Foreign countries which buy African farmland in order to gain food security are guilty of a "new form of colonisation," South African Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson said on December 7.
She blasted foreign acquisition of African farmland and forests at a side event at the UN climate talks in Durban.
"You will find that some other country, or government in another continent, buys up land. If the land is forest land, they will kill it and they will grow food for that country. The host African country suffers.
"A new form of colonisation is happening to Africa. Many people don't like us telling this," she said to applause from delegates.
In an interview, Joemat-Pettersson gave the example of the new country of South Sudan, where she said "close to 40% of its land surface has already been sold" to foreign interests.
"They bring in
their own labour, they bring in their own equipment, soil, seeds, they
use the soil of the host country and then they move off. They leave very
little behind or they may leave depleted land."
She added:
"People will basically do anything to alleviate poverty. And what you
see in the continent is countries selling off prime agricultural, prime
forestry, to alleviate their own poverty."
Joemat-Pettersson
declined to name the foreign countries that were doing this, but said in
response to a question: "I don't think China is the only one. There are
other examples as well."
South Africa has launched an initiative
with the African Union to get all countries to draw up a register of
land management use.
"This way, they can evaluate what has
happened to their rain forest or their forest and what has happened to
prime agricultural land," she said.
"The register also allows us
also to see how much prime agricultural land or forest land has been
sold to foreigners, meaning people from another country, and what impact
this has on the host country.
The minister said she did not
expect the register to be completed by next year, but said "the African
Union heads of state are being absolutely phenomenal about this. We are
driving it and I think momentum is gathering, because people are
realising that we are losing security of tenure and we are losing
control over our own natural resources."
In
2009, a report by two NGOs and the UN's Food and Agricultural
Organisation (FAO) said nearly 2.5 million hectares (6.2m acres) of
farmland in just five sub-Saharan countries had been bought or leased in
the previous five years.
China, but also India, South Korea,
oil-rich Gulf countries and western companies were involved in the
practice, which was driven by the desire for food security and biofuels
but also by an improved investment climate in Africa, it said.
In
March this year, the aid agency Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) reported
that over a million hectares (2.47m acres) of land in South Sudan had
been leased to foreign companies in Unity state.
In July,
Germany's Africa policy co-ordinator, Guenter Nooke, said China's
"large-scale land purchases" had contributed to the devastating drought
affecting the Horn of Africa.
The accusation was dismissed by the foreign ministry in Beijing as "completely unfounded and [with] ulterior motives."
News24
December 08, 2011
Foreign land buying in Africa slammed by South African agriculture minister
Categories agribusiness, commercial farming, investment, land deals