{"id":312590,"date":"2010-02-12T11:33:47","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T16:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3115"},"modified":"2010-02-12T11:33:47","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T16:33:47","slug":"africa-investment-sparks-land-grab-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/312590","title":{"rendered":"Africa investment sparks land grab fear"},"content":{"rendered":"

BBC News:<\/a> Long of little interest to outsiders, African land has rarely been associated with financial reward.<\/p>\n

But for investors like Susan Payne, chief executive of Emergent Asset Management, farmland in sub-Saharan Africa is a hot bet.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Population increase, changes in eating habits and demand for bio-fuels are putting farmland at a premium worldwide.<\/p>\n

“And African farmland prices are the lowest in the world,” she says.<\/p>\n

Her fund is in the process of buying or leasing a total 50,000 hectares, equal to roughly 80,000 football pitches, in several African countries including Mozambique, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Angola, Swaziland and the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n

Ms Payne says the investment leads to better harvests and creates jobs.<\/p>\n

But some land deals have sparked accusations that foreign investors, corporations and countries are engaged in a damaging “land grab” in Africa and a new form of colonialism.<\/p>\n

Food security<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last year’s food price crisis, which triggered riots in a dozen countries, has made governments more focused on the security of their food supplies.<\/p>\n

Countries short of arable land, such as China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Kuwait, have been seeking agricultural investments in Africa.<\/p>\n

“This has woken people up to political issues surrounding food and agricultural land ownership,” says Ms Payne.<\/p>\n

“As an investor you can take advantage of that,” she says.<\/p>\n

Ms Payne says the investments made by her company are welcomed and is confident that charges of land grabbing won’t stick.<\/p>\n

“Frankly we are seeing amenable terms because local groups, including governments, want us there,” she says.<\/p>\n

“We are not bringing in our own farm workers and then taking the food and exporting it.”<\/p>\n

She says local communities benefit from access to new farming techniques, new seeds and technologies, as well as the above-average wages paid by Emergent’s local partner.<\/p>\n

For now, the vast majority of the food produced stays in the country in which it is produced although it can be exported.<\/p>\n

“There is a lot of enthusiasm for this and there should be,” she says.<\/p>\n

“Without private pools of capital like we are providing, there will not be the jump-start to get Africa growing rapidly in agriculture – or frankly – any other sector.”<\/p>\n

Politicised<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nonetheless, it is a highly politicised arena to invest in.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics was forced to abandon a project to lease one million acres of land in Madagascar to produce corn earlier this year.<\/p>\n

The country’s new president scrapped the deal following criticism that local people had not been consulted, and Daewoo was unsettled by unrest in the island state<\/p>\n

But Ms Payne says the risks to investors are overplayed and such views are based on an outdated view of African governments.<\/p>\n

She says that 70% of African governments are democratically led and their economies are much better regulated than in the past.<\/p>\n

“We only operate in counties where we can have clear land title. If we can’t get this, or we don’t have a 99-year lease from the government then we won’t operate in that country,” she says.<\/p>\n

Read more>><\/a><\/p>\n

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BBC News: Long of little interest to outsiders, African land has rarely been associated with financial reward. But for investors like Susan Payne, chief executive of Emergent Asset Management, farmland in sub-Saharan Africa is a hot bet. Population increase, changes in eating habits and demand for bio-fuels are putting farmland at a premium worldwide. “And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}