“We are not here to cry wolf about land grabs but we are here to discuss the management of land in Africa,” former president of Botswana Festus Mogae said
African experts seek plan to outlaw land grabs by foreigners
Nairobi, Kenya - African experts gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, are discussing a common position to outlaw land grabbing by foreigners, the latest threat to food security in the continent, PANA reported from here. Former President of Botswana Festus Mogae, the Chairman of the Coalition for Dialogue in Africa (CoDA), said the experts meeting on African land policy would discuss the positive and negative aspects of foreign investments in land.
“We are not here to cry wolf about land grabs but we are here to discuss the management of land in Africa,” the former president told the gathering.
An African Union official, Abebe Haile Gabriel, said foreign direct investments enabled several countries in the world to grow economically but this was not the case for Africa.
“Africa must mobilise benefits from the Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) because land resources are a source of dependence to many Africans,” said Abebe, the Director of Rural Economy and Agriculture at the African Union.
He said African countries would only benefit from the foreign land grabs if their leaders were better equipped to negotiate deals that would promote agriculture and sustain food security.
Experts blame African leaders for allowing transactions in land much to the disadvantage of local communities, who suffer the consequences of land shortages.
An African Development Bank (AfDB) official at the meeting said the high speed of foreign land acquisitions in Africa was driven by failure to substantially invest in the agriculture.
“The inequality in bargaining power is a threat to small-holder farmers because these land acquisitions create mass displacements,” the AfDB official said.
AU is seeking an agreement on a proposed African Land Policy that will govern the negotiations with foreign governments on obtaining land in Africa.
“We need investments in Africa, improved technology for productivity, investments in pastoralists and the indigenous small-scale farmers to produce food,” Marc Wegerif, the Economic Justice Campaign Coordinator for East and Central Africa at Oxfam International, told PANA.
Researchers said land deals equal to the entire size of the five East African Community (EAC) members -- Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania -- are currently under discussions and about 60 million hectares have been given out to foreign investors within Africa in the last two years alone.
“These are figures that are verified. We know discussions are underway for 165 million hectares of land,” Wegerif said.
Agriculture experts insist the current famine in the Horn of Africa region has been worsened by the increased demand for land for mining and exploration of oil resources in Kenya and Ethiopia, which has reduced the ability of the local pastoralists to resist long droughts.
The Regional Learning Programme for Vulnerable Communities, a lobby group, said the sub-division of land is threatening the lives of pastoralists in East Africa.
The group said pastoralists now keep smaller herds of cattle due to fragmented grazing land.
