I find it interesting (in a depressing way) that developed countries are turning to African land to grow food for their populations, ignoring the environmental hypocrisy; their own countries have become so developed and/or polluted as to proclude sufficient food-growing so they lease land in a country many miles away and then transport it in energy-heavy ways. Instead of a focus on rethinking the consumerist-heavy lifestyles of developed countries (using this land to grow flowers?!), the response is always expansion. But even African land will run out one day.

On the question of land-grabbing and neo-colonial overtones, I am skeptical about the extent to which this foreign ‘investment’ will actually reach the individual Africans supposedly benefitting from these transactions; trickle-down has not exactly proven to be the effective and equitable mechanism of redistrubution neoliberalists believed it would be. The UN spokesperson claims that ‘done correctly’ these transactions can be a ‘tool for development’, but again I am skeptical about exactly what kind of development will be being promoted, and whether the Africans’ whose land it is welcome the kind of development on offer.

I think the point raised by the International Land Coalition is a pertinent one; land not in ‘use’ in Africa may be serving a longer-term purpose. A Western model of consumption sees land as ‘wasted’ if it is not actively giving an output and so these corporations may feel justified in using the land ‘because no one else is anyway’, but start from a different assumption of what is ‘useful’ or ‘productive’ and that land might not seem so ‘wasted’ after all.

While overall I think this differs from traditional colonial expansion, it nonetheless creates a distinct power relationship that again disadvantages people in Africa and reaffirms the notion that Africa is a resource for developed countries to exploit.

Stacey