Africa for Salehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

A story is told that when the first European missionaries arrived to Africa, they had a Bible in their hand, and that the African had land in his. The ‘good’ missionaries said to the African to crose his eyes and hold on to the Bible so that they could pray together for the ‘uncivilised’ African’s salvation. When the ‘obedient’ African opened his eyes, in his hand was the Bible, and in the missionary’s hands, was the land.

In the last few decades, millions of hectares have been reported as being under negotiation for lease or sale by developing countries to the rich countries. The land in question refers to 227 million hectares (561 million acres) of land – an area the size of northwest Europe –having been reportedly sold, leased or licensed, largely in Africa and mostly to international investors. The World Bank estimates that in 2009 alone nearly 60 million hectares of land were purchased or leased in developing countries all over the world – an area the size of France. Ethiopia is one of the world’s largest recipients of humanitarian food and development assistance, and in 2011, received more than 700,000 tonnes of food and £1.8bn in aid; at the same time, it has offered three million hectares (7.4 million acres) of virgin land to foreign corporations, such as Karuturi. Karuturi Global terms the deal it has with Ethiopia, “the deal of the century: £150 a week to lease more than 2,500 sq. km (1,000 sq. miles) of virgin, fertile land – for 50 years”. The lowest prices are in Africa. “It’s very good land. It’s quite cheap. In fact it is very cheap. We have no land like this in India,” says Karmjeet Sekhon, Karuturi Global Project Manager of what is expected to be one of Africa’s largest farms. “There you are lucky to get 1% of organic matter in the soil. Here, it is more than 5%. We don’t need fertiliser or herbicides. There is absolutely nothing that will not grow on it. To start with, there will be 20,000 hectares of oil palm, 15,000 hectares of sugar cane and 40,000 hectares of rice, edible oils, and maize and cotton. We are building reservoirs, dykes, roads, towns of 15,000 people. This is phase one. In three years’ time, we will have 300,000 hectares cultivated and maybe 60,000 workers. We could feed a nation here.” While the prospects that they can feed a nation is undoubtedly real, the harsh reality is that Ethiopia will not be that nation.

Despite foreseeable terrible consequences, the appetite among the rich countries to own a piece of this developing-country fertile land continues to grow: it’s like witnessing bandits arguing over whom has the right to rob which bank.

Land grab advocates argue it is a “win-win” situation, whereby investors profit and “host” nations benefit from economic development, improved agricultural infrastructure, and employment opportunities.

Yet Professor Reg Noble of Ryerson University in Toronto reminds us that there is enough food in the world to feed the 7 billion-plus people at current food production rates, if the commoditisation of food was not the driving force of this phenomenon. Anuradha Mittal, founder of the Oakland Institute argues that, according to his organization’s ground-breaking report on African land grabs, "The land grab phenomenon is being done in the name of modernizing agriculture and expanding African economies, but it cuts out the core natural resources that support African livelihoods for the majority – land and water. This huge transfer of natural wealth to outside investors is eroding food security, water security and cultural integrity for local people.” Professor Noble, a research associate in food security and community development, blames the land rush on the increasing demand to acquire fertile land by a corporate global minority seeking bio-fuel crops and the new frontier; the need for carbon credits has now turned into a lucrative business.

Beneath the arguments and justifications advocated by land grab speculators and institutions like the African Development Bank, World Bank, Western University pension funds and global agri-business corporations, is the need to produce more food for the commodity market and raw materials for the biofuels industries. Oxfam states that most of the land deals made in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, and Tanzania have been to grow crops for export commodities, including cut flowers and biofuels. In Mozambique, where approximately 35% of households are chronically food insecure, only 32,000 hectares out of the 433,000 approved for land deals between 2007 and 2009 were for food crops.

Affected communities are being pushed far away from their fertile land, and are being boxed into corners next to each other, heightening the probability of resource conflict, a common feature in many African countries. Beyond that is the loss of land ownership while at same time remaining physically present, because there are large-scale agricultural activities next to displaced populations who have neither access to nor the ability to benefit from the leased or sold land. Nearly 10,000 people were displaced from the Namwasa and Luwunga reserve lands in Uganda, with no resettlement assistance and no compensation. In fact, compensation for the leased or sold land is poor or non-existent; likely jobs from land grabs do not materialize; the most vulnerable of the population, namely the women and children, suffer more; and there is irreversible damage done to ecosystems, such as draining of marshland and clearing of forest.

Since colonisation, from in the post-independence era to the age of economic liberalisation thanks to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund African leaders at both the community and national level have always shown a high degree of propensity towards any investors who knock at their door selling ideas of how to turn around the fortunes of their nations. Africa is a very lucrative area due to failed or dysfunctional political systems and a despicable crop of leaders who are easy prey for manipulation, if not exploitation, by any would-be investors. The political elites in African countries have a demeaning attitude towards a majority of their population, and will stop at nothing when it comes to expropriating their people’s resources in an effort to make a ‘killing’ out of anything that previous regimes did not act on during their time in power. South Sudan has also seen a surge of investor interest since the country’s independence in July last year. The South Sudanese government, along with foreign aid agencies, has held a series of events to promote foreign investment in the country, including an international conference in Washington in December. But David Deng, Research Director of the South Sudan Law Society, says that a large number of potential investors have visited the country since the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement, which ended a 22-year civil war between the north and south. Last year, researchers estimated that around 9% of South Sudan’s land had already been leased or bought by investors before independence. Deng said, “Here we have a country that is probably at the most unpredictable time in its entire history, faced with a very real possibility of a return to war, with a government that is just getting on its feet, and it still manages to attract considerable amounts of interest from foreign investors”.

When one hears Western media preaching that Africa is "open for business", it simply means that Africans havn’t learned any of the lessons they should have after many years of exploitation, bringing misery to the continent’s vulnerable populations. Political leaders from countries leasing land argue that it is prudent to lease land in the name of business and economic liberalization. But the ‘voiceless’ and ‘powerless’ local farmers who bear the brunt of the consequences that come with land grabs have a different take. In short, their patience will run out as they quickly approach the edge with no options; they will either have to accept ‘falling off the cliff’ or step forward and say enough is enough, and seek to reclaim the land. African land experts will tell you that this would be like opening a Pandora’s Box that has been steaming for several decades. Across Africa, the box is full of unresolved historical land grievances, so much so that no African government will withstand its ‘explosion’, as time and again, its ugly face has destabilized populations in Kenya, South Sudan and Zimbabwe. But as Kenya and South Sudan walk down the road of the land leasing business, one needs not be a rocket scientist to expect the unexpected.

Adapted from here