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NewsDay

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Upsetting communities in favour of business ventures

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WITH about 30 million hectares of land having been transferred to investors in recent years, most of it in Africa and given the scale of the phenomenon, experts are now calling for safeguards to protect the interests of local communities.

WITH about 30 million hectares of land having been transferred to investors in recent years, most of it in Africa and given the scale of the phenomenon, experts are now calling for safeguards to protect the interests of local communities.

BY TONDERAYI MATONHO

There has been a flurry of land acquisitions in developing countries since the 2007 food crisis. Countries such as China, the Gulf States and South Korea, all highly dependent on imports to feed their people, are trying to secure food supplies.

In Zimbabwe there is a land ownership wrangle between Matobo villagers and Trek Petroleum, which continues, unabated with villagers accusing the fuel company of grabbing their grazing land as it expands its farming operations.

The project has been met with fierce resistance from local communities, as Trek Petroleum struck a partnership deal with the Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (Arda) to carry out farming activities at Matobo Estate, Matabeleland South province.

Local communities in Matobo’s Zwehamba, Matankeni and Mahetshe areas claimed the project was encroaching into their ancestral lands and also crowding them out.

A local leader, Senator Sithembile Mlotshwa, recently confirmed the stand-off in an interview with NewsDay: “The government facilitated the partnership between Arda and Trek, which is a move for the better that the people welcomed.”

In the deal, Trek later found that its operations did not fit in the fields that belong to Arda and is now extending, in the process, evicting villagers from their farming lands.

High-level political leaders have been to the area in support of the project, but none of them were concerned about the communities’ plight.

According to the Matabeleland Institute for Human Rights, various communities in Matabeleland have for decades been quietly complaining of marginalisation in local development and empowerment opportunities, expropriation of local resources without community benefit and partitioning of local lands without consideration of local communities.

In the Marange diamond fields, large-scale displacement of local villagers by local and foreign companies has also taken place, with the people insisting that they were not going to leave the lands of their ancestors, claiming their forefathers’ graves and villagers’ homes should not be disturbed.

However, the wrangle has been ongoing with the companies mining the diamonds seemingly having the upper hand. Lawmakers and government officials have visited the area, but offered no effective solutions.

At the same time, new demands created by biofuels in particular, have also resulted in land becoming an increasingly rare and sought-after commodity. Zimbabwe is one country with an interest in biofuels.

Experts note that millions of litres of ethanol and biodiesel have been produced from more than 300 to 400 000 hectares of land in a single country from pastoral lands and farm lands in Africa where locals have been forced off, with little or nothing in the way of compensation.

According to the Centre for Agricultural and Technical Co-operation (CTA), the prospect of a sharp rise in food requirements, linked to the trend for biofuels, is making land a particularly attractive long-term investment.

CTA notes that since 2004, 30 million hectares of agricultural land has been sold or leased to foreign investors in Africa, including 12 million hectares during the past eight years. Heading the list are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Faced with poor performances in traditional markets, on stock markets and in raw materials, investors have realised that agricultural land is a sound and a viable asset.

The advent of these investors, CTA notes, which offer jobs, improved infrastructures, more modern cultivation techniques and higher output with guaranteed markets, is beneficial to local communities.

However, other experts believe that these land acquisitions are damaging to the host communities, who lose their plots in deals that fail to respect local land tenure rights and fair compensation.

“There must also be dialogue at national level, that over and above a certain size, these land contracts should be debated by the democratic institutions, which are the National Assembly and the Senate,” Veronica Zano, a legal officer with the Zimbabwe Environment Law Association, said.

“The foreign direct investment should be able to generate enough revenue for local development and the financial support provided should also enable precise evaluation of the impact of the investment in environmental terms.”

Nevertheless, while supporting these investments, the World Bank recently conceded that such initiatives do not always work to the advantage of local communities, who are neither consulted nor involved in negotiations and are often turned off land that is crucial to their survival.

Since 2008, there has been a sharp upturn in the number of investment funds dealing in land acquisition.

Emergent Asset Management, a firm specialising in emerging markets, joined forces with South African agricultural product dealer, Grainvest, to launch the African Land Fund to acquire land in southern Africa.

The secrecy surrounding these land transactions makes it difficult to find out who has acquired what and where.

In the case of the wrangle between Trek Petroleum and the villagers, senior officials from the company were quoted as saying Arda was responsible for extending [the farm] and not Trek; but an Arda official declined and played down the alleged wrangle.

In Marange, $15 billion worth of mined diamonds, disappeared into thin air and to this day no efforts have been made to trace the huge sum.

“Investors sometimes pledge to fund infrastructures for the country or the region in the form of dualised roads, irrigation systems, schools and health clinics and provide agricultural technology transfer,” Midlands State University law student, Denzel Malikwa, said.

However, negotiations for these deals spark mistrust, raise questions and are rarely transparent. The acquisition of land ownership by foreigners may upset local traditions and ways of thinking.

“Most of this land is sold off for a song or only benefits one party through corrupt means and locals will end up as farm labourers,” Malikwa said, adding that there should be dialogue between the governments, producers or villagers, local and foreign investors.

He noted that can only be done if the local communities are empowered by providing them with the best land for cultivation.

In a joint report published by the International Institute for Environment and Development, Food and Agriculture Organisation and International Fund for Agricultural Development, in which they carried out an inquiry into eight African countries, they recommended that involving local communities in negotiations and taking their interests more into account is the way to go.