China’s Expanding Farmland Footprint Across Africa

The China’s agroeconomy in Africa is focused on farming rice, maize, soybeans, wheat, cassava, sugarcane, sisal, cotton and other commercial crops. These crops reveal the strategic importance of their relationships with each country they have pitched their farming-tents in. In Tanzania, the agricultural investment comprise thousands of hectares of sisal farms; also, fresh investments in Angola focuses on grains and soybeans. In another flipped-page, Chinese-backed agricultural financing across Africa, has also supported irrigation, fisheries, farm development, mechanisation, rural infrastructure, etc.

Some communities living around these farm projects, have benefited somehow, but at different stages. Large farms can create jobs, introduce machinery and irrigation schemes, build access roads and connect rural producers to bigger markets. Governments also see agricultural investment as a route to higher output, export earnings, technology transfer and industrial growth.

In the course of finding who controls the land, and who keeps the value created from it, China and African governments are officially promoting local processing, mechanisation, agricultural technology and expanding African food exports, to the Chinese market.

Note that human beings across the globe would always cherish landed property as security-asset. Accordingly, for the indigenous African people and their communities, land is much more than an economic asset. Landed property is inheritance, it represents food security, origin, ethnicity and identity. When governments lease large areas to foreign investors without transparent consultation or strong protections for customary land rights, families can find themselves losing farms, lands and farmlands that they have cultivated for generations. Even jobs from commercial estates, may not be able to replace a long-term security that comes with owning or controlling productive land.