9. Water and Land Grabs

In a previous post I discussed the insurgence of Western mega-farms into Africa and the potential impacts of a widespread growth in private firms emerging within food and agriculture in Africa. In reflecting on this post, I realized that I missed an opportunity to construct a wider discussion about the insurgence of Western private companies and its consequences for land and water grabs. As a consequence, this post will address land and water grabs by agrobusinesses from ‘developed’ countries and attempt to outline the potential implications of this for water, food and development in Africa. Furthermore, land and water grabs are also arguably facilitated by international asymmetric power dynamics and asymmetric power dynamics have been a continually reemerging concept within the blog so far so revisiting this idea in an international context may be useful in further evaluating their importance to the problems water, food and development are facing in Africa. 

It arguable that land and water grabs act as forms of David Harvey’s ‘accumulation by dispossession’ and that this process is underscored and facilitated at various levels by uneven power dynamics. For example, the power dynamics of the relationship between China, a nation often critiqued for ‘land grabbing’, and many African countries is uneven. As a consequence, ‘the African side of the joint venture is usually the contribution of land’ (Bräutigam, B.2012: 95) whilst ‘supporters of such foreign agricultural projects assert that, in addition to increasing crop yields and the productivity of previously marginal areas, they bring technical know-how, improved infrastructure, tax revenues, and jobs to countries that desperately need them.’ (Schiffman, R. 2013: 247). As a result, to an extent this still remains a function of asymmetric power dynamics as it facilitates foreign investors increased capacity to purchase land. 

However, asymmetric power dynamics do not only facilitate land grabs within international relationships these dynamics are also evident domestically. For example, ‘in Zambia all land is vested in the president – making land allocation to foreign investors easy’ (Carmody, P. 2012: 129) and furthermore ‘elite Mozambicans exercise access control over land resources through their ‘bundles of powers’ (Fairbairn, M. 2013: 157). These examples are further evidence of how the issue of land and water grabbing is fundamentally an issue of asymmetric power dynamics as domestically individuals have the power to facilitate foreign investment at the expense of local smallholder farmers. This is also evident in the growing trend of private equity firm’s investment in African agriculture that are predominantly concerned with ‘looking to Africa to fund and develop agricultural initiatives’ (Campanale, M. 2012: 143). ‘The main rationale behind this is promise of higher prices for agricultural produce and land over the long term’ (Campanale, M. 2012: 144). Here, asymmetric power dynamics are also at play as individuals are capable of selling to private investors because the funding received from the private equity firms is often utilized to cement their political control. 

One of the main challenges that the growing prominence of land grabs poses to Africa is that these land grabs are also accompanied by water grabs. As other nations and private firms invest in African agricultural land and take the rights of ownership, they are also grabbing the water contained within that land and the virtual water within the crops. The virtual water being how much water it has taken to produce the store of crops present. Consequently, this poses many challenges in a continent facing food insecurity and where water resources are often competed over by a number of users. Hence, these water and land grabs serves as obstacles to development as they inhibit the capacity of nations to achieve a point of food and water security, which as established can serve as a vehicle for development. 

As there are increasing occurrences of foreign direct investment in Africa’s agricultural land. For example, ‘China State Farm Agribusiness Corporation began to buy up or lease some of the old Chinese aid projects – for example the Segou sugar complex in Mali, Magbass sugar complex in Sierra Leone, Koba farm in Guinea and Mpoli farm in Mauritania’ (Bräutigam, B.2012: 94-95). The realities of these grabs for African water, food and development must be attained as at present ‘it is counterproductive to displace small farmers and make them plantation laborers on what was once their own land.’ (Schiffman, R. 2013: 247) and the sale of land and consequently water is acting as an obstacle to development. One of the main challenges is that these land and water grabs are often facilitated by asymmetric power dynamics either between states, between individual civilians or between elites and private firms. Consequently, ‘efforts among private investors to gain access to land highlights how and by whom authority is acquired and exercised’ (Burnod, P. 2013: 179). This demonstrates the importance of power dynamics within the context of land and water grabs as it is these uneven relationships that facilitate the sale of land and water. Consequently, the example of land and water grabs can be understood to be symptomatic of one of the key problems that has been established throughout this blog, which is that asymmetric power dynamics are producing an unevenly developing African continent particularly when considering water and food as viable vehicles for achieving development.