Jarch Capital

As world population expands, the demand for arable land should soar. At least that's what George Soros, Lord Rothschild, and other investors believe.

Although it slipped past the world’s media, in mid-April it emerged that Jarch Capital had doubled its landholdings in Southern Sudan. That takes the acreage owned by Phillippe Heilberg and chums to a massive 800,000 hectares, or 3,000 square miles, which the firm claims will become a gigantic agricultural plantation.

Sub-Saharan African countries have of late become the target of a new form of investment that is strongly reminiscent of colonialism: investors from both industrialised and emerging economies buy or lease large tracts of farm land across the continent, either to guarantee their own food provisions or simply as yet another business.

Jarch Management Group, Ltd., a US investment firm, disclosed that it is considering additional opportunities to lease large tracts of farmland in Southern Sudan.

Un financier new-yorkais vient d'acquérir 400 000 hectares de terres au Soudan. En plus de constituer l'une des plus importantes transactions de ce type depuis la vente de l'Alaska au XIXe siècle, cette transaction fait partie d'une stratégie troublante: la firme Jarch Capital parie que le Soudan, et d'autres pays africains, sont sur le point de se morceler en plusieurs États.

Of all the places on this planet where you might think of investing, Sudan would surely not normally be at the top of anyone’s list. But that is not the view of Philippe Heilberg of Jarch Capital in New York, who told the BBC that his company was leasing 400,000 hectares in the relatively more stable south part of the country.

South Sudan's administration is looking into a 4,000 sq km land investment by a US businessman because of questions over who owns the plot, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Even the World Bank is continuing its role as a neo-colonial consensus agent by actively pursuing and financing access to 'under-utilised land' around the world through its International Finance Corporation.

Land ownership could prove contentious. In the distant past, it was often held by communities as a whole or vested in traditional authorities. State officials now often have the greatest say. That opens the potential for official abuse of yet another valuable resource.

A US businessman backed by former CIA and state department officials says he has secured a vast tract of fertile land in south Sudan from the family of a notorious warlord.

Unity state, where Philippe Heilberg, a US businessman, says he has secured a huge tract of arable land, is inaccessible even by south Sudan’s standards. Apart from AK-47 assault rifles, it is deprived of most of the trappings of the modern world.

A privately held US investment firm entered into an agricultural investment with a company controlled by the son of a South Sudanese general.