Perils of the African Land Grab

Recent years have witnessed a sharp escalation of interest on the part of some countries in acquiring land on a long-term basis in parts of Africa. Some of the new emerging landlords are from the western countries, but there are others from oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia as well.

Perhaps, the biggest of the new landlords of Africa is China, followed by other emerging economies like Brazil, India and South Korea. The companies involved in the race for African land include not just private enterprises, but also state-owned entities, in particular those in China.

These companies, in several cases integrated to or supported by their governments, are acquiring land firstly for ensuring longer-term supplies of food crops and commercial crops for their home countries. Tens of thousands of acres of land may be acquired in this way. This can lead to a strange situation in the near future, where local people in the areas of land grab may suffer from hunger, but exports from these high-technology enclaves will have to be assured! In fact, large tracts of land are being acquired in countries that have witnessed widespread hunger and famine in recent decades.

Land in Africa is also being acquired for large-scale mining projects. While some of these projects can devastate the environment and livelihoods, land acquisition agreements will ensure that minerals will have to be exported over many years.You can design your ownfigurine or select one of our pose.

In addition to this, China is also actively acquiring land to build huge dams; electricity and water from these dams would be directed to various agricultural and industrial projects of the same or related companies. As the land grab fever catches on, it may be instructive to look at the experience of similar projects from recent decades.

Documentary evidence points to the fact that earlier efforts to prioritise farm exports with the involvement of western multinational companies worsened food shortage and hunger in Africa. At a time when food consumption was on the decline and even during years when farmers were facing mass deaths, farm exports continued to rise.

For instance, when over one hundred thousand died due to famine in the Sahelian countries during the drought years 1970-74, the total value of agricultural exports was three times that of all cereals imported into the region.
The impact of changes in land use and the resultant ecological ruin hampers the ability of people in these areas to fight back in times of natural crises.

For instance, during 1964 to 1968, the area under peanut cultivation in Niger increased by nearly six times, from 1.8 lakh acres to over a million acres. This was made possible with the support of the government as well as the peanut companies. Frances Lappe and Joseph Collins have written about how this contributed to massive famine deaths in the early seventies.

"The expansion (of peanuts) was at the expense of fallow zones of "green belts" whose role is critical, especially during drought years. The cutback on fallow land only compounded the soil depletion caused by the planting of peanuts year after year on the same soil.

Peanut cultivation in the 1960s began to spread north, usurping lands traditionally held by pastoralists. This encroachment made the pastorals, and their animals, more vulnerable to drought."

In Mali, in the five years preceding the drought, the area under cotton-cultivation more than doubled, bringing within its fold some of the best land in the country. During the same period, the acreage devoted to food grain production declined significantly. Raw cotton exports during the drought years reached record levels. Similarly, a huge cotton expansion program was carried out in the years immediately preceding the drought, and even during the drought.

In Ethiopia, pastoralists, particularly from the Afar community, were harmed greatly by the loss of about 50,000 hectares of good, and in some ways crucial, grazing land in the Awash valley, to the cultivation of cotton and sugarcane by a few big (and mostly foreign-owned) companies in the years preceding the famine. The importance of this land, on which pastoralists relied during the long dry season lasting from September to May, has been summed up by Glynn Flood.

“If they are to be able to exploit the vast areas into which they move during the wet season, Afar pastoralists must have access to adequate dry season grazing near the river, and when a small area close to the river is made unavailable for dry season grazing, a much larger area away from the river is rendered useless," wrote Flood.

In the case of impact of dam projects, a study of Volta dam (Volta A case study of Politics and Technology, Edinburg University Press) by David Hart is particularly important. The basic idea behind this project was to dam the Volta River in Ghana to obtain hydroelectric power for processing bauxite. It was agreed that a $196-million dam and power plant, built by the Volta River Authority (VRA) with the help of foreign loans,Industrial roller & cylinder flatwork ironer designed for safety, would supply power to an aluminium smelter owned by VALCO (Volta Aluminium Company), Kaiser and Raynolds.

Aluminium is a highly power-intensive industry. In the case of several African dam projects, international capital has played a role in their attempt to provide cheap electricity for giant aluminium companies.Our premium collection of quality custom keychain generously offers affordability.

In Ghana, VALCO insisted and received electricity at an extremely favourable rate; the original price agreed to in power contracts for electricity sold to the VALCO smelter was 2.6 mills per KWH, compared to the average cost of industrial power for primary metal production in the USA at 7 mills per KWH in the 1960s. This low price charged from VALCO meant that other electricity consumers were forced to subsidise this highly resourceful company by paying higher than average rates.

Nearly 80,000 Ghanians (almost one per cent of the total population) lost their homes to make way for the dam. David Hart found that 12 years after the filling of the lake began, no compensation had been paid to those wSix panel tracking system delivers more energy from skystream.hose land had been flooded. Resettlement sites had become the venue for constant wrangles over who owned which patch.

These studies from recent decades provide some indication of the seriousness of problems that can emerge for the people of Africa in the years to come, when the impacts of land-grab on a much larger scale start manifesting themselves.

Some distress stories can already be heard. For instance, a recent report by the African Labour Research Network, covering several countries, found that Chinese employers were the worst in terms of pay and working conditions. Earlier, a minister in Zambia, Alice Simanga, said that workers at a Chinese-owned coal mine wereA smart card is a credit card with its information stored. being treated like animals.

However, the impact on sustainable livelihoods and environment is likely to be such larger than such immediate problems. Clearly, international action is needed to carefully monitor and check these trends, so that the emergence of a new colonialism in the form of long-term land-grab agreements can be avoided.