Pirates are not the only source of concern off the African coast. The deal South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics is negotiating with the Madagascan government looks rapacious. Alas, it is but the latest brazen example of a wider phenomenon.

Daewoo Logistics of South Korea said it expected to pay nothing to farm maize and palm oil in an area of Madagascar half the size of Belgium, increasing concerns about the largest farmland investment of this kind.

A South Korean company hopes to turn an undeveloped stretch of Madagascar into a corn-production center, an official said Wednesday.

South Korea's Daewoo Logistics will plant corn in Madagascar, a company official said on Tuesday, with a long-term aim to replace more than half the corn it currently imports from mostly the United States.

Daewoo Logistics of South Korea has secured farmland in Madagascar to grow food crops for Seoul, in a deal that diplomats and consultants said was the largest of its kind.

Le Président de la République, Marc Ravalomanana, a reçu en audience ce jeudi 30 octobre 2008 en fin d’après-midi, au Palais d’Iavoloha, une délégation d’opérateurs économiques sud-coréens, conduite par le Président de la Compagnie Daewoo Madagascar

Nowadays, the concern of the Malagasy governement is focused on how to attract foreign private investments. The new Malagasy investment law, Act 2007-036 of January 14th, 2008, has brought a very key change concerning the possibility for foreigners to own their land in Madagascar

"In a wide-ranging conversation, Sudanese business magnate Osama Daoud outlined a project to gradually develop as much as 1.26 million acres in northern Sudan for agricultural production," reports the US Embassy in Khartoum

There is Korean land in Argentina: 20,894 hectares of pampas some 1,000 km northwest of the capital Buenos Aires. The Korean government bought the land in 1978 for US$2,115,000, but it has remained neglected for about 30 years.

On the heels of tight crop production reports and the recent memory of individual nations experiencing food disruptions, there is a scramble to control or own agricultural assets and food stocks.

It is becoming harder for Koreans to buy grain, regardless of price. That is why the government is hurrying to cultivate overseas crops and to secure stable import sources.

L'Etat cède 880000 hectares de terre arable pour 670 millions d'euros. Publiée mi-août par le Financial Times, l'annonce du gouvernement soudanais n'est plus vraiment une nouveauté. Comme d'autres avant lui, le pays est prêt à céder un territoire presque aussi grand que l'Ile-de-France à des investisseurs étrangers trop contents de s'exécuter.