Tanzania

The government of Tanzania has refuted media reports indicating that it has leased out 1000 square kilometres of farmland to South Koreans.

The Korea Rural Community Corporation, under the Agriculture Ministry, said it is also in talks with other resource-rich countries about deals in exchange for support for the construction of agricultural infrastructure or farms. Among the negotiating partners mentioned were Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Senegal and Mongolia.

"This land [100,000 ha] is not meant to be leased to the Koreans as such, but a mechanism will be worked out on how the land must be processed," said a spokesperson for Tanzania's prime minister.

South Korea will develop 100,000 ha of farmland in Tanzania to make inroads into African and European markets, a state-run rural development corporation said Thursday.

Tanzania has offered to lease land to Indian private companies for a period of 99 years, as it pitched for increased investment in the agricultural sector.

What started as a government drive to secure cheap food resource has now become a viable business model and many Gulf companies are venturing into agricultural investments to diversify their portfolios.

A conference to discuss ways of boosting agricultural production in Africa will be held in Zanzibar later this month

An internal document recently posted on IRRI's website reveals that the Institute has been advising Saudi Arabia in the context of its strategy to acquire farm land overseas for its own food production.

Agricultural experts have called for a halt to moves by Gulf investors to snap up foreign land, amid claims that poor nations are losing much-needed farmland in a calculated land grab.

The consensus is that Africa is being out-gunned. While regulations & rules are debated, the amount of land being bought up by foreign investors is increasing at a rapacious speed.

The wheat farms in Sudan & Uganda are not Egypt’s first foray into overseas farming — the government operates a corn farm in Zambia, a rice farm in Niger, a vegetable farm in Tanzania and plans 14 more farms across Africa — but they are significant because they are among the first efforts to address wheat scarcity after the instability of 2008.

Philip Kiriro of the East Africa Farmers' Federation says the countries most endangered by landgrabbing in the region are Tanzania and DRC