Africa for Sale?

The past several decades have witnessed a rise in foreign and domestic investments in Africa’s arable land. While such land projects are currently the focus of widespread media and scholarly interest, the role of the state in driving, negotiating and facilitating these acquisitions deserves closer attention. This book analyzes how state land policies, stakeholder interactions and privatization schemes interact to facilitate large-scale land acquisitions. It includes a study of the various forms of state intervention, the influence of foreign agencies, governments and private entities, and a look at how states interact with local populations. The inclusion of case studies in settings throughout the African continent should attract the interest of both an academic and non-academic readership.

Sandra Evers is associate professor in Anthropology at VU University Amsterdam. Her research and publications deal with migration, slavery, cultural transmission and land issues in Madagascar within the context of globalisation, natural resource management, poverty and sustainable development. Dr Evers directs a research programme on foreign large-scale land acquisitions in Africa and Madagascar.

Caroline Seagle is a PhD candidate at the VU University Amsterdam. An environmental anthropologist by training, she was a recipient in the Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI) small grants competition and published in the Journal of Peasant Studies special issue on Green Grabbing (2012).

Froukje Krijtenburg is a post-doctoral fellow affiliated to VU University Amsterdam specializing in discourses of land use and access in Africa. Her current research explores stakeholder mediations of a foreign land deal in Kenya. She wrote Cultural Ideologies of Peace and Conflict: A Socio-Cognitive Study of Giryama Discourse (Kenya) (PhD dissertation VU Amsterdam, 2007).

'... this volume is an excellent contribution to the debate about land grabbing and a useful reminder about the role about the African State in these processes'.

Tor A. Benjaminsen in The Journal of African History, 56, pp 175-176.