Foreign and Domestic Interest in Agricultural Land in West Africa

Résumé fourni par la source

Abstract Farmland in West Africa has been of interest to foreign investors for decades. However, the recent “rush for land” is unprecedented in scale and pace. Both foreign and domestic investors acquire agricultural land in West Africa; hotspots include the fertile lands along the rivers Gambia, Niger, and Senegal. The current interest in land does not come as a surprise to those who have studied how land governance systems in West Africa evolved over time: Inherited from colonial administration, land tenure is governed through statutory and overlapping (neo) customary systems. Since the 1990s, these systems have allowed investors to acquire ownership or rights of use, especially for customary land. This facilitated access to land for outsiders, which then coincided with an increased demand for land in the 2000s. Since then, large extents of agricultural land have been transferred to foreign and domestic commercial investors. These acquisitions are exacerbating inequalities, and the current evidence points toward rather adverse impacts on local people. At the same time, such acquisitions put land governance systems under pressure. This pressure leads to changes to the land governance systems, for instance, through eroding trust in customary institutions. The examples of the Ghana Oil Palm Development Company and Mali’s Office du Niger show how exactly land acquisitions play out on the ground over time.

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