Africa for Sale?

Positioning the State, Land and Society in Foreign Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Africa

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The past several decades have witnessed a rise in foreign and domestic investments in Africa’s arable land. While such land projects are currently the focus of widespread media and scholarly interest, the role of the state in driving, negotiating and facilitating these acquisitions deserves closer attention. This book analyzes how state land policies, stakeholder interactions and privatization schemes interact to facilitate large-scale land acquisitions. It includes a study of the various forms of state intervention, the influence of foreign agencies, governments and private entities, and a look at how states interact with local populations. The inclusion of case studies in settings throughout the African continent should attract the interest of both an academic and non-academic readership.

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Sandra Evers is associate professor in Anthropology at VU University Amsterdam. Her research and publications deal with migration, slavery, cultural transmission and land issues in Madagascar within the context of globalisation, natural resource management, poverty and sustainable development. Dr Evers directs a research programme on foreign large-scale land acquisitions in Africa and Madagascar.

Caroline Seagle is a PhD candidate at the VU University Amsterdam. An environmental anthropologist by training, she was a recipient in the Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI) small grants competition and published in the Journal of Peasant Studies special issue on Green Grabbing (2012).

Froukje Krijtenburg is a post-doctoral fellow affiliated to VU University Amsterdam specializing in discourses of land use and access in Africa. Her current research explores stakeholder mediations of a foreign land deal in Kenya. She wrote Cultural Ideologies of Peace and Conflict: A Socio-Cognitive Study of Giryama Discourse (Kenya) (PhD dissertation VU Amsterdam, 2007).
'... this volume is an excellent contribution to the debate about land grabbing and a useful reminder about the role about the African State in these processes'.

Tor A. Benjaminsen in The Journal of African History, 56, pp 175-176.
Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors

Introduction: Contested Landscapes—Analysing the Role of the State, Land Reforms and Privatization in Foreign Land Deals in Africa
Sandra J.T.M. Evers, Caroline Seagle and Froukje Krijtenburg

SECTION 1
THE RECONFIGURATION OF RURAL LANDSCAPES AND LIVELIHOODS IN THE RECENT SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICAN LAND

Corporate Land Deals, Dispossession and the Future of Farming
Ben White

A Critical Review of the Policy Debate on Large Scale Land Acquisition: Fighting the Symptoms or Killing the Heart?
Annelies Zoomers

Challenges and Risks for Bilateral Relations from Foreign Large-Scale Land Acquisitions
Michael J. Strauss

SECTION 2
THE CREATION OF FERTILE GROUND FOR THE STRUCTURING OF FOREIGN LARGE-SCALE LAND ACQUISITIONS: LAND REFORMS, PRIVATIZATION AND COMPETING JURISDICTIONS

Land Consolidation and the Expansion of Game Farming in South Africa: Impacts on Farm Dwellers’ Livelihoods and Rights to Land in the Eastern Cape
Nancy Andrew, Femke Brandt, Marja Spierenburg, Dhoya Snijders and Nomalanga Mkhize

Development and Dispossession: Impacts of Land Reform in Botswana
Maria Sapignoli and Robert K. Hitchcock

Domestic and Foreign Investment in Irrigable Land in Mali: Tensions between the Dream of Large-Scale Farming and the Reality of Family Farming
Amandine Adamczewski, Perrine Burnod, Hermine Papazian, Yacouba Coulibaly, Jean-Philippe Tonneau and Jean-Yves Jamin

Conflict between Industrial and Artisanal Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Drc): Case Studies from
Katanga, Ituri and Kivu
Ruben de Koning

SECTION 3
STAKEHOLDER INTERACTIONS AND COMPETING VALUATIONS OF LAND

Shifting Patterns of Land Use and Ownership in Burkina Faso with a Case-Study of Two Kurumba Villages—Bourzanga and Pobe-Mengao
Lucjan Buchalik

Being a Foreigner in One’s Country: Mobility, Land Acquisition and Investments in Cameroon
Evelyne N. Tegomoh

Ancestors and Title Deeds: Rural Transformation in 20th Century South Africa and the Consolidation of Ethnic-Based Identities
Gitte Postel

Competing Rhetoric in the Context of Foreign Land Acquisitions: The Case of “New Nigeria”
Akachi Odoemene

‘Keeping this Land Safe’: Stakeholder Conceptualisations of Protection in the Context of a Mijikenda (Kenya) World Heritage Site
Froukje Krijtenburg

Index
All interested in the drivers, stakeholder configurations and impacts of foreign large-scale land acquisitions in Africa, with a particular focus on the role of the state.
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