Il y a deux semaines, les habitants de Ndjassock au Cameroun (région du centre) barricadaient les locaux de la SOCAPALM - Eseka, une plantation de palmier à huile de Socfin/Bolloré qui sous-loue 2600 hectares de terres à des prix exorbitants aux "élites" et populations du territoire, bénéficiant de l'exclusivité sur leur production tout en fixant le prix au kilo.
A French billionaire controls 400,000 hectares across Africa through a web of Swiss companies and colonial-era land titles. This is how modern extraction works.
Depuis des décennies, les communautés riveraines des plantations du groupe Socfin dénoncent les pratiques abusives de l'entreprise, qui vont de l'accaparement des terres à la violence sexuelle. Aujourd'hui, leurs plaintes ont été validées par une source surprenante : les propres consultants rémunérés de Socfin, qui ont conclu que la plupart des plaintes sont au moins partiellement fondées et que la grande majorité des abus sont de la responsabilité de l'entreprise.
For decades, communities around the Socfin rubber and oil palm plantations have railed against the company's abusive practices, which range from land grabs to sexual violence. Now their complaints have been vindicated by a surprising source: Socfin's own paid consultants, who have concluded that most of the complaints are at least partially founded, and that the vast majority of the abuses are the responsibility of the corporation.
During a field trip to the site on June 5, 2025, led by SYNAPARCAM, villagers expressed fear of not being able to feed their families or having a small place to build a house as all remaining lands are being occupied with palm trees.
In 2019, 22 communities in Liberia filed a complaint with the World Bank Group’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, accusing the International Finance Corporation of fueling abuse and environmental destruction through a loan to the Salala Rubber Corporation to expand its rubber plantations—with devastating consequences.
The World Bank Group’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman found that the IFC failed to follow its own safeguards, enabling widespread harm to land rights, community health, cultural heritage and women by the Salala Rubber Corporation.
A long-standing land dispute has recently escalated between a subsidiary of the European holding company Socfin and the Indigenous Apouh à Ngog (Apouh) community in Cameroon’s Littoral region.
Après une longue bataille judiciaire, les ONG et militant·es poursuivi·es diffamation ont été totalement acquittées. Le jugement rendu par la justice luxembourgeoise est très net : les accusations étaient infondées.
Bloomberg's Big Take podcast looks at an investigation into allegations of sexual coercion at plantations run by Socfin, a rubber company supplying top tiremakers.
Hubert Fabri and Vincent Bolloré own plantations accused of land appropriation and labor abuses. Their company says it has taken steps to improve matters, but a trip to West Africa shows sexual coercion claims remain widespread.
On March 25, 2025, the people living in Apouh A Ngog village in the Litoral Region of Cameroon witnessed a brutal and traumatising act of intimidation : heavily armed government forces, including heavily armed soldiers and gendarmes arriving to supervise the replanting of oil palms by staff of SOCAPALM, part of the multinational corporation Socfin Bolloré.
