News
Timely news and information about agricultural research in Africa. Collected from a variety of sources, we are also happy to accept your suggestions for relevant research to include.
Latest articles
Is Water the Hidden Agenda of Agricultural Land Acquisition in sub-Saharan Africa?
April 7, 2011 / News by P Woodhouse and A S Ganho The many headlines focusing on ‘land-grabbing’ have distracted attention from the role that access to water plays in underpinning the projected productivity of foreign direct investment in acquisition of agricultural land in developing
Projecting Smallholders: Roads, the Puebla to Panama Plan
April 7, 2011 / News Projecting Smallholders: Roads, the Puebla to Panama Plan and Land Grabbing in the Q’eqchi’ Lowlands of Northern Guatemala By Liza Grandia As an avenue for analyzing the impacts of the broader PPP infrastructure program on indigenous, rural areas, this paper
ENGLISH – Agrarian structure, foreign land ownership, and land value in Brazil
April 7, 2011 / News Agrarian structure, foreign land ownership, and land value in Brazil By Sérgio Sauer and Sergio Pereira Leite The recent world “rush for farmland” has targeted Latin America in general and Brazil in particular, with a huge increase in foreign investments
Dynamics in land tenure, local power and the peasant economy: the case of Petén, Guatemala
April 7, 2011 / News By Markus Zander and Jochen Dürr This article analyses the ongoing process of land grabbing by cattle farmers and drug traffickers in south-eastern Petén, Guatemala and its socio-economic consequences. In the last decade, this process has strongly accelerated due to
Transnational Land Deals in Mindanao: Situating Ambivalent Farmer Responses in Local Politics
April 6, 2011 / News by Tania Salerno This article broadly discusses transnational corporate land acquisitions while focusing specifically on the politics surrounding a joint-investment in Mindanao, Philippines. More particularly it analyses the key implementation processes prior to and during the establishment of one particular
The gendered politics of dispossession: oil palm expansion in a Dayak Hibun community in West Kalima
April 6, 2011 / News The gendered politics of dispossession: oil palm expansion in a Dayak Hibun community in West Kalimantan, Indonesia # by Julia and Ben White This paper explores the gendered politics of monocrop oil-palm expansion in a Hibun Dayak community in Sanggau
Urbanization strategies and agrarian change in Eastern China: a multilevel integrated assessment of
April 6, 2011 / News Urbanization strategies and agrarian change in Eastern China: a multilevel integrated assessment of domestic land grabbing by Giuseppina Siciliano This paper explores the links between urbanization strategies and domestic land grabbing processes in a rural village located in Chongming island.
Gulf-State Investments in Indonesia and The Philippines: Gaining Control of Agricultural Land and Fo
April 6, 2011 / News by Gerben Nooteboom & Rosanne Rutten, University of Amsterdam The issue of food security is most acute for Gulf States. Poor in arable land and water resources, rich in capital, and dependent on a huge migrant-labour force, Gulf States rely
Conservation and Land Grabbing in Tanzania
April 6, 2011 / News by Tor A. Benjaminsen, Ian Bryceson, Faustin Maganga, Tonje Refseth The discussion of global ‘land grabbing’ has mainly focused on large-?scale land deals and direct foreign investments in food and biofuel production in developing countries. The land grabbing effect of
Gendered Dimensions of Land and Rural Livelihoods: The Case of New Settler Farmer Displacement…
April 6, 2011 / News Gendered Dimensions of Land and Rural Livelihoods: The Case of New Settler Farmer Displacement at Nuanetsi Ranch, Mwenezi District, Zimbabwe By Patience Mutopo The bio fuels boom has recently been gaining much currency in Zimbabwe. This revolution has had different
Resistance to Accumulation by Dispossession in the Context Of Neoliberal Capitalism And Globalizatio
April 6, 2011 / News By Shapan Adnan Harvey [2003] has argued that, in the long term historical geography of capitalism, accumulation by dispossession (ongoing primitive accumulation) is organically linked to the accumulation of capital proper i.e. that based on expanded reproduction. Furthermore, accumulation by
Legitimating Foreignization in Bolivia: Brazilian agriculture and the relations of conflict…
April 6, 2011 / News Legitimating Foreignization in Bolivia: Brazilian agriculture and the relations of conflict and consent in Santa Cruz, Bolivia By Lee Mackey Introduction: Brazil is a leader in tropical soybean innovation, the pretender to dominance of a global biofuels market, and the
After titling: Oil palm landscapes and Afro-Colombian territories
April 6, 2011 / News by Roosbelinda Cardenas Gonzales On September 28, 1994, Aroldo and a small group of other residents of Bocas de Guabal, a small village on the Mira River in Colombia’s littoral border with Ecuador, held a meeting to discuss the rapid
The Role of the EU in Land Grabbing in Africa – CSO Monitoring 2009-2010 “Advancing African….
April 6, 2011 / News The Role of the EU in Land Grabbing in Africa – CSO Monitoring 2009-2010 “Advancing African Agriculture” (AAA): The Impact of Europe’s Policies and Practices on African Agriculture and Food Security By Alison Graham, Sylvain Aubry, Rolf Künnemann and Sofía
A question of scale: the construction of marginal lands and the limitations of global land classific
April 6, 2011 / News by Rachel A. Nalepa, Boston University With the growth of the biofuel complex, the concept of “marginal land” has emerged as a term commonly associated with the promotion of agrofuels. Remote sensing and other data are used to globally characterize
China’s Farmland Rush in Benin: Toward a Win-Win Economic Model of Cooperation?
April 6, 2011 / News By Paulette Nonfodji The early seventies saw the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Benin after the breakdown of these relations in 1966. China’s role in Benin has ever since been growing
Wildlife Conservation and Land Acquisitions: A Case Study of the Tanzania Land Conservation Trust
April 6, 2011 / News By Ngeta Kabiri, Environmental Evaluation Unit, University of Cape Town In the past decade, there have been large-scale acquisitions of land in Africa that have drawn the attention of both agrarian policy analysts and local populations in the affected areas.
Development by Dispossession: Land Grabbing as New Enclosures in Contemporary Ethiopia
April 6, 2011 / News by Fouad Makki and Charles Geisler Dept. of Development Sociology, Cornell University The confluence of the world economic crisis with the global food and energy crises has set off a frenzy of land grabbing in Africa, accelerating trends of de-peasantization,
Multi-stakeholder initiatives to regulate biofuels: the Roundtable for Sustainable Biofuels
April 6, 2011 / News By Elizabeth Fortin, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow University of Bristol Over the last decade, dramatic growth in the production of biofuels across the globe has been supported by domestic, bilateral and intergovernmental policy instruments. The consequential dominance of agri-business multi-national
Joint ventures in South Africa’s land reform programme: strategic partnerships or strategic …
April 4, 2011 / News Joint ventures in South Africa’s land reform programme: strategic partnerships or strategic resource grab? By Nerhene Davis & Edward Lahiff Interoduction: Over the past three years, growing attention has been paid to the large-scale acquisition of land in developing countries
Contemporary Land Grabs and their Alternatives in the Americas
April 4, 2011 / News By Sara Safransky and Wendy Wolford Introduction: In 2007-2008, world food and fuel prices spiked sharply upward, doubling or tripling the cost of key food items and leading to a “wave” of protests and anti-government riots in more than 60
Land Market Liberalization and Trans-National Commercial Land Deals in Ghana since the 1990s
April 4, 2011 / News By Dzodzi Tsikata and Joseph Yaro Introduction: Large Scale commercial land transactions involving land in developing countries and transnational corporations and governments of the global north are justifiably generating a lot of interest in the land tenure research and policy
Titling against grabbing? Critiques and conundrums around land formalisation in Southeast Asia
April 2, 2011 / News By Philip Hirsch Debates and critiques around land policy often focus on the neo-liberal agenda of formalising land as alienable property, most notably through land titling schemes. Sometimes these schemes are posited against alternatives such as land reform and community land
How the Daewoo Attempted Land Acquisition Contributed to Madagascar’s Political Crisis in 2009
April 2, 2011 / News By Venusia Vinciguerra The acquisition or leasing of extended areas of land in developing countries by private firms is a growing phenomenon (Cotula et al. 2009:4-5; Shepard and Anuradha 2009). Some trigger factors for this are: food security issues tied
From International Land Deals to Local Informal Agreements: Regulations of and Local Reactions…
April 2, 2011 / News From International Land Deals to Local Informal Agreements: Regulations of and Local Reactions to Agricultural Investments in Madagascar By Burnod Perrine, Gingembre Mathilde, Andrianirina Ratsialonana Rivo, and Ratovoarinony Raphael In 2009, the 1.3 million hectare agricultural project planned in Madagascar
A Land Grab Scenario for Indonesia? Diverse Trajectories and Virtual Land Grabs in the Outer Islands
April 2, 2011 / News By John McCarthy, Suraya Afiff and Jacqueline Vel
Strengths and limitations of the Round Table for Responsible Soy — RTRS in Mato Grosso, Brazil
April 2, 2011 / News By Mateo Mier y Terán The rapidly increasing production of soybean over the past four decades in the southern cone of Latin America, mainly in Brazil and Argentina, has demanded vast areas of land and predictions are that the global
Land Grab and Oil Palm in Colombia
April 2, 2011 / News By Mark James This article focuses on the effects of agrofuel production in the south-western department of Nariño, Colombia, as multinational firms cultivate palm oil on territories that legally belong to indigenous and ethnic groups. The two communities primarily affected
Economic Empowerment for Pastoralist Women: A Comparative Look at Program Experience in Uganda…
April 2, 2011 / News Economic Empowerment for Pastoralist Women: A Comparative Look at Program Experience in Uganda, Somaliland and Sudan By John Livingstone & Everse Ruhindi PENHA (the Pastoral & Environmental Network in the Horn of Africa) is a regional NGO, focused on pastoral
Eating Bitter to Taste Sweet: An Ethnographic Sketch of a Chinese Agriculture Project in Senegal
April 2, 2011 / News By Lila Buckley This is a case study of Chinese agriculture interventions in Senegal. As Chinese land-based investments multiply across the African continent, I focus on a single government-run agriculture demonstration centre outside Dakar to provide insight into the daily
Farmland grabs by urban sprawl and their impacts on peasants’ livelihood in China: An overview
April 2, 2011 / News By LI Xiubin China is undergoing rapid industrialization and urbanization, which substantially increase pressure on farmland resources, environment, and peasants’ life as well. During the past two decades, some 4 million ha of farmland has been occupied by non-agricultural sectors.
Global Landgrabs, Agribusiness and the Commercial Smallholder: A West African perspective
April 2, 2011 / News By Kojo Sebastian Amanor In the last few years there has been a growing concern with investment in large-scale estate agriculture, particularly within Africa, and its impact on eroding land rights and livelihoods of smallholders. This tends to regard investment
The Modern Motility of Pastoral Land Rights: Tenure Transitions and Land-Grabbing In East Africa
April 2, 2011 / News By John G. Galaty Paper The major challenges to pastoralism are not the demands of modernity, which most pastoralists are fully willing to embrace, nor the cultural lure of education – since the educated pastoralist is not an oxymoron but
Biofuels and Wasteland Grabbing: How India’s Biofuel Policy is Facilitating Land Grabs in Tamil Nadu
April 2, 2011 / News By Jennifer Baka Unlike the large scale, biofuels-induced land grabs occurring in Africa(Cotula et al. 2009; Sulle and Nelson 2009; World Bank 2010), the land grabstaking place in India involve smaller tracts of land and are more subtle and obscured.
Agrarian change below the radar screen: Rising farmland acquisitions by domestic investors in West..
April 2, 2011 / News Agrarian change below the radar screen: Rising farmland acquisitions by domestic investors in West Africa Results from a survey in Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger By Thea Hilhorst, Joost Nelen, Nata Traoré In West Africa, domestic investors acquire plots of
Processes of Large-Scale Land Acquisition by Investors:Case Studies from Sub-Saharan Africa
April 2, 2011 / News By Laura German, George Schoneveld and Esther Mwangi Rapid growth of emerging economies, emerging interest in biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels and recent volatility in commodity prices have led to a marked increase in the pace and scale
Gujarat’s Gain and Bengal’s Loss? ‘‘Development,’ – Land Acquisition in India and the Tata Nano…
April 2, 2011 / News Gujarat’s Gain and Bengal’s Loss? ‘‘Development,’ – Land Acquisition in India and the Tata Nano Project: A Comparison of Singur with Sanand By Devparna Roy It is necessary to understand the political economy and recent political history of West Bengal
‘Land belongs to the community’: Demystifying the ‘global land grab’ in Southern Sudan
April 2, 2011 / News A working paper by David K. Deng Sudan is among the global ‘hotspots’ for large-scale land acquisitions. Although most of this investment activity was thought to be focused in the Northern part of the country, recent research indicates that a
The ‘bitter fruit’ of a new agrarian model: Large-scale land deals and local livelihoods in Rwanda
April 1, 2011 / News By An Ansoms Abstract: In a context of globalisation and liberalisation, Africa is increasingly confronted with the commercialisation of its space. Various so-called large-scale actors – international private investors, ‘investor’ states, and local entrepreneurs – search for large quantities of
What shall we do without our land? Land Grabs and Resistance in Rural
April 1, 2011 / News Alison Elizabeth Schneider Political dynamics of the global land grab are exemplified in Cambodia, where at least 27 forced evictions took place in 2009, affecting 23,000 people. Evictions of the rural poor are legitimized by the assumption that non-private land
The Modern Motility of Pastoral Land Rights: Tenure Transitions and Land-Grabbing in East Africa
March 31, 2011 / News John G. Galaty Mcgill University Introduction: The major challenges to pastoralism are not the demands of modernity, which most pastoralists are fully willing to embrace, nor the cultural lure of education – since the educated pastoralist is not an
Climate Change in Sub-Saharan Africa: consequences and implications
March 31, 2011 / News P. Ericksen, J. de Leeuw, P. Thornton, A. Ayantunde, M. Said, M. Herrero and A. Notenbaert International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya and Bamako, Mali Introduction Managing climate variability and climate risk is at the heart of pastoralism. Both traditional
MIND THE GAP – Commercialization, Livelihoods and Wealth Disparity
March 22, 2011 / News MIND THE GAP – Commercialization, Livelihoods and Wealth Disparityin Pastoralist Areas of Ethiopia By Yacob Aklilu and Andy Catley
Livestock Exports from the Horn of Africa
March 22, 2011 / News An Analysis of Benefits by Pastoralist Wealth Group and Policy Implications By Yacob Aklilu and Andy Catley Feinstein International Center, Tufts University
Moving Up or Moving Out?
March 22, 2011 / News A Rapid Livelihoods and Conflict Analysis in Mieso-Mulu Woreda, Shinile Zone, Somali Region, Ethiopia By Andy Catley and Alula Iyasu
An Essay on The Future of Pastoralist Conflict
March 18, 2011 / News By Paul Goldsmith Conflict is a form of disorder intrinsic to developmental processes. The impacts of violent conflict on economy and governance represent both a set of costs and specific indicators of serious problems on different levels of the system.