Company expands its activities to capitalize on the soft and hard commodity resource boom in West Africa

A Korean firm is eyeing the Philippines for developing vast agricultural lands for vegetable production.

Qatar pursuing a "shared-benefits model" that meets the needs of investors and local communities in currently cultivated land areas where the yield gaps are large.

African farmland investment has the potential to match the exponential growth of Brazil's agricultural industry, the head of business development at privately owned agricultural operator Quifel said.

Of the 16 applications received, only six were from Zambia while the rest were from foreign investors from the UK, Egypt, China, Hungary, Mauritius, Switzerland and South Africa.

In Mozambique, there has been an unofficial halt to new large land grants.

The National Renaissance Party calls on the Government of Mali to publish a full list of beneficiaries of land and the areas granted to them.

A local subsidiary of Saudi Arabian firm Abbar and Zainy has proposed turning a wide swathe of land in Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao – including the site of the Maguindanao massacre – into a banana plantation.

Dubai business leaders have urged the Government to snap up farmland overseas to grow basic staples as a buffer against soaring food prices.

Unlike other Gulf countries that are usurping African land to expand their agricultural capacity, Qatar intends to transform its own barren land into an agricultural powerhouse.

Modern machineries of all sorts, owned and run by agri-companies, are turning the soils inside out, destroying forests and beginning to pollute the environment to get more production.

Despite opposition from Ethiopia's President and environmental authorities, a rainforest area providing livelihood to an indigenous people has been leased out to make tea plantations.