(Bio)Fueling Injustice? - Europafrica

2. The evolution since 2010: the rising
phenomenon of land grabbing and its negative
impact
2.1. New evidence confirms the scale of the phenomenon
The Monitoring report already showed that land grabbing is a wide scale phenomenon
in Africa. Without overemphasising quantitative approaches, since 2010 research has
produced new estimates on the scale of the rush for land. It seems that it is greater
than originally expected, especially in Africa. A 2011 analysis from the World Bank
analysing media reports estimates that investors expressed interest in 56.6 million
hectares (ha) of land globally between October 2008 and August 2009. Of these
projects, two thirds of them, or nearly 40 million hectares, involves Sub-Saharan
Africa. 12 Still in the same report, a country-specific inventory of official data on actual
and pending land transfers in 2004-09 shows that investors acquired or expressed
interest in 10.2 million ha in five African countries during the period (Ethiopia,
Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Sudan). 13 A finer analysis of these results by the
authors shows that the biggest flow of investments is between investors based in
Europe and Central Asia for acquisitions in Africa, thus confirming the importance to
monitor land grabbing on the continent. 14 These figures also demonstrate a sudden
and huge demand for African land, as the annual rate of area expansion in Africa was
only of some 1.8 million ha in 1961-2007 – compared to 39.7 million ha in 2009
alone. 15
The International Land Coalition set up the Land Matrix project to monitor largescale
land transactions from 2000-2010. In this period, the project finds a total of 203
million ha of large-scale (more than 200 ha) land acquisitions. Of these, 71 million ha
had been cross-checked from multiple sources and confirmed as of December 2011.
Africa again appears to be the most impacted region, with almost half of the crosschecked
deals (34 million ha) taking place in the continent.
A group of experts set up by the UN Committee on World Food Security, the High
Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) endorsed similar figures in July 2011 (50-80 million
ha globally), noting that “all sources agree that the trend is markedly upward and is
likely to continue.”
The drivers of this rush for land are known. The triple crisis (food, financial, oil) played
a key role, as analysed in the Monitoring report. The food crisis incentivised rich foodimporting
countries to invest in land to ensure their own food security and the
limitations of oil production motivated the development of agrofuels. These two
phenomena together contributed to raise the value of land, which has by consequence
driven speculative investment in land, in the context of the global financial crisis where
investors seek new reliable sources for financial returns. Taking a different typology,
the HLPE highlights three drivers to the rush for land: 16 public policies on food and
biofuels – including the African Union (AU) Comprehensive African Agricultural
Development Programme (CAADP) of 2003 which committed member state
governments to invest 10% of government expenditure in the agricultural sector;
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