accumulation by land dispossession and labor ... - Land Portal

“Dismembered from the land, from labour, from power, and from memory, the result is destruction of the base
from which people launch themselves into the world”– Ngugi wa Thiong‟o (2009) on „Re-membering Africa‟
1.0 Introduction
New commercial pressures on land and its impact on small producers is one of the major issues
being discussed in both national and international arenas. As foreign states and corporate entities
continue to exert pressures on African countries to acquire land for various investment purposes,
Tanzania is not exempted. The country is stereotypically perceived as having large underutilized,
or rather unexploited, fertile land – the so-called ‗virgin land‘. Official, that is, conventional,
statistics back up such claims and a number of leaders at the national level tend to use them to
lure potential foreign investors. Similarly, investors use these statistics to justify their ventures.
Given the growing interest in African farmland and its associated impact on livelihoods of rural
communities, the Land Rights Research and Resources Institute (HAKIARDHI) through the
support of Oxfam‘s Pan-Africa Economic Justice Desk in Tanzania undertook this exploratory
study on the current state of the so-called ‗New Land Grab‘ in Africa. To that end the research
team was tasked to gather facts, trends, processes and challenges in regard to large scale land
acquisitions with a view to produce this ocassional paper for awareness raising and policy
engagement on land rights within the country and widely across the Horn of Africa, East and
Central Africa region.
1.1 Objective
The core objective of the study was to determine the current nature and scope of large
scale land acquisition with the aim of safeguarding the land rights of small-scale
producers. This is in line with HAKIARDHI‘s mission to ―promote and advance the land
rights of the 80% of Tanzania‘s population that is rural based and who are small
producers‖. Thus, to that end, the study aims to:
(i) Establish the nature in which the land is acquired from the people and villages
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