Understanding Land Deals in Limbo in Africa: A Focus on Actors, Processes, and Relationships
Youjin B. Chung, Marie Gagné
Abstract
Land, as the material and symbolic foundation of agrarian life, is situated at the heart of African studies. 1 Debates over land access and control have grown in salience and urgency in recent years in the context of large-scale land acquisitions. In the wake of the global food, fuel, and financial crises of 2007-2008, an unusual and heterogeneous group of actors-including foreign and national governments, private corporations, as well as individual and institutional investors-joined the rush for land in the global South to produce and/or to speculate on agricultural commodities The speed and scale of this land rush were extraordinary. Prior to 2008, the average rate of agricultural land expansion was less than four million hectares per annum worldwide; in just one year, between 2008 and 2009, foreign investors had expressed interest in approximately 56 million hectares of farmland globally, of which 70 percent was reportedly concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa