The Ernst & Young office in Addis is currently advising several investors from the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, who are investing tens of millions of dollars in the agro industry in Ethiopia.
“African countries have not been in a reasonable bargaining position,” AU Agriculture Commissioner Rhoda Peace Tumusiime told Reuters in an interview at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa. “The pace of the trend was very fast and they didn’t envisage that there should be benefits to the community.”
An agricultural investment firm owned by the Saudi government will focus on investing abroad to cultivate mainly wheat, rice, sugar and soybeans, a senior agriculture ministry official said on Monday.
Des États à la recherche d'autonomie alimentaire et des grands groupes louent des millions d'hectares à l'étranger. Christian Bouquet, spécialiste en géopolitique, explique le phénomène.
A group of private Saudi investors plans to invest 375 million riyals to plant wheat, barley and rice in Ethiopia
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.
The truth is that if exploitation of a developing country’s natural resources by the West is colonialism, so it is when rich countries of the South do the same.
"Don’t tell me the Saudis grow food in Ethiopia to feed Ethiopians. Here is the conflict. Food shortage and famine is still rampant in today’s Ethiopia."
"Huge tracts of unutilised agricultural land are available" writes the Ambassador of Ethiopia to the UK
Saudi Arabia has announced the arrival of the first food crop harvested in Saudi-owned farms abroad, in a sign that the kingdom is moving faster than expected to outsource agricultural production.
Reports indicate the growing Euro-Arab-Asian interest to buy land in Africa for the food security of their home population, not Africa´s. However, seldom do these reports link the the appetite for farmland and energy investment on the continent with the current global economic crises.
A group of five Saudi Arabia business men have planned to invest 1 billion Saudi riyals (some $ 266.6 million) in agricultural projects in Sudan and Ethiopia within the coming few years, Pan Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat reports.
