Land and water grabbing have more recently emerged as
major burning threats to many African poor societies. These threats are
amalgamated to illusion that "land
and water grabbing" for large scale investments is deepening poverty by
displacing local farming systems. More importantly, land and water grabbing is limiting
accessibility of land and water resources for local's agriculture development
and energy security. Globally, by 2012 the statistical trend of ongoing land
and water grabbing in Africa has indicated that over 9,76 millions chunked
fertile land and well ecologically connected have been outsourced to investors
mainly lead by China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Brazil,
South Africa and Japan. Amongst the US investors have reported to gain
3.3millions hectares of land in Africa while the northwestern Europe
involvements are still going undisclosed (Kugelman and Levenstein, 2013).
The great challenges of land
and water grabbing processes in Africa are vested into poor compensations to
evictees and worsen yet, whenever evictions occur, none of the allocations
are arranged. The recent evidence is from Kilombero valley in
Tanzania whereby the pastoralist communities have been evicted without being
directed where to heard about. Until recently, land and water grabbing remained
to be a major cause of dramatically killing such as those has been witnessed in
Tana Delta, Kenya. By April 2011, an Indian investor was reported killed at
Tana Delta in Kenya when the locals were protesting against the Indian
investment firms which was clearing the rainforest for expanding the sugarcane
plantations. Normally, the countries which outsourced land at cheap price, weak
and uncoordinated land and water governance system are perceived to be a
destination for many large scale investments. As per Tanzania Investment
Commission, between 2010 and 2011 the registered large scale investors, both
for food crops and bio-energy was bolstered from 23 to 53 companies and these
companies are potentially located along the river basin fertile floodplains and
wetlands. The current follow up of these companies showed that half of these
companies are inactive.
Merely in Rufiji Basin, the Kilombero
Valley Teak Co Ltd (British firm) was granted 28000ha of which 7000ha has teak
now and remaining 20000ha are not yet operationalized. The Kilombero Plantation
Ltd is another British Company that has succeeded 5000ha at Mgeta Village for
paddy cultivations from Korea Tanzania Company after phased out (Mwami and
Kamata, 2011). The concentration of these investments have increased river
water abstractions and lead to unnecessarily water demand competitions with
local communities. The large scale investments are adversely depleting river water
flows, fertility of floodplains and wetlands and its water quality and hereafter
lead to drought which in turns are progressively restricting smallholder
cultivation. More importantly, the turmoil of land and water grabbing are
leaving Africa with uncompleted promise and high level of being dependence
which are mostly rendering burden of importing goods with little gains from
exported products. The approach for sustainable large scale investments in Africa
has to change by inclusively establishing a clear level of democracy circulation
which truly transfer power to local communities in owning natural resources. And
the government should stand firm and serious in coordinating and monitoring the
functioning of rules and regulations for water abstractions and land use
operation.
Unlike many African countries,
however, Tanzania has been suffering from economic instability mostly because
of prudent poor contribution of large scale investment to the national economy.
By 2010, the large contribution to the national GDP growth came from public
services (43.5%GDP) far followed by agriculture including large scale
investments (26,9%GDP), mining sector (13.3%GDP) and the least contribution was
from telecommunication and transport sector (6.8%GDP). These evidences showed
that large scale investments do not influence much transformation to country economic
growth rather. I think, If Africa is really serious to construct its own destiny,
it should focus more in empowering small-scale farmers and should carefully identify
the serious investors to collaborate with. I suggest, the investment models
from Scandinavian countries should be deployed to Tanzania simply because they are
very relevant to the development context.
The analysis of ongoing land and
water grabbing processes and strategies in Africa are affirmed with corruption which
is materialized by few African politicians and elites. More likely, corruption
and ineptitude capacity of public servants in negotiating deals and agreements
have enormously limited accountability and transparency of signed contracts to
the citizens. Many of these land and water agreements are still remained
undisclosed and they lack inclusiveness of the communities management planning
process rather than are drafted based on an off-the shelve. This has an
implication that politicians and few elites are the major problematic cause of
the persisted land and water grabbing issues in Africa. The politicians are
viably occupying huge power of owning and controlling natural resources and
sometime they use this weakness to sell the natural resources at the thrown
price. Large investments in Africa is not a problem but some of the unserious
investor overuse the abided land and natural resources related weak and
uncoordinated laws to distort the process. Worsen enough, some investors have
been involved even in the process of negotiating land pricing with villagers.
This is totally terrible and in facts, their involvement leaves many questions
to what is the role of governments because the process does not speak and
defend the poor voices instead it decline to pro-investors interests. Following
this, the Tanzania government stopped the process of outsourcing the land until
the clear identification of land for large investments are placed on the table.
Tanzania has recently introduced a new land initiative which is translated as land
for "Agriculture first" by burning process of outsourcing land for
large scale investments which exceed 10000ha for bio-energy and 5,000ha for
food production.
For past three years Tanzania
has been doing well in establishing safety and rules of laws which resulted the
Mo Ibrahim foundation to rank 10th out of 52 nations in Africa.
Tanzania leads other East African countries by 59% in governance quality and followed
closely with Uganda (55%). The presence of rule of laws have somehow increase
accountability to public workers and gender equality especially to women, now
some are leading the high rank positions. Because of these evidence, The 2012
Mo Ibrahim foundation report ranked Tanzania 62.3% for establishing participation
and human rights while safety and rule of order raised slightly by 2.3% from
60% in 2011. In Mo Ibrahim foundation, the governance quality is measured
through safety and rule of laws, participation and human rights, sustainable
and economic opportunity and human development. In short, Tanzania under
Kikwete regime has been doing much better in comparison to previous presidential
regimes although the main challenge remained to be a corruption within the
public sectors mainly governed by politicians to mistreat the opportunities
brought through international cooperation. The main path which Tanzania is forgetting
is to re-emphases the construction of manufacturing industries along with Agriculture
first campaign.
The short discussion which I
had conducted with the former Finland President, Martti Ahtisaari pointed that he
is very confidence to current Tanzania government because it has showed
seriousness in addressing poverty issues collectively. This gives him hope and
much trust to Kikwete regimes and mostly the current Tanzanian government refers
presently as a reference to other Sub-Saharan countries. Contrary, although Tanzanian
economic achievement, estimated to grow stable at rate of 7% annual GDP from
2007, still it is very obvious to argue that the economic growth do not provide
much impacts to poor people. This is because, the poverty by headcount in the
country (2007) has slowly decreased by 2.4% only in comparison to 38.7% of 1991
(Edward, 2011). While, Uganda and Ghana, two countries which were far behind to
Tanzania in reducing poverty incidence by headcount for 55.7% and 51.7%
respectively in 1991 have do showed successfully in transforming to 31% and
28.5% by 2007. Uncoordinated and unmonitored land laws: For Tanzania case, the
pace of land and water grabbing is folded into contradicting land Acts
(especially the contradiction of land identification for village land and
public land as per Tanzania investment Act 1997 and Land Act, Cap 113 (of 1999 and village land Act, Cap 114 of 1999,
miscellaneous amendments Act of 2004 and 2006), land
acquisition policies and poor power relation between central governments and
grassroots institutions. Many Tanzanians perceived that the land Act 1999
doesn't reconciles the inclusiveness of the local institutions, norms and
customers in the process of negotiating the fates of outsourcing their land for
large scale investments instead
it is focusing only to legal procedures which in other side provides power to
corrupted politicians to cheat their own people. The malignant of this process
gives favour of power to investor to perform their operations without much
concerns to the communities. The conglomerate of these
factors limits authority of power to local's institutions and NGO's in
coordinating, planning and managing water and land resources. Apart from that,
it limits accountability of the public servants and democracy circulation by
excluding local communities in negotiating the opportunities and challenges
which emerges along with large scale investments.
Now, the fuel the future blog argues
by asking who is unserious investor and how to define them?.
I leave these two questions to my leadership to top up your thoughts and
feelings. This question is well connected with fact that the costs of large
scale investments to smallholders farmers and poor communities in Africa are
very viable today. As I have mentioned earlier, many people have been evicted,
displaced and in some localities like in Kilombero floodplains and even
Bagamoyo, the compensation to evictees have been claimed to be very low which
do not unpin the current life difficulty. Some villages have been allocated to
the unproductive land with limited infrastructure for water supply, health
welfare and education. For detailed information refers (Havnevik et al, 2011).
The land large scale investment through unserious investors is regarded as a "loose-win" situations that
increased rural evictions and disturbs local's food security, increase poverty
and thereby streaming to land related blood battles. The unserious investors
have been scrambling to African land and water resources and worsen yet, some
are continuing to acquire large hectares of land for feeding their home countries'
demand. What they leave to Africa is
degraded land with chain of uncompleted promises, high level of poverty with
limited labour market and income
distribution.
Regardless of these challenges
still many of the countries seem do not learn from historical evidences of how
large scale land acquisitions boomed food prices in 2010 and adversely resulted
to unstable economy. However, The Tanzanian government in different approach is
trying several means to transform Tanzania development into pro-poor aspects.
Of course, the success of Tanzania is aggregated prolifically by the government
to offer more much of the efforts have been done to date, especially from the
President himself and his cabinets. There are minor challenges which some have
been adopted from the previous leadership. Tanzania is very different today
much of the progress have been witnessed by my own eyes. The Kikwete's
government has strengthen efforts for improving infrastructures, bridge, roads
and low cost houses have been constructed mainly roads, institutions have also been
strengthened, physical and human capitals have been developed as well and
amendment of regulations and laws. In facts, this achievement has been achieved
because of good governance that increased confidence to Tanzanians. It is very
obviously that, the Tanzanian development showcase floor on the amazing race of
implemented safety and rule of laws and participation and human rights.
The unserious investors bought
land in Tanzania for loan asking to international funding organization and use
the acquired fund for other business to the other location (Mwami and Kamata,
2011). I was very impressed to hear that the Minister of Lands, House and Human
settlement, Prof, Anna Tibaijuka has already stopped the process of outsourcing
land for large scale investment until the creation of land bank. Hon, Tibaijuka
has ordered new mapping and identification of Tanzania land for large scale
investments and village land use. The Metria company from Sweden has agreed to
capacitize ministry staffs on this process. Moreover, the minister strategy is
to implement law of land succession against widow women are in place before
2015. Basically, these are very promising approaches which encourage the
marginalized women to get land. In many Tanzanian societies women are terribly
disadvantaged once they become widow. The minister Tibaijuka mentioned the over
going land reform should focus splendidly to respond effectively to the
overgrowing people's desire of decentralizing power of land ownership and
entitlements to locals/village people. The doubled concerns of the Minister
floored on the concerns of enhancing rural village institutions to treat land
not like other commodity. The village will be able to discuss through their
village assembly council to whom they should give a land and what win-win
benefits should be viably expected. This has to go concurrently with proven
evidence from past performance and commitment of the investor and stakes should
be discussed transparently and consensus agreed by villagers before
outsourcing. This means that the village assembly as an institution will be
well reorganize and the new law will be created to defend them.
At this end, I would like to suggest that in order to meet the sustainable economic
transformation horizons which reduces direct impacts of poverty to poor societies . Much
effort should be directed upon improving small-scale agriculture production system
that go parallel with construction of manufacturing industries. Doing so, will raised the value of agricultural products and extend the opportunity of labour markets.The
agriculture first campaign should truly aim to empowering small-scale farming
by increasing accessibility of farmsteady inputs and land and water resources. Perhaps, the country could learn from country like Ghana of which its economic transformation is driven by
small-scale farmers. Recently the ministry of agriculture in Ghana are planning to use electricity from the National grid for driving irrigation pump. Following this, Tanzanian should tap the opportunity of reserved natural gas to
produce electricity to be used irrigation farming. Subsidies for agricultural inputs and electricity
costs should be lowered in order to fit the food production requirements. The other area is to re-form
rural co-operative unions and inventing agricultural technologies which will fit easily
to the local farming environments. These will
relatively reduce the incidence of youth migrating to the urban and thereby reduce the poverty.The rural community need a lot of capacity building and establishment of joint management institution for sustainable management of natural resources. The terms and condition for natural resources coordination and monitoring should be decentralised.The societies need a certain level of democracy which value their concerns and involve them since the begining of the process of outsourcing natural resources and truth is the main pillar of building trust. The allocation
of land for large scale agro-investment should be on degraded land and the economic value of the water and land for investment should be re-assessed before outsourcing. This will
potentialize the rehabilitation of degraded land without affecting the
downstream communities along the river's watershed and the productive land should
prioritized to locals, so it will be a win-win process.
Please, we welcome any comments and suggestions for the better of our people!
Recommended
reading.
Hamisi.R.2013. Simulation of water balance for sustainable agriculture development and energy security in the Rufiji Basin. Tanzania
Havnevik K, and Haaland H. 2011. Biofuel, land and environmental issues: the case of SEKAB’s biofuel plans in Tanzania. In: Prosper B. Matondi, Kjell Havnevik and Atakilte Beyene(Eds). Biofuels, land grabbing and food security in Africa. Nordic Africa Institute in association with Zed Book LTD, Cynthia Street, London and Fifth Avenue, New York, USA.
Kugelman and Levenstein. 2013. The Global Farms Race: Land Grabs, Agricultural Investment and Scramble for food security. Island Press. Washington, USA.
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