Autre point soulevé : les investissements extérieurs dans l’agriculture africaine. Selon Alain Joyandet, « Ce phénomène doit être régulé avant qu’il ne devienne massif », a indiqué le secrétaéire d’Etat français.

Saudi-based investment firm Binladin Group is mulling at investing on agriculture projects here worth an estimated US$4.3 billion, which will be spent within the course of 15 years, says an official.

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L'exploitation de terres en Afrique par des investisseurs étrangers ne doit pas exposer les populations locales à des crises alimentaires, a souligné lundi le secrétaire d'Etat à la Coopération Alain Joyandet.

Deputy for agriculture and fisheries to the coordinating minister for economic affairs Bayu Krisnamurthi earlier said that the government had given a priority to a regulation pertaining to the development of food estates to support Indonesia`s food security. According to him, the economic affairs coordinating ministry was drafting a regulation, 90 percent of which had been completed.

Some fear that the land grabs could worsen poverty because few benefits will flow to the poorer host countries, and small farmers could lose out. Although the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is drawing up guidelines to protect their interests, it is far from clear whether anyone will follow them.

Faced with high land values and falling milk prices at home, a growing number of New Zealand dairy farmers are investing in South America, the United States, eastern Europe and Russia.

Des écologistes craignent qu’à Madagascar la faune et la flore extraordinaires soient menacées de disparition. Où encore maintenant vivent des lémures et caméléons, l’agriculture turbo sera faite sous peu.

"They [Daewoo] have prospected for land and now the central government is waiting for the prospecting reports,” the Malagasy land reform ministry told the FT. Critics said the welfare of Malagasy people and global food security would be better served by islanders being helped to manage their own farms. They stressed the trickle-down effect of Daewoo’s plan would be marginal and noted the company’s focus on exporting food from a country in which about 600,000 people rely on relief from the United Nations World Food Programme.

Saudi billionaire Mohammed Al Amoudi is finalizing plans for a $300 million sugar plantation in northwestern Ethiopia, the Walta Information Center reported.

Nomadic herders, rarely a priority for governments, are being dispossessed by bioethanol developments in Kenya, says Michael Taylor of the International Land Coalition (ILC), and they also depend on the “unused” land that Madagascar offered Daewoo.

Sauf secret bien gardé, c’est à ce jour la plus importante transaction du genre : la Corée du Sud vient de révéler qu’elle va louer 1,3 million d’hectares de terre à ­l’État malgache.

The Kenyan President, Mwai Kibaki, returned from a visit to Qatar on Monday. His spokesman said the request for land in the Tana River delta, south of Lamu, was being seriously considered. “Nothing comes for free. If you want people to invest in your country then you have to make concessions,” the spokesman said.

Africa could be the breadbasket for the GCC, providing valuable water and food supplies to the entire region, a Bahraini expert claimed yesterday.

Dernières nouvelles de la mondialisation : la société sud-coréenne Daewoo Logistics négocie avec le gouvernement de Madagascar la location, pour quatre-vingt-dix-neuf ans, de quelque 1,3 million d'hectares de terres agricoles. Soit un quarante-cinquième de la superficie de l'île : comme si la France accordait pour un siècle à un investisseur étranger la libre disposition de deux de ses départements...