The focus of the seminar was to explore the increasing interest in land acquisition in Africa from the different perspectives of the major stakeholders. It took place at Sida on the 10th of November, 2010.

1. Land deals in Africa:
Trends, drivers, impacts and responses
Lorenzo Cotula
Senior Researcher
IIED

2.  Trends and drivers
 Implications for land rights and rural livelihoods
 Are there alternatives?
 Ways forward

3.  Trends and drivers
 Implications for land rights and rural livelihoods
 Are there alternatives?
 Ways forward

4.  IIED/FAO (2008) -
Biofuels
 IIED/FAO/IFAD (2009) -
Africa
 IIED/TNRF (2009) -
Tanzania
 IIED/CTV (2010) -
Mozambique

5. •About 10m ha of approved land allocations >1000ha 2004-early 2009
(mainly govt leases) in five African countries alone (Ethiopia, Mozambique,
Nigeria, Sudan, Liberia) (World Bank 2010)
•Usually small % of suitable land (eg 0.6% in Mali, 2.3% in Madagascar) but
higher value lands targeted (irrigation, soil fertility, markets)
•Some deals are very large (eg 100,000 ha in Mali) but average sizes are
much smaller
•Little land under production
Allocated land (hectares, cumulative)

6. •Media focus on FDI, especially govt-backed
agencies in Asia and Western investment funds
•National inventories:
•Nationals very important
•FDI from Europe and US as well as Gulf, East
Asia and India
•Mainly private agribusiness (90% of land
acquired in Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar,
Mali), though home governments provide
support
•Drivers:
•Food and energy - security concerns,
commercial returns
•Ag commodities and timber
•Carbon markets

7.  Trends and drivers
 Implications for land rights and rural livelihoods
 Are there alternatives?
 Ways forward

8. •Land central to lives to millions of people in Africa – not just
livelihoods, also cultural and spiritual value. Human rights are at stake
•Major risks – for local access to land, water and resources, for family
farming
•Also hopes for benefits – capital, jobs, infrastructure development,
productivity increases, market access
•World Bank (2010) found little evidence of these so far
•Costs are incurred now, benefits are in uncertain future
•Benefits do not necessarily accrue to people who lose land

9. Concepts of wasteland, marginal land and idle land disregard or
under-value current uses
Resource constraints may exist even where land available (eg
water)
Large natural resource investment projects are unlikely not to affect
existing access to land and resources – even where intensity of
current resource use may be low

10. In Africa, rural people tend to access land through
“customary” systems and have use rights on state
land; despite recent law reforms, security of these
rights undermined by
 Limited documentation
 Legal protection only if “productive use”
 Extensive powers of compulsory acquisition – what
is “public purpose”?
 Compensation only for loss of improvements – and
no compensation if no “visible” improvements
(grazing, hunting-gathering)
 Little or no local consultation requirements – and
where legally required, weak implementation
 More generally, limited capacity to exercise rights,
major power asymmetries

11.  As deals move from MOUs to land transfers and implementation,
limited but growing evidence that people are losing land
 Eg in Kenya (FIAN, 2010); Mozambique (Nhantumbo and
Salomão, 2010; FIAN, 2010); Ghana (Schoneveld et al, 2010)

12.  Trends and drivers
 Implications for land rights and rural livelihoods
 Are there alternatives?
 Ways forward

13.  Ongoing work: desk research,
lesson-sharing, case studies - in
collaboration with IFAD, FAO and
SDC
 No tinkering around the edges –
assess inclusiveness of core
business model based on
 Ownership
 Voice
 Risk
 Reward

14. The models
 There are alternatives to land acquisitions
 Wide range of models - contract farming,
joint ventures, lease/management
contracts, supply chain relations...
 Great diversity within models
 Often used in combination
 Some well tested and documented, others
more recent
 Collaboration in production vs value-
sharing mainly through rewards (eg
leases)
 Context and crop key

15. All that glitters is not gold
– devil is in the detail
 Whether collaborative models benefit
local groups depends on process and
terms
 Contract farming: access to inputs
and markets, more stable incomes –
or exploitative outsourcing of risks
 Joint ventures: equity stake, board
representation, dividends – or land
loss, nominal say, transfer pricing
 Local disaggregation needed to
assess impacts; longer-term,
impacts on land access possible

16.  Trends and drivers
 Implications for land rights and rural livelihoods
 Are there alternatives?
 Ways forward

17.  Major, lasting repercussions on agriculture and food
security – need for vigorous public debate in host
countries, farmer organisations must be central to that
debate
 Widespread perception that large plantations needed to
modernise agriculture, but no evidence it works
 Irrespective of development pathway chosen, securing
local land rights is more urgent than ever
 Eg Mozambique’s Community Land Fund - community
land delimitation, farmers associations, support to local
consultation...