World Bank organizes costly conferences on land governance while overlooking the forced relocation of farmers and indigenous people resulting from its policies and programs.

The three activists, who face terrorism charges for attempting to attend a workshop on food security, face a court hearing in Addis Ababa on October 22.

Even the World Bank admits that the vast bulk of foreign investment in Africa doesn’t help the continent’s people, with aid and agricultural support often a smokescreen for multinationals looting nations’ wealth.

Journalist Keya Acharya has been served a defamation notice demanding 20 million USD as compensation from the legal counsels of Sai RamaKrishna Karuturi, Managing Director of Karuturi Global Ltd.

Legal battle launched after man claims he was evicted from his farm and beaten under villagisation scheme funded by UK aid

Land grabs in Africa could herald a new dystopian age of hunger

Background document accompanying the 14 February 2014 media release issued by Tax Justice Network, GRAIN, Anywaa Survival Organisation, Forum Syd Kenya and the South Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers Movements.

With the large and sometimes overexposed attention for land grabbing in Africa, good examples tend to be forgotten

Ram Karuturi mulls taking his rose-to-maize company private as its stock shows no signs of bouncing back.

This article calls into question the depth and effectiveness of a regulatory approach arguing that problems underlying large-scale land deals are so deep constituting socio-institutional problems of power asymmetry, exclusion and invisiblization, than just investment externalities or regulatory challenges.

According to the data presented by international non-profit Rights and Resource Initiative, Indian companies have acquired 63,000 sq km land, an area almost twice the size of Kerala, in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia.

The company has approached the African Development Bank, the African Export-Import Bank and the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank to raise another $100 million for a sugarcane estate.

Two MIDROC-affiliated companies, largely owned by the Saudi tycoon Mohammed Hussein Ali Al-Amoudi, are Saudi Star Agricultural Plc and Horizon Plantations Plc. Both offered tens of millions of Birr to acquire state-owned plantations last week.

According to Rana Kapoor, head of India's Yes Bank, Africa offers immense opportunity in terms of investment in large-scale commercial farming, quoting rates of return of 18-21% and above.

“We have finalised deals with four big agro companies in India for joint ventures for different crops that we are looking at growing – rice, maize, oil palm and sugarcane,” says Karuturi.

What happens when you are forced to leave the land that has fed your family for generations? What is the impact of wealthy foreigners having access to the best agricultural land in a very poor country? These questions addressed in new Guardian film.

The Diaspora is just airing the voice of the voiceless Ethiopians for those who are on a land bonanza to stop hurting our people. There is a great danger coming. When? No one knows but it is coming.

Not since Belgium's King Leopold turned the Congo into his personal market-garden has so much land been allocated to offshore nations.

I personally know of the efforts of a leading Japanese company that is cooperating with African farmers to create sustainable systems that blend technology with traditional African lore

Standard Chartered Bank's Africa private equity arm and a unit of Reliance Capital are in talks to invest in Dubai-based Karuturi Overseas.

India, once the colonial jewel of Britain's empire, has been accused of 'neo-colonialism' in Africa where its business people have joined a race with China, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to buy up agricultural estates and take advantage of cheap labour.

It's a tsunami of land deals and, as all of the experts who have studied the phenomenon have agreed, no nation is truly prepared for its implications.

"Saudi Arabia is increasingly looking for agriculture investment opportunities abroad, mostly in Africa," reports the US mission in Riyadh in May 2009

Una coalición de grupos hace un llamado urgente ante las autoridades de Etiopía y de India para que se cancele la concesión de nuevos contratos de arrendamiento de tierras a la compañía de agronegocios Karuturi Global.

Large-scale land transactions in which nations sell huge, publicly owned parcels to foreign and domestic corporations negatively affect local women more than men, a new study by Oregon State University shows.

Despite all the hypocritical calls and posturing of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for ending hunger, they have facilitated, enabled, and led the global rush for landgrabs

World Bank accountability on forced resettlements resulting from its programs must be front and center at its spring meetings, taking place this week in Washington DC

As climate change, population growth and environmental damage shrink the amount of arable land on the planet, wealthier countries and corporations look to developing countries for land.

The fact that China does not now depend on Africa in any meaningful way for food does not mean this will continue to be the case.

If Africa remains a food deficit region, exporting significant quantities of food to China grown on Chinese-financed investment projects will raise serious questions.