powers, especially as they enjoy the backing of the governments and
the local elite.
The FAO has admitted that most African governments do not have legal
mechanisms in place to protect the rights of their people.
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