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.
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Town Camels: Pastoral Innovation in a fast Changing World
March 15, 2011 / News Town Camels: Pastoral Innovation in a fast Changing World Case Study from Gode Town, Somali Regional State, Ethiopia By Abdi Abdullahi Hussien, Seid Mohamed Ali, and Abdurehman Eid Tahir Because of demographic, socio-economic and political factors, Ethiopian pastoralists are settling
Dispossession, semi-proletarianization, and enclosure: primitive accumulation and the land grab …
March 15, 2011 / News Dispossession, semi-proletarianization, and enclosure: primitive accumulation and the land grab in Laos By Miles Kenney-Lazar Introduction: In April 2008, the Vietnamese corporation Hoàng Anh Gia Lai Joint (HAGL) signed a memorandum of understanding with the Government of Laos (GoL) agreeing to
The Politics of “Win-Win” Narratives: Land Grab as Development Opportunity?
March 15, 2011 / News By Elisa Da Vià Intorduction: In the Makeni area of central Sierra Leone, a land dispute has flared up after Addax Bioenergy, a division of the Swiss-based energy corporation Addax & Oryx Group, won a 50-years lease for around 40,000
Indirect expropriation: The role of national institutions and domestic elites in the Mozambican farm
March 10, 2011 / News By Madeleine Fairbairn Rather than treating global farmland acquisitions as a top-down phenomenon driven entirely by global markets, this paper instead highlights the crucial mediating role played by national-level land politics and domestic elites using material drawn from interviews with
Whose Paradise? Conservation, tourism and land grabbing in Tayrona Natural Park, Colombia
March 8, 2011 / News By Diana Ojeda The last decade in Colombia has been marked by a massive counter-agrarian reform, forcibly displacing 4 million people from an estimated 5.3 million hectares of land. The land grab stands in close relation to paramilitarism, illegal crop
Foreign investment into agriculture: Investment Treaties and the ability of governments to balance..
March 8, 2011 / News Foreign investment into agriculture: Investment Treaties and the ability of governments to balance rights and obligations between foreign investors and local communities By Mahnaz Malik A number of countries are offering large tracts of farmland to foreign investors as demand
Development as a Trojan Horse? Foreign Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Ethiopia, Madagascar …
March 7, 2011 / News Development as a Trojan Horse? Foreign Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Ethiopia, Madagascar and Uganda By Dr. Sandra J.T.M. Evers and Dr. Kassahun Berhanu The past decade has been characterized by an unprecedented rise in foreign, large-scale land acquisitions in Africa.
The Political Construction Of A Land Grab in Papua New Guinea
March 7, 2011 / News By Colin Filer Introduction: It is still commonly asserted that 97 percent of the land in Papua New Guinea (PNG) remains under customary ownership, just as it was when PNG gained its independence from Australian colonial rule in 1975 (GPNG
The Biofuel Boom and Indonesia’s Oil Palm Industry: The Twin Processes of Peasant Dispossession…
March 7, 2011 / News The Biofuel Boom and Indonesia’s Oil Palm Industry: The Twin Processes of Peasant Dispossession and Adverse Incorporation in West Kalimantan By Claude Joel Fortin The sharp rise in global demand for biofuels and food has prompted widespread land grabbing in
‘Red Star over Guyana’: Colonial-style Grabbing of Natural Resources but New Grabbers
March 7, 2011 / News By Janette Bulkan Introduction: China has arranged free trade agreements (Coxhead 2007, Jenkins et al. 2007) which lay out in some details what is to be traded and on what terms in a WTO-compatible framework with large supply countries such
Naturalizing Land Dispossession: A Policy Discourse Analysis of the Merauke Integrated Food…
March 7, 2011 / News Naturalizing Land Dispossession: A Policy Discourse Analysis of the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate By Takeshi Ito, Noer Fauzi Rachman, Laksmi A. Savitri The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) signifies a strategic space within which corporations facilitated
Land grabbing, governance and social peace-building issues in Cameroon: Case study of the roles …
March 4, 2011 / News Land grabbing, governance and social peace-building issues in Cameroon: Case study of the roles of elites in land deals and commoditisation in the North West Region J. A. Mope Simo A critical analysis of patterns of land grabbing and commoditisation
Would Cecil Rhodes have signed a Code of Conduct? Reflections on global land grabbing and land….
March 4, 2011 / News Would Cecil Rhodes have signed a Code of Conduct? Reflections on global land grabbing and land rights in Africa, past and present By Robin Palmer The new phenomenon of global land grabbing and its impact on land rights in Africa
Territory by Dispossession: Decentralization, Statehood, and The Narco Land-Grab in Colombia
March 4, 2011 / News By Teo Ballvé For decades, the coupled dynamics of the drug trade and political violence have fueled the displacement of more than four million campesinos in Colombia. Agribusiness developments on these violently stolen lands have become favored conduits for drugmoney
Policy Options for Pastoral Development in Ethiopia and Reaction from the Regions
March 3, 2011 / News Report Number 4 Pastoral Economic Growth and Development Policy Assessment, Ethiopia By Peter D. Little, John McPeak, Getachew Gebru, and Solomon Desta This report addresses policy options for improving pastoral economies and development in Ethiopia. We draw on the findings
Policy Options for Pastoral Development in Ethiopia
March 3, 2011 / News Report Number 3 Pastoral Economic Growth and Development Policy Assessment, Ethiopia By Peter D. Little, Roy Behnke, John McPeak, and Getachew Gebru This report addresses policy options for improving pastoral economies and development in Ethiopia and their different tradeoffs. We
Future Scenarios for Pastoral Development in Ethiopia, 2010-2025
March 3, 2011 / News Report Number 2 Pastoral Economic Growth and Development Policy Assessment, Ethiopia By Peter D. Little, Roy Behnke, John McPeak, and Getachew Gebru This report is the second in a series of papers that examine pastoral economies and development in
Retrospective Assessment of Pastoral Policies in Ethiopia, 1991-2008
March 3, 2011 / News Report Number 1Pastoral Economic Growth and Development Policy Assessment, Ethiopia By Peter D. Little, Roy Behnke, John McPeak, and Getachew Gebru Ethiopia has the largest number of domestic livestock in Africa and much of it originates in the country‘s
Land Grab and Oil Palm in Colombia
March 3, 2011 / News By Mark James Maughan 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
Nothing New Under the Sun or a New Battle Joined? The Political Economy of African Dispossession…
March 3, 2011 / News Nothing New Under the Sun or a New Battle Joined? The Political Economy of African Dispossession in the Current Global Land Rush By Liz Alden Wily This paper focuses upon local conditions which allow governments of agrarian economies in especially
A Land Grab Scenario for Indonesia? Diverse Trajectories and Virtual Land Grabs in the Outer Islands
March 3, 2011 / News By John McCarthy, Suraya Afiff and Jacqueline Vel In August 2010 Indonesia’s ministry of agriculture launched a giant project to create a $5 billion agricultural estate spanning three districts in the province of Papua in response to perceptions of a
Large Scale Investment Projects and Land Grabs in Zimbabwe: The Case of Nuanetsi Ranch Bio-Diesel…
March 3, 2011 / News By Joseph Mujere and Sylvester Dombo Since 2000 the land reform discourse in Zimbabwe has focussed on land redistribution as well as the new forms of livelihoods, which it allowed the peasants to have. Focus has also been placed on
Agricultural Development Corridors equals Land-grabbing? Models, roles and accountabilities in a Moz
March 3, 2011 / News By Randi Kaarhus Agricultural growth corridors have over the last years been launched as high-profile initiatives to increase agricultural production in Africa. These ‘corridors’ are presented as value-chain mechanisms, and as means to promote an African Green Revolution. As a
The Food Regime in the Land Grab: Articulating ‘Global Ecology’ and Political Economy
March 2, 2011 / News By Philip McMichael This paper situates the land grab in the conjunctural crisis of capitalist ecology, expressed in climate, energy and food crises, which in turn transform the food/fuel regime. This crisis serves a double purpose: of justifying investment in
Building the Politics Machine: Tools for Resolving the Global Land
March 2, 2011 / News By Michael B. Dwyer Introduction: Laos and the global land grab In August of 2008, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization shocked the world when he described a recent spate of transnational farmland investment as “a
Land Grabbing and Popular Resistance: Case Studies in the
March 2, 2011 / News By Peter Ho and Cécile Famerée The article illustrates how the political dynamics around access, assignation, and control of natural resources allows understanding divisions in land?based social relations. A powerful Peruvian private firm has acquired land for palm plantation on
Agrarian Change Under the Radar Screen: Rising Farmland Acquisitions by Domestic Investors…
March 2, 2011 / News By Thea Hilhorst, Joost Nelen and Nata Traoré Policy makers in Africa increasingly state that modernisation of agriculture requires “agro-business” investors, whereby family farms should make space and sell their labour. This discourse amplified following food prices rise in 2007,
Household Livelihoods and Increasing Foreign Investment Pressure in Ethiopia’s Natural Forests
March 2, 2011 / News By Kathleen Guillozet and John C. Bliss Foreign investment in Ethiopia?s forestry sector is currently limited, but agricultural investments that affect forests, largely through forest clearing, are commonplace. We describe the nature of forest investments and outline the challenges and
Land Control, Land Grabs, and Southeast Asian Crop Booms
March 2, 2011 / News By Derek Hall This paper argues that research into dynamics of land control in the contemporary ‘land grab‘ can benefit from engagement with the literature on booms in the production of crops like cocoa, coffee, fast-growing trees, oil palm, and
Legacies of Transnational Mining and Hydropower in Defining Costa Rican Environmental Sovereignty
March 2, 2011 / News By Dana Graef This paper analyzes the linked histories and changing national discourses surrounding a transnational mining concession and subsequent plans for national hydroelectric development in the Pacific south of Costa Rica. My analysis shows how the framing of a
Land Grabbing in Namibia: A Case Study from the Omusati Region,
March 2, 2011 / News By Willem Odendaal Large scale land acquisitions by foreign investors in Africa for agricultural purposes continue to capture attention worldwide. In recent years Namibia has received some proposals from multi-national agricultural corporations to develop large scale irrigation projects, mainly in
Agricultural Foreign Direct Investment and Water Rights: An Institutional Analysis from Ethiopia
March 2, 2011 / News By Andrea Bues This paper aims to analyse the impacts of agricultural foreign direct investment on the local institutional setting of water management in a country in which most of the population depends on agriculture. It presents the case of
Land Grabbing in Indonesia
March 2, 2011 / News By Yulian Junaidi Jasuan In the recent years we see the fast growing phenomena of land grabbing across the world. In Africa, Asia and Latin America million of hectares of land has been taking over by developed countries through their
Escalating Land Grabbing In Post-conflict Regions of Northern Uganda…
March 2, 2011 / News By Samuel B. Mabikke Since the mid 1980s, Northern Uganda- a region of over 13 districts has been devastated by armed conflict particularly by the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) as well as old age cattle rustling by armed Karamajong rustlers
The Impact of Special Economic Zones in India: A Caste Study of Polepally SEZ
March 2, 2011 / News By Vidya Bhushan Rawat, Mamidi Bharath Bhushan and Sujatha Surepally Introduction: Special Economic Zones (SEZs) can be compared to their predecessors, Free Trade Zones and Export Processing Zones, in that they are aimed at stimulating foreign direct investment (FDI) and rapid,
Land Grabs for Biochar? Narratives and Counter Narratives in Africa’s Emerging Biogenic Carbon Seque
March 2, 2011 / News By Melissa Leach, James Fairhead and James Fraser Introduction: Biochar refers to the carbon-rich product that results when biomass – from wood or leaves to manure or crop residues – is burned under oxygen-deprived conditions and then buried in the
From “Land Grabbing” to Global Outsourcing: Credibility and Governance of Chinese Land Acquisitions
March 2, 2011 / News By Irna Hofman and Peter P. S. Ho This paper will use the case of China to arrive at an analytical framework with which we might better understand the processes of worldwide land acquisitions – pejoratively termed “land grabbing.” In
The Relationship between Land Grabbing for Biofuels and Food Security, a Bane or Boon? …
March 2, 2011 / News By Festus Boamah The rapid emerging interest in large scale biofuel investments in Ghana are fraught with debates and controversies among government agencies, non-governmental organizations and policy makers expressing concerns about the possible effects on the environment, land tenure, food
Saving the Amazon? Land Grabs and “sustainable soy” as the New Logic of Conservation
March 2, 2011 / News By Brenda Baletti Introduction: On July 14th 2010, 1000 people gathered in Santarém’s Yacht Club for a “public audience” regarding the one million ton capacity soy port that multi-national agricultural corporation Cargill built on the Amazon River there in 2000.
Land Regularization in Brazil and the Global Land Grab: A State-making Framework for Analysis
February 28, 2011 / News By Gustavo de L. T. Oliveira I adapt James Scott’s framework for a comparative analysis of ongoing changes in land ownership in the Amazon and the Cerrado regions of Brazil. The Brazilian government recently initiated a program intended to regularize
The Role of Foreign Investment in Ethiopia’s Smallholder-focused Agricultural Development Strategy
February 28, 2011 / News By Tom Lavers Recent foreign agricultural investment in Africa has generated a great deal of interest and criticism, with western media warning of a neo-colonial ?land grab‘. This paper moves beyond this narrow assessment by examining the political and social
The Role of the International Finance Corporation in Promoting Agricultural Investment and Large…
February 28, 2011 / News By Shepard Daniel This paper examines the role of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector branch of the World Bank Group, within the growing global trend of large-scale land investments in developing countries by wealthier, food-insecure nations and
Alternative perspectives on land grabbing and biofuels:
January 4, 2011 / News This presentation identifies three contrasting narratives which define the current debate about ‘land grabbing’ and biofuels: a techno-optimist position, an administrativemanagerial position and a localist-environmental position. Each suggests different responses to the growing phenomenon of large-scale land deals for biofuels.
LAND GRABBING IN AFRICA
January 4, 2011 / News Available evidence on its scale and character and insights of relevance to policy makers Ruth Hall Senior researcher, PLAAS Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Biosafety regulation in Kenya
November 17, 2010 / News For two days, leading Kenyan biosafety stakeholders met in Nairobi to advance discussions about Kenya’s biosafety bill, just as implementing regulations are being developed and the involvement of stakeholders is critical. Organised by the STEPS Centre, the Centre for Africa
Daily Newsletter – July 9
September 15, 2010 / News 31 Years of Silence is Over Surely we know enough – certainly rural people know more than enough. Now is the time to get some seasonality traction with these policies. Richard Longhurst
September 14 – New numbers on world hunger to be released- FAO/WFP/IFAD press conference
September 13, 2010 / News Updated figures on the number of people worldwide who suffer chronic hunger is released at a press conference at FAO’s headquarters in Rome on Tuesday, 14 September 2010 at 13.30h. www.fao.org/webcast/