Ethiopia

Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi feels a growing sense of unease these days. It stems from an email that Karuturi received on March 7. The sender wrote he had lost Rs 7 lakh by investing in Karuturi Global Ltd's shares.

Ram Karuturi mulls taking his rose-to-maize company private as its stock shows no signs of bouncing back.

Farms were bought from govt for 1.1b birr ($59.4m), General Manager of Horizon Plantations Ethiopia Jemal Ahmed tells reporters in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.

The 612 Indians on the list of those who have invested in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands include two MPs, a former royal, top industrialists and the CEO of Karuturi Global.

Karuturi said it will borrow "hundreds of millions" of dollars from a sovereign wealth fund to invest in farming in East Africa after development banks declined to provide assistance because of “unfair” criticism by advocacy groups

"Avec la bénédiction de l'Agence Française de Développement et la Banque Européenne d'investissement l'accaparement de terres agricoles par des financiers de l'agrobusiness et des fonds spéculatifs se poursuit..."

All this talk about people being displaced for the purpose of land lease is unfounded at best and even deliberately contrived at worst, says Minister Counsellor at the Embassy of Ethiopia in New Delhi

As ratings agencies and risk insurers increasingly factor in land tenure risk to their premiums, investors need to be aware of the potential costs that might be incurred through disruption, sabotage or loss of assets and the further possibility that the strong-arm tactics used by some African states to resolve disputes could invalidate or seriously impact on the level of insurance cover.

The army's attack on indigenous communities is suspected to be directly related to a land grab in the area by the Turkish company Tekron Group.

It alleges that the dealings of Karuturi Global, one of India’s largest flower growers, in the African nation do not smell as sweet as what it grows

With the coming of big industrial farms in Ethiopia, local people, villagers and pastoralists are being threatened, intimidated, forcibly displaced and herded into camps by the military, their homes destroyed.

The takeover of peoples' land and water by corporations – even if they are from the global south – is a new form of colonisation, writes Anuradha Mittal.