Cape Town — People's rights to work the land – an indispensable pre-condition for food security in Africa – are the subject of two key initiatives by international agencies working to improve agricultural production on the continent.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations announced this week that it has begun technical consultations on international guidelines aimed at ensuring that tenure to land and other natural resources such as water, fish stocks and forests is properly governed.
At the same time, the FAO has launched a separate initiative to address the problem of what many Africans see as "land grabbing" – the new trend of foreign companies and governments leasing or buying land in African countries on which to grow crops.
The consultations on good governance concerning issues of tenure will include governments, the private sector, poor farmers, indigenous groups, local authorities and others, the FAO said in a news release.
The release quoted Paul Munro-Faure, chief of the FAO's Land Tenure and Management Unit, saying that that the FAO was taking the lead on the issue because "secure land access is the best safety-net for the poor, and because good governance of land is a necessary condition for secure land access and land tenure rights".
The FAO said although most member nations had rules to protect farmers and forest dwellers, as well as local and foreign investors, from being turned off their land or having it seized arbitrarily, "laws are often ignored or badly enforced."
The consultation would produce guidelines to give practical help to governments, the private sector and civil society on "responsible governance" of tenure.
Paul Mathieu, senior officer of the FAO Land Tenure and Management Unit, told AllAfrica in an interview that one of the contributory factors driving the consultation had been this year's Transparency International index on corruption, which had underlined the need for better governance in many countries to ensure the security of land rights and the effectiveness of land administrations.
He said the FAO's response to the acquisition of land by foreign entities will be a separate process, but will also address issues of governance and the need for effective and fair institutions.
"From about 18 months ago," he said, "there were beginning to be concerns about 'land grabbing,' or what we have called large-scale land acquisitions… So the FAO, with other UN organizations will work towards developing principles, and maybe a code of conduct, for international agricultural investment.
"These two initiatives are different processes, but they will certainly address the linkages between international investment and land governance, and thus reinforce each other."
A recent report compiled by the FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), said the acquisitions were being driven by food security concerns in investor countries.
"Food supply problems and uncertainties [in investor countries] are created by constraints in agricultural production due to limited availability of water and arable land; by bottlenecks in storage and distribution; and by the expansion of biofuel production, an important competing land and crop use," the report said.
For people in countries where land was bought or leased – in Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia - the phenomenon created both risks and opportunities, the report said.
"Increased investment may bring macro-level benefits (such as GDP growth and improved government revenues), and may create opportunities for economic development and livelihood improvement in rural areas. But as governments or markets make land available to prospecting investors, large-scale land acquisitions may result in local people losing access to the resources on which they depend for their food security…"
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
It added: "Ultimately, the extent to which international land deals seize opportunities and mitigate risks depends on their terms and conditions: how are risks assessed and mitigated – for instance through considerations in project location?
"What business models are favoured in project implementation (from plantations to contract farming, purchase agreements, policy incentives, or joint ventures)? How are costs and benefits shared – for example, in terms of safeguards against arbitrary land takings, or revenue-sharing arrangements? And who decides on these issues and how?"
"This is rightly a hot issue because land is so central to identity, livelihoods and food security," the report said.
