Land grabbing in Southern Africa: the many faces of the investor rush

By R. Hall. 2011

418 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The popular term ‘land grabbing’, while effective as activist terminology, obscures vast differences in the legality, structure and outcomes of commercial land deals and deflects attention from the roles of domestic elites and governments as partners, intermediaries and beneficiaries. This paper summarises initial evidence of the characteristics of recent acquisitions of public lands and land held under customary tenure in Southern Africa, and their distribution across the region. It draws attention to their diverse manifestations – to questions of size, duration and source of the investments; the commodities and business models through which they are implemented; the tenure arrangements and resources accessed; the terms of leases and compensation; the degree of displacement; labour regimes and employment creation; and changes in settlement and infrastructure. The article proposes a schematic analytical framework for distinguishing between different types of land deals and considers the implications for unfolding and future trajectories of agrarian change.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Sociology and Political Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/44e22e74cb8cd4f29255fe0b3de4958845253f6e

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Citations in the corpus

Land appropriation, surplus people and a battle over visions of agrarian futures in Africa (2013, background): “6Also seen in other governments: ‘[T]he government [in Cambodia] argued that titling hampered development schemes that required evictions’ (Hall 2011, 2). rulers of the postcolonial states’ (1991a, 80).”
Large Farm Establishment, Smallholder Productivity, Labor Market Participation, and Resilience: Evidence from Ethiopia (2016, background): “Reasons include competition for productive land (Hall 2011), a failure to adhere to required consultation processes (Nolte and VogetKleschin 2014), and lack of contract disclosure or independent compliance monitoring (Cotula 2014).”
Plantations, Contract Farming and Commercial Farming Areas in Africa: A Comparative Review (2013, background): “Among the current dynamics at play are: white South Africans and Zimbabweans looking for farmland abroad (Hall 2011; Sjaastad et al. 2012); indigenous farmers looking to expand or acquire holdings and profit from commercial crops (Sjaastad et al.”
The geographic and sectoral patterns of large-scale farmland investments in sub-Saharan Africa (2014, background): “An added advantage of these crops is that their fungibility enables producers to hedge against market fluctuations (Hall, 2011; Borras et al., 2013); therefore, producers can easily switch between end-markets to capitalize on price differentials.”
Land grabbing, social differentiation, intensified migration and food security in northern Ghana (2017, background): “drivers and dynamics unfolding at the global and regional scales (Alden Wily 2012; Cotula 2013; Deininger 2011; Hall 2011; Li 2011; McMichael 2012).”
The Emerging Soybean Production Frontier in Southern Africa: Conservation Challenges and the Role of South‐South Telecouplings (2016, background): “SAMSAFR telecouplings involve flows of knowledge and capital into infrastructure development, land acquisition (Hall 2011; Land Matrix 2014), agricultural research, and institutional reforms.”
The new enclosures: critical perspectives on corporate land deals (2012, methodology): “Using this schema, Ruth Hall (2011) shows for southern Africa that most deals involved a transition in land use from non-food to biofuels and a concentration of land, wealth and power in private companies.”
How and why chiefs formalise land use in recent times: the politics of land dispossession through biofuels investments in Ghana (2014, background): “in land acquisitions in their home countries (Zoomers 2010; Hall 2011; Cotula 2012), the mediating role of local social institutions in land deals seldom features prominently.”