Global demand for arable land is rising, making Africa a key target for large-scale acquisitions to tackle food and energy challenges.

The Ethiopian Investment Holdings and Agricultural Works Corporation signed a 600 million USD shareholders agreement to jointly invest in a 15,000 ha Integrated Dairy and Commercial Farming Project with the United Kingdom’s Asset Green Company.

National elites and foreign investors in Africa will be protected by the AfCFTA. But the same cannot be said for local communities and their rights over agricultural land. In the name of climate, the AfCFTA will boost the development of land deals for carbon in Africa.

Ethiopia’s hopes of ushering in a new era of commercial farming ventures rested in large part on the shoulders of the Gambella Regional State. Recent years have seen hundreds of investors granted licenses and credit to establish commercial farms in the southwestern corner of the country, but little has come from the efforts.

In recent years, Gulf economies have tackled their food dependencies not just by importing foodstuffs but through land enclosures, or the purchasing of agricultural land abroad, particularly in the Middle East, North and East Africa (but also as far as the United States and Australia)

With scarce arable land and water resources, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are expanding their agricultural diplomacy to improve food access and vying for agricultural cooperation with Africa

A new World Bank report on land in Africa acknowledges the failures of large land deals but still promotes large-scale land investments.

Africa is at the forefront of the land grab crisis in the Global South, with nearly 1,000 large-scale land deals for agriculture recorded across the continent since 2000.

The Bodi people have been decimated since the Gibe III dam came into operation and diverted the Omo River’s waters to large-scale irrigation schemes.

This LDPI Working Paper Series includes work in progress presented at the 2024 Global Land Grabbing Conference in Bogotá, addressing urgent challenges related to land, water, and natural resource grabbing.

The transferability of land, along with the liberalisation of agriculture and finance the Bank and IMF have pushed on Global South states, have facilitated investment in agribusiness and driven the financialisation of national agricultural sectors.

Globe-trotting billionaire Mo Dewji made a fortune in East Africa selling palm oil, rope, and soda. Now he says he's trying to acquire 100,000 ha in Rufiji and another part of Tanzania for sugarcane and cereal plantations.

The Swiss-based multinational ASC Impact claims to have acquired 22,000 hectares in Ethiopia’s remote Gambela state along the border with South Sudan for large-scale tree plantations, carbon credits and agriculture.

The case stems from accusations lodged by the Djiboutian Ambassador in 2018, asserting that Karuturi neglected to meet the terms of agricultural agreements signed in 2011 and 2012 for activities in Ethiopia.

With 56 deals under its belt, the UAE has 14 more farmland acquisition deals in the pipeline in 2024, mainly in Africa

With vast lands conducive to tree growth, Kirchmayer and ASC Impact believe that Africa is ripe for reforestation initiatives that support mass timber production and other green projects.

Tanzania is offering more than 60,000 hectares of fertile land to both foreign and domestic companies to invest in large-scale farming at Mkulazi area in Morogoro.

Tensions are bubbling up at Arizona alfalfa farms as water becomes a top commodity. Local farmers say that their wells have dried up since since an Emirati alfalfa farm moved in.

Elite Agro Projects plans to establish a wheat farm in Ethiopia, where it already operates a flower farm.

Researchers say the construction of a dam and sugarcane plantations has dispossessed the Lower Omo’s peoples of their farming and grazing lands and irreversibly altered the natural cycles of the Omo River.

Farmland purchases by the Harvard endowment contributed to a climate of anxiety, fear, and strain on Brazilian subsistence farmers.

In recent years, the Ethiopian government has been enthusiastically renting large swathes of its territory to both local and foreign investors, regardless of who is already living there.

Guyana President Mohamed Irfaan Ali offered India 200 acres of land for exclusive cultivation and production of millets in honour of the United Nations declaring the year 2023 as the International Year of Millet

Zambia has allocated 20,000 hectares of land to large-scale farmers in Kenya to start growing maize which will be exported in the country.

With attention centered on the civil war in the country over the last two years, the hunger and health crisis in the Omo Valley caused by the Gibe III Dam and the Kuraz Sugar Development Project has gone ignored.

« Nous exhortons les participants au Sommet de Dakar II à envisager des moyens d’arrêter les accaparements des terres des agriculteurs » martèlent 83 reseaux et organisations de la société civile

Assets up for grabs include a 70-hectare piece of land and greenhouses sitting on 26 hectares of land

Article analyses the effects on local actors, their land access, land use and tenure security of a large-scale land deal in northern Laos that a Chinese company initiated but subsequently abandoned.

Land Matrix report says large-scale land acquisitions in Africa do not respect the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure

The digitalisation of information on land and natural resources is exacerbating land grabbing in the remaining agricultural frontiers of Latin America.