Egypt plans to lease farmland for agro-business projects during 2010 but is waiting for the agriculture ministry to allocate suitable plots, the trade minister said on Monday.

Conference in March 2010 on Arab food security, including through foreign farmland acquisition, to be held at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman

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

Human rights workers said risks to the rural poor over such deals are significant because they are regularly evicted to make way for foreign investors.

The main objective of this essay is to draw the attention of fellow Ethiopians to the issue. So that it stays front and center in our contemporary political agenda, until we manage to mobilize the necessary popular pressure and try our best to stop it from taking effect.

"They (the government) borrowed $13 billion from China and now they want to pay it back with our land," Bolat Abilov, a leader of the opposition party Azat, said at the rally. “No Chinese soya beans on the Kazakh land!” shouted one protester.

Several hundred people have gathered in the Kazakh city of Almaty to protest against what they call "Chinese expansionism".

Yemen, grappling with poverty and a resurgent al Qaeda, is in talks with Saudi firms interested in acquiring farms or investing in fishery and livestock production with a first deal eyed by June.

Charoen Pokphand officials interacted with various agencies of government involved in seed production and sales in a bid to have access to relevant information and to consider the procedure for acquisition of land.

As swathes of their country’s land is leased, cleared and prepared for food production by foreign companies, Ethiopians are divided over whether this constitutes ‘agro-colonialism’ or much-needed development

"The urgent need is to find countries where India can grow its pulses and its grain, because India's farms may not be enough," says the director of Adani Logistics Ltd

Investors from one of Thailand's biggest business concern, CP Group, yesterday affirmed their intention to invest in rice production in Nigeria, among other agriculture related areas.