Egypt

A cash-strapped Pakistani government plans to sell or rent one million acre land to foreign countries for agricultural purposes in a bid to underpin the country’s troubled economy. “A complete legal cover will be provided to the investors so that even in case of the change of government, they should not be affected.”

Al Rajhi for International Investment will spend an estimated $400 million by 2011 to produce wheat and maize in Egypt and Sudan. The Saudi private firm is already farming 42,000 hectares of farmland in Egypt this year.

A consortium of Saudi agricultural companies is looking to invest 150 million riyals ($40 million) into food production in Africa, the Agriculture Ministry said on Sunday.

Foreign investors have been given licenses to run cow farms across Kurdistan Region.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are worldwide leaders in buying farmland in third-party countries, followed by China and Japan, says the World Bank.

Saudi Arabia, one of the world's biggest rice importers, has received the first batch of rice to be produced abroad by local investors, state news agency SPA reported on Monday.

King Abdullah received today Saudi Arabia's Minister of Commerce and Industry accompanied by two Saudi businessmen Mohammad Hussein Al-Amoudi and Abdullah Hassan Al-Masri on the occasion of the arrival of the earliest produce of their rice to the Kingdom.

Egypt will receive a number of UAE delegations next month to discuss proposals involving agriculture, land reclamation and the food industry in southern Egypt, as well as infrastructure and renewable energy projects.

Des pays en quête de ressources alimentaires et des groupes financiers séduits par les perspectives du marché mondial de l'agriculture acquièrent en masse des terres arables dans des pays le plus souvent pauvres ou émergents, un phénomène qui inquiète des ONG.

The global food and financial crises have combined to create a new form of colonialism in which countries short of resources and corporations desperate for profits are buying up arable land in emerging nations, NGOs say. The non-governmental organisations have expressed concern at this "global land grab," which they say is threatening the survival of rural livelihoods in some parts of the world.

Autre problème posé par l’exploitation des terres agricoles en Afrique par d’autres pays et par les multinationales étrangères : le droit à la propriété foncière. Dans plusieurs pays du continent, les législations autour de ce droit sont floues.

Nomadic herders, rarely a priority for governments, are being dispossessed by bioethanol developments in Kenya, says Michael Taylor of the International Land Coalition (ILC), and they also depend on the “unused” land that Madagascar offered Daewoo.