African agriculture has a big investment problem: lots of private equity interest but few opportunities because most farms and companies are too small to absorb the cash or provide attractive returns.
Foreigners are buying up prime agricultural land, but proposed legislation could curtail the booming trade.
Public-private partnership program envisions letting investors farm up to 4 million hectares of currently unused government land for up to 50 years in large-scale 400,000-hectare projects.
Ethiopia announced on Friday plans to lease 100,000 hectares of land both to local and foreign investors, despite recent reports that foreign investors were grabbing large chunks of land.
Olam International, an India-based multinational agribusiness company, is developing an outgrower scheme on a giant 20-year, 850,000 hectare concession it has secured not far from the port of Beira, Mozambique.
Three MoUs on investment in mineral exploration and sugar cane plantation in Cambodia were signed last weekend in China’s Guangxi province at the Forum on Potential Investment and Business Opportunities in Cambodia.
The Liberian government has leased nearly 6 per cent of Liberia’s total land mass to palm-oil companies. More than a million people live on those lands, and 150,000 will be affected in the first five years of the plantations.
We are witnessing a second scramble for Africa and other poor countries by rich nations and agribusinesses to acquire land for agricultural and biofuel purposes.
Today in the lead up to World Habitat Day on October 1st Witness are proud to announce a new video People Before Profit – bringing communities across the world together to tell the global story of forced evictions.
Olam's acquisition includes five estates on 5,866 hectares of land in northern Zambia's Kasama district.
Ethiopia Sugar Corp. said it’s signed agreements with state-owned China Development Bank Corp. for $500 million in loans to build two refineries, part of a plan to boost output of the sweetener almost tenfold by 2025.
