Citadel Capital

Egyptian private equity firm Citadel Capital said it was investing $40 million to grow crops in Sudan, where agricultural spending is increasing as the government moves to address food shortages.

African governments need to raise their level of accountability and ensure that they improve and protect their own food security through quid pro quo side-agreements negotiated when they lease or sell their arable land to foreign interests, says Keith Mullin of Thompson Reuters

Citadel Capital Corp., an Egyptian private-equity firm with $8.3 billion in investments, said one of its companies received a $4.9 million loan from Bank of Khartoum for the plantation of land in Sudan.

Wafra, Citadel Capital’s agriculture platform in Sudan, said its portfolio firm has obtained a $4.9 million loan from Bank of Khartoum to support the farming of its first 2,076 acres of sorghum.

"Investors like Citadel Capital and Goldman Sachs must be stopped from acquiring large tracts of land in Africa because this practice has become a serious threat to the continent's food sovereignty"

Egyptian private equity firm Citadel Capital is seeking to buy Kenya’s firms and long-term land leases as it seeks agro-based raw materials to feed its food business.

El-Nahda for Integrated Solutions signed an agreement with the White Nile Governorate for a 30-year lease on 60,000 feddans [25,210 ha] of land on which it will build a large-scale commercial rice farm.

Citadel's Karim Sadek dismisses talk of land grabbing as an “academic concern”, saying “there should definitely be a priority for the produce to be sold on the local market, if there is a paying market for it”.

Citadel Capital says that their investments will mainly focus on the agriculture sector, with Tanzania's 'Kilimo Kwanza' initiative taking the centre stage.

Citadel Capital will deploy significant capital across East Africa in 2010 in sectors spanning from agriculture to consumer foods.

“We are now looking very seriously into Sudan,” said Zouhair Eloudghiri, chief executive officer of Savola Foods Co., a unit of Saudi Arabia’s second-largest publicly traded food producer, Savola Al-Azizia United Co.

Asked why he was attracted to Sudan, where Citadel got 200,000 ha of farmland betting on a continued global commodities rally, Chairman Ahmed Heikal said: "Almost free land, available water, fantastic climate, fantastic land quality -- why not Sudan?"