Sri Lanka

On May 7, 2024, Lipton announced the sale of its Kenyan tea estates to LOLC Holdings PLC. The tea estates are on land that was violently seized from the Kipsigis and Talai clans by the British army in the early 20th century.

A video produced by War on Want shows how the villagers of Udugama are under threat as the oil palm plantation company Watawata Plantations destroys their forests and access to water.

A clause in the 2023 budget states that "it is expected that large parcels of unutilised/unproductively used lands will be leased out on long-term basis to grow exportable crops"

Finlays, a subsidiary of the UK Swire Group, is selling its 30 Sri Lankan tea plantations to Brown Investments, which already controls 12,000 ha of tea farms in the country

Leader of the Indigenous community Uruwaarige Wannila Aththo filed a writ application with the Court of Appeal seeking an order to prevent the allocation of indigenous community lands for maize cultivation for leading companies.

In Sri Lanka, where the state formally owns an estimated 85 percent of the country’s 6.6 million hectares of land, there is legitimate concern that the proposed US-funded project, the MCC compact would shift control of these lands towards private interests.

Au Sri Lanka, une circulaire protégeant des milliers d’hectares de forêt pourrait être levée. Officiellement, le but est destiné à soutenir les petits paysans. Mais ce projet s’inscrit dans un contexte moins glorieux où l’on retrouve des multinationales US bien décidées à privatiser aux quatre coins du monde des terres qui échappent à leur appétit vorace.

The Oakland Institute, independent policy think tank based in the US, in a recent report said the compact between Sri Lanka and the US Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) could potentially shift millions of hectares of land in the country into private control

A push to privatise land and other resources in countries from Ukraine to Papua New Guinea is hurting indigenous people and the rural poor, while increasing the risks linked to climate change.

Nationalists want land issues to be handled independently by Sri Lanka because of fears that the MCC will be used to grab land for foreign investments, as has happened in Africa.

In response to resistance from people’s movements, Sri Lanka has pulled out of MCC agreement, which would have opened the door for commercial agriculture and large scale acquisition of Sri Lankan lands for foreign individuals and corporations.

Mauritius-based Sunbird Bionergy is pursuing a US$190 million cassava outgrower ethanol project in Zimbabwe's Luena farm block that includes a seedlings plantation that will eventually cover 10,000 ha.