The AfCFTA and land in Africa: towards a surge in land grabbing?

Will the agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) embolden multinationals to increase their stranglehold on land? If its recently-adopted Protocol on Investment is anything to go by, the answer may well be yes. Through this protocol, the AfCFTA aims to boost and protect “intra-African” investment – in other words, between African countries. That said, questions arise as to whether multinationals with subsidiaries in Africa, and investment funds based in tax havens like Mauritius, might also benefit from this.              

The protocol requires investors to respect local communities’ “legitimate tenure rights to land”, but only insofar as they are recognised by the State Parties themselves. This could serve as a springboard to formalise land markets, with private land titling, as has long been the goal of the World Bank and other Western donors. Worse still, the AfCFTA promotes projects to combat climate change. In Africa, many such projects are based on land deals involving foreign investors. In other words, under the pretext of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the floodgates will be opened for land grabbing by local and foreign actors, whose huge appetite for African land has been made abundantly clear.