Land deals in Africa:

Trends, drivers, impacts and responses

Lorenzo Cotula

Senior Researcher

IIED

Trends and drivers

Implications for land rights and rural livelihoods

Are there alternatives?

Ways forward

Trends and drivers

Implications for land rights and rural livelihoods

Are there alternatives?

Ways forward

IIED/FAO (2008) -

Biofuels

IIED/FAO/IFAD (2009) -

Africa

IIED/TNRF (2009) -

Tanzania

IIED/CTV (2010) -

Mozambique

• About 10m ha of approved land allocations >1000ha 2004-early 2009

(mainly govt leases) in five African countries alone (Ethiopia, Mozambique,

Nigeria, Sudan, Liberia) (World Bank 2010)

• Usually small % of suitable land (eg 0.6% in Mali, 2.3% in Madagascar) but

higher value lands targeted (irrigation, soil fertility, markets)

• Some deals are very large (eg 100,000 ha in Mali) but average sizes are

much smaller

• Little land under production

Allocated land (hectares, cumulative)

• Media focus on FDI, especially govt-backed agencies in Asia and Western investment funds

• National inventories:

• Nationals very important

• FDI from Europe and US as well as Gulf, East Asia and India

• Mainly private agribusiness (90% of land acquired in Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali), though home governments provide support

• Drivers:

• Food and energy - security concerns, commercial returns

• Ag commodities and timber

• Carbon markets

Trends and drivers

Implications for land rights and rural livelihoods

Are there alternatives?

Ways forward

• Land central to lives to millions of people in Africa – not just livelihoods, also cultural and spiritual value. Human rights are at stake

• Major risks – for local access to land, water and resources, for family farming

• Also hopes for benefits – capital, jobs, infrastructure development, productivity increases, market access

• World Bank (2010) found little evidence of these so far

• Costs are incurred now, benefits are in uncertain future

• Benefits do not necessarily accrue to people who lose land

Concepts of wasteland, marginal land and idle land disregard or

under-value current uses

Resource constraints may exist even where land available (eg

water)

Large natural resource investment projects are unlikely not to affect

existing access to land and resources – even where intensity of

current resource use may be low

In Africa, rural people tend to access land through

“customary” systems and have use rights on state

land; despite recent law reforms, security of these

rights undermined by

Limited documentation

Legal protection only if “productive use”

Extensive powers of compulsory acquisition – what is “public purpose”?

Compensation only for loss of improvements – and no compensation if no “visible” improvements (grazing, hunting-gathering)

Little or no local consultation requirements – and where legally required, weak implementation

More generally, limited capacity to exercise rights, major power asymmetries

As deals move from MOUs to land transfers and implementation,

limited but growing evidence that people are losing land

Eg in Kenya (FIAN, 2010); Mozambique (Nhantumbo and

Salomão, 2010; FIAN, 2010); Ghana (Schoneveld et al, 2010)

Trends and drivers

Implications for land rights and rural livelihoods

Are there alternatives?

Ways forward

Ongoing work: desk research, lesson-sharing, case studies - in collaboration with IFAD, FAO and SDC

No tinkering around the edges –assess inclusiveness of core business model based on Ownership

Voice

Risk

Reward

The models

There are alternatives to land acquisitions

Wide range of models - contract farming, joint ventures, lease/management contracts, supply chain relations...

Great diversity within models

Often used in combination

Some well tested and documented, others more recent

Collaboration in production vs value-sharing mainly through rewards (eg leases)

Context and crop key

All that glitters is not gold

– devil is in the detail Whether collaborative models benefit

local groups depends on process and terms

Contract farming: access to inputs and markets, more stable incomes –or exploitative outsourcing of risks

Joint ventures: equity stake, board representation, dividends – or land loss, nominal say, transfer pricing

Local disaggregation needed to assess impacts; longer-term, impacts on land access possible

Trends and drivers

Implications for land rights and rural livelihoods

Are there alternatives?

Ways forward

Major, lasting repercussions on agriculture and food security – need for vigorous public debate in host countries, farmer organisations must be central to that debate

Widespread perception that large plantations needed to modernise agriculture, but no evidence it works

Irrespective of development pathway chosen, securing local land rights is more urgent than ever

Eg Mozambique’s Community Land Fund - community land delimitation, farmers associations, support to local consultation...