Sir Bob warns pensions may miss out on Africa
- Financial Times
- 20 June 2010
Sir Bob Geldof has warned UK pension funds they are missing out on the “last great investment opportunity left” by not placing money in Africa -- including its arable lands.
Sir Bob Geldof has warned UK pension funds they are missing out on the “last great investment opportunity left” by not placing money in Africa -- including its arable lands.
Responsible investment in agriculture is preferably not about large scale foreign land acquisitions. It is about promoting sustainable agriculture, reducing poverty and meeting the world’s food needs, says IFAD's Harold Liversage
The UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) said that so far trade and investment deals with partners in the south are merely reinforcing a long-standing trend with the north in which African countries export farm produce, minerals, ores, and crude oil, and import manufactured goods.
Indonesia's Minister of Agriculture says the Embassy in Riyadh will organize a meeting and formulate regulations on the investment, as a follow-up of his visit to Saudi Arabia
There are always concerns surrounding foreign ownership, but they're about the wider issue of land ownership and not specifically about China, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said after talks with Chinese Vice-President Xi Jingping
Instead of providing land to big corporations, the Indonesian government has a better choice: to redistribute land to the millions of landless and peasant families so they can work again to feed their family.
The Chinese Government is buying Australian farms to directly feed its population, a senior Liberal said on the eve of a visit by a top Bejing official.
In a small-town spin on a global agricultural investment trend, a group of US Midwest soybean farmers has issued a private placement this month to raise capital for farmland acquisitions in Brazil.
Sai R Karuturi, founder and MD of Karuturi Global, says the company has acquired a very large piece of land in Ethiopia and has started agricultural production from it.
The Indian government is encouraging private companies to shop for land in countries like Canada, Myanmar, Australia and Argentina to grow crops under long-term supply contracts.
The political dynamics around land are further exposing the inappropriateness of the aggressively promoted mainstream ‘toolkit’ of ‘land governance’.
"It's not something that is going to take too long, it's not rocket science," Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the OECD, said of the planned guidelines on agriculture.