Africa: World Bank Ramps Up Attack On Small Farmers

analysis

"Enabling the Business of Agriculture," promoted by the World Bank, and now enhanced with a new sub-indicator on land policy, is presented as a way to advance agricultural development, particularly in Africa. In reality, notes a new report from the Oakland Institute, it gives an additional push to a "land rush" by mostly foreign corporate interests. This trend, notes Harvard land tenure scholar Pauline Peters, "marks the most radical shift in the distribution and tenure status of land since colonial times."

Peters reviews the literature on "the politics of the land rush across Africa" in a November 2018 article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Both Peters and the Oakland Institute highlight the fact that land appropriation, although not new, has accelerated rapidly in the decade since the financial crisis of 2008.

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