Land-grabbing In The New Alliance? A Case Study that Illustrates Some of the Issues.
Douglas Hertzler et al.
Rural communities in the Bagamoyo district of Tanzania are opposing a much-lauded sugar cane plantation project planned by EcoEnergy, a Swedish-owned company that has secured a lease of over 20,000 hectares of land for the next 99 years and which is about to push smallholder producers off their land. Although the company has conducted consultations with affected villagers, the research conducted by ActionAid found that the majority have not been offered the choice of whether to be resettled or not,1 and have not been given crucial information about the irreversible effects the project may have on their livelihoods and their rights to food and land. By failing to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of the communities in the area affected by the project, EcoEnergy is grabbing the land of these communities, or risks doing so. EcoEnergyys plan to develop a sugar cane plantation is a flagship project of the increasingly controversial New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the G88s African agriculture initiative.2 The New Alliance is a set of agreements that give large corporations a key role in agricultural development in Africa and which require African governments to give incentives to agribusiness, expanding corporate access to seeds, land, water, labour and markets often at the expense of local communities.
Event: Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2015
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