African Land and Natural Resource Grabs Destroy Lives and Futures of Africans

By Obang Metho, SMNE

April 18, 2013

The group of panelists at the US Congressional Briefing

When the
global food crisis of 2008 struck, with its food shortages, sky-rocketing food
prices and widespread riots, it sounded an alarm that began the global race for
fertile agricultural land, particularly land with access to water. Asian
countries in the global south, like India, China, and South Korea, simply did
not have enough unused, suitable land to meet the increasing need for food for
their people. Some European countries were in the same position. Arid countries
in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait,
may have wealth from oil, but they were large importers of food and have little
or diminishing arable land. Underground water aquifers were already being
depleted in efforts to irrigate existing food crops. 

Soaring
populations, decreasing available land, environmental degradation and lessening
confidence in access to adequate imports caused many governments to search
beyond their borders for new ways to ensure a supply of food for the future. At
the same time, speculators, investors and multinational agri-businesses began
to see food as a high-profit commodity which could be profitable like oil,
minerals and other natural resources.  

So
began the second scramble for African land that has led to massive land grabs
of land already occupied by the people of Africa. For most of those affected,
it has led to widespread displacement and to greater, rather than less, food
insecurity. This abuse of land rights has happened most easily in nations where
authoritarian regimes maintain their control over the people through
suppression of basic freedoms, human rights abuses, fraudulent elections,
corruption and military power. Unfortunately, many of these foreign investors
become complicit as they partner with Africa’s strongmen.

World Bank
President Dr. Jim Yong Kim said at their annual meeting last week, “Usable land is in short supply, and
there are too many instances of speculators and unscrupulous investors
exploiting smallholder farmers, herders, and others who lack the power to stand
up for their rights. This is particularly true in countries with weak land
governance systems.”[ii]

In
many countries in Africa freedom does not exist. Freedom House in their Freedom
in the World Study for 2012 ranked Sub-Saharan Africa as 82% un-free or only
partially free. People
who dare to demand their rights or who expose the dark side of those in power,
do so at risk to their lives and futures. Those in power do not represent the
best interests of their people, but instead represent their own interests. With
the search for agricultural land, authoritarian governments with weak adherence
to laws and few protections for the people are making secretive deals to lease
both small and large swathes of some of the prime agricultural land to foreign
and crony investors for negligible amounts (e.g. $1.19 per hectare in parts of
Ethiopia) for up to 99 years. Equivalent land reportedly brings $350
per hectare in places like Indonesia and Malaysia and thousands in the farm
belt of the US.

Much of
the food is destined for export or wherever it can bring the highest price. Most
Africans are small farmers; though poor, they have been able to sustain
themselves because of their land; however, the displaced will no longer be able
to be self-reliant and may easily end up hungry or in need of food aid. Although
some of the food produced will end up locally, food prices may well be beyond
their ability to pay. The displaced are mostly in the rural regions where
education and training have been lacking, leaving most ill-equipped to find
other jobs. Institutions, meant to strengthen civil society, often do not exist
or are under government control. Because there is little accountability or
transparency, it has opened the doors to high-level corruption, crony
favoritism and illicit transactions as secretive deals, with vague contracts,
are negotiated by regime power-holders. 

A Focus on the Gambella region of Ethiopia, my birthplace and the
epicenter of land grabs in Africa:

Ethiopia
is one of the leading examples on the continent where large scale land grabs are
going on. Gambella region, considered to have the
potential for becoming the breadbasket of Ethiopia or the Horn of Africa, may
now fail to feed its own. The region has some of the richest, most fertile land
and abundant water in the country. My own ethnic group, the Anuak—as
well as other indigenous groups like the Nuer, the Mazengir, the Komo and the Opo—consider Gambella their
ancestral home, but little investment has been directed towards this
marginalized and undeveloped region. Now, Gambella is the region most
significantly targeted for land grabs.

In 2003,
related to natural resources, the current government of Ethiopia massacred 424
Anuak leaders within three days and went on to commit many more crimes against
humanity directed towards this one ethnic group in the following three years. It
was related to natural resources at the time and now, their land is being grabbed.

It is
happening in other regions as well. Already, an estimated 200,000 small farmers
and pastoralists in the rural areas have been displaced from their land in
order to free it up for investors. Recently, thousands of people of Amhara ethnicity were forcibly evicted from the region of Benishangul. A year ago, 70,000 other Amhara
were evicted from land in the Southern Nation’s region. In 2011-2012,
70,000 small farmers from the Gambella region were forced off their land. Many
more will be moved to resettlement areas in the next year. In Gambella, a
region with a total population of about 300,000, this means nearly three-quarters
of the people will be affected. 

In the
vague contracts, previously made available on the government’s website,
investors are promised land “free of
impediments.” Impediments, a description which refers to the people now
living on the land, are citizens of Ethiopia, but instead of their own
government protecting their rights, they are seen as obstacles to be
“cleared from their land” as if they were squatters or intruders in
their own homes. Even though the government claims the local people are choosing
to leave voluntarily in order to access better services, resistance is met with
human rights abuses. 

This
is most often occurring in rural areas among indigenous people who have no
established land rights even though they and their families or communities have
lived on the land for generations. Neither do they have the power to resist the
regime’s security forces as many are forcibly evicted from their land and
moved to resettlement areas where they are promised improved access to
services; however, most often, those services do not exist and the land is
inferior with less access to water sources. Some end up homeless, in refugee
camps in neighboring countries or working for slave wages on land they used to
own. In most cases those affected have neither been consulted nor compensated
for their losses, in contradiction to national and international laws.

The
government claims there is no relationship between the resettlements and land
leases; however, as soon as they are pushed off their land, the investors or
agricultural companies move in to clear the land. For example, land grabs from
small farmers have opened up 100,000 hectares—nearly 250,000
acres—for large agricultural farms like Karuturi
Global Limited of India. Karuturi has been promised a
total of 300,000 hectares—nearly 750,000 acres, which will require the
expropriation of the vast majority of the best agricultural land in Gambella.
Water for irrigation from this Upper Nile region is not being regulated and
could greatly impact water availability elsewhere, including down river in other
parts of Gambella, as well as in South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt. 

Another
agricultural company, Saudi Star, owned by the second richest man
in Africa, multi-billionaire Sheikh Mohammed Al Amoudi
has been given 10,000 hectares to lease in Gambella. As part of his Derba Group, he plans to lease another 290,000 hectares in
the same region. He also allegedly has intentions to lease 300,000 hectares in Benishangul, another marginalized region, north of
Gambella, and recently purchased three other farms in the country. There has
been violent conflict related to Saudi Star. Within Gambella, smaller
sized sections of land have been leased to regime cronies. In fact, it is
estimated that nearly 70% of the domestic lessees of land in Gambella are either
regime supporters or members of the ruling party’s own ethnic group. 

Some real life stories
from the ground:

Case Study #1: Mr. Okok
Ojulu:
Okok is an Anuak smallholder farmer who was educated
in the UK in sustainable development. 
In 2002, he led the World Bank’s project in the Gambella region. His
work was very effective in utilizing the bank’s development funds to
build schools, clinics and to dig water wells for the region. The funds were
given to all other regions in Ethiopia as well. After the World Bank assessed
the outcomes, Okok was given an award of excellence
for how the funds were used and how the services were implemented. One of the
rewards received from the bank was a car for his work. Shortly thereafter he
was imprisoned for several years in Addis Ababa by the federal government
because he had become a threat to the government, having become so popular and
influential in the community. In 2007 he was released and returned to his
family and region. 

Shortly
after his release and prior to the land rush in the Gambella,
Okok, a man of considerable vision and ability, began
plans to form an agricultural cooperative that would benefit the community. He
began to grow food himself and when he had grown enough food to make a profit, he
began hiring local people. He also began negotiating for the purchase of a
tractor that could be leased out during planting and harvesting. Those using it
would help pay for the cost of the tractor with their crops when they were
successfully harvested. The cooperative would then market the produce to the
local people. 

The
initial success of the venture inspired the young people to see farming as a
viable opportunity for their future livelihoods. It was also seen as a way to
eradicate poverty and to become more self-reliant; however, the TPLF/EPRDF saw
it as a threat, in direct opposition to the foreign investment model they were
selling to the people. They intimidated him and after finding out he was again
going to be arrested, he had to flee the country. He had been supporting his
own children’s school fees as well as fees of other relatives, which he
could no longer do. His vision was killed and the people he had hired no longer
had jobs. In doing this, the regime further disempowered the small holder
farmers, the backbone of solving food insecurity. 

The
farmland he had used in this project was instead given to Saudi Star. When we
talk about local small farmers being pushed off their land and impoverished by
it, we have names for you of many more examples. Mr. Okok
is now in Kenya as a refugee because it is no longer safe for him to live in
Ethiopia.

Case Study #2: WorOwar: A second case example is a local
business man, WorOwar, who invested all the money he
had from his business to lease agricultural land when he noted how foreigners
were coming to take the land. However, because he was not a government
supporter, a regime crony nor a TPLF/ERPDF party member, the government
authorities ended up harassing, threatening, and torturing him. He lost the
land to the government who made it so difficult for him and his family that they
were forced to flee the country for safety in 2010. Some regime crony now has
possession of his land.

Case Study #3: Gambellans
in the Diaspora:
There are Anuak, now living in the Diaspora, who took the initiative to attempt
to lease land in the Abobo District of Gambella. They had heard that the area where they had grown
up and where family members still lived was on the list to be leased. This was
an effort to ensure that these family members would not be displaced and that
the land would continue to be theirs; however, the regime authorities refused
to lease it to them. Instead, an Indian company took over the land.

Case Study #4: Mazenger
community leaders:
In 2011, community leaders of the Mazenger people
took the initiative to go to Ethiopian President Girma
Woldegiorgis to seek help to stop the clearing of
their virgin forests for an Indian company to grow spices.

The
president agreed with the local people and advocated on their behalf by writing
a letter to the Ethiopian Minister of Agriculture, the former Prime Minister,
and the Minister of Environment, saying it would hurt rather than help the
country in the long run; but his efforts were ignored. Instead, those community
leaders who initiated this ended up losing their jobs and some were even put in
jail. This is impact of the land grab investment on the people even while the
government denies it all. This is why I call it not only a land grab, but a
life and future grab from these innocent people. There are too many other
examples to tell; not only in Gambella, Ethiopia or Africa but throughout the
world

What Undergirds Land
Grabbing?

Lack of freedom:

Out of
five countries in the world showing the greatest aggregate declines in freedom
from 2007-2011, Ethiopia was fifth according to the previously mentioned 2012
study by Freedom House. In the case of Ethiopia, it is well known within the
country that the ethnic-based Tigrayan Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF)
not only controls the ruling party, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary
Democratic Front (EPRDF), but it also controls every sector of society and every
facet of life from the federal level to the kebele
(neighborhood levels). This includes the parliament, civil service, the
judiciary, the military, security forces, civic institutions, religious
institutions, the economic system, the educational system and the
administration of developmental aid; including the dispensation of food aid,
fertilizers, seed and other developmental aid. 

Lack of justice and equality

Most
benefits are directed to the TPLF’s own region or supporters. For
example, in their own region of Tigray, there are
five hospitals and four universities whereas in a region like Gambella, there
are no universities and only one hospital without running water. Party
membership is necessary to get into schools, to get jobs and to access most any
opportunities. If you are not part of the inner circle, you stand no chance of
moving ahead. Conversely, if you challenge the system, you could face
harassment, higher taxes, loss of property,
intimidation or rights violations. The judiciary and the land appeal process
are not independent but are controlled by the top regime power-holders. The
number one interest of the regime is the resources but not the people whose
freedom they must restrict in order to have free reign of benefiting from the
nation’s resources.

Lack of political space: 

Opposition
groups are threatened and undermined and opposition leaders and activists are
imprisoned on charges of terrorism. There is only one opposition member in
Parliament out of 547 members. He is only given 3 minutes to speak at any
session.

Lack of freedom of religion:

The
TPLF/ERPDF interferes in the religious affairs of both Christians and Muslims,
for example, forcing regime-selected, pro-government religious leaders into top
positions to undermine their influence on society. It has caused church
divisions among Christians and caused thousands of Muslims to peacefully
protest against religious control. Muslim leaders have been arrested and are in
prison despite committing no crimes. 

Lack of independent institutions:

Civic
institutions, which are crucial in healthy societies, are under the control of
the regime. Even the laws undermine civil society by prohibiting significant
parts of their work, with criminal penalties for infractions, if they receive
more than 10% of their funding from foreign sources. For example, human rights
organizations have had to close and instead, the government has created their
own.

Lack of Communication and technology

Communication
and technology, on every level, is controlled. Here are some examples:

Telecommunication:
the government is the only provider and most Ethiopians have limited access;
for example, the rate of mobile phone usage in Ethiopia (5%) is one of the lowest in
Africa; the rate of fixed land phones is only 1%; again, among the lowest. Ethiopia
has invested in sophisticated spyware equipment to monitor users.

Internet:
the government is the only provider; they actively control opposition websites
and closely monitor use[iii] through various techniques, including
spyware. Access to the Internet is one of the lowest rates in the world at
0.5%, seven times behind the African average.

There is
only one government-run television station and radio station. Voice of America
(VOA) and Deustche Welle
(DW) have both been jammed in the past. Newspapers are self-censoring or
government –controlled. Journalists and editors have been imprisoned
as terrorists or have fled the country. Printing shops have been threatened not
to print any material that reflects poorly on the TPLF/ERPDF.

The government
disseminates propaganda internally and internationally; for example,
claiming that resettlement is voluntary, by denying human rights abuses, by denying
personal gain by regime power-holders, and by using democratic, developmental
and war on terror rhetoric to dupe outsiders and to gain political, financial
and military support.

Lack of land tenure undergirds poverty
and land grabs:

In
Ethiopia, all land is owned by the state; essentially banning private
ownership. This has made it impossible for farmers, who use their land as
collateral, to buy and sell land. It also gives them uncertain rights to that
land since the government has reserved the their own right
to redistribute the land if they see fit to do so. 

In regards
to how this creates or mitigates food insecurity, the SMNE worked with the
Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota on the completion of a study,
Land Reform in Ethiopia: Recommendations
for Reform, focusing on the role of land tenure policy and poverty in
Ethiopia. That report will be released this week and will be available on our
website. http://www.solidaritymovement.org/

The team
of researchers found evidence that a lack of land tenure contributes to the
vulnerability of the people; particularly in regions where they have no
certificates giving the people individual or customary/community rights to utilize
the land. Small and marginalized tribes have the fewest rights. The TPLF/ERPDF
uses the lack of certification to redistribute land on whim.

Only four
regions now have partial certification: Amhara, Oromia, Tigray and parts of
Southern Nations. No one is safe, but those with certification are safer. Lack
of mapping boundaries of properties also exacerbates the problem.

City
dwellers also are at risk. Even though many hold certificates; urban
certificates are inviolable only as long as no one wants the land underneath
your home, condominium or business. If it is strategically located or sought
after by an investor or someone from the inner circle of regime, the land can
be expropriated. New laws are on the books that can demand eviction from urban
land sites if the lessees fail to build a two or three story structure on the
site. Many find it financially impossible to do so and end up on the streets,
homeless.

The study
found that land appeals are oftentimes heard by the same people and authorities
who made the decisions on the expropriation of the land involved. There is
obviously an inherent conflict of interest. [More information on
Ethiopia’s certification program can also be found from the World
Bank’s document: the Land
Governance Assessment Framework: Identifying and Monitoring Good Practice in
the Land Sector.][iv]                                                       
Some
observations:

High rates
of rural landlessness and land poverty already exist; challenging the
government’s argument that there is abundant excess land. Much
of that land is less arable than what is being forcibly vacated. Forty
three percent of rural Ethiopians have no access to land and fully 60% lack
sufficient land to grow enough food for a family of five. (Please see Humphrey
Institute’s Executive Summary).

Land
grabs can be linked to increasing corruption, but not to decreasing hunger.

Land
grabs, which are resulting in increased food
insecurity and dispossessing the small farmers of their livelihoods, are exactly contrary to goals
expressed by the World Bank, the IMF, USAID,
development groups like the Gates foundation and others who say they want to
support smallholder farmers.

Most
every voluntary guideline of the FAO is not being followed in Ethiopia.[v]
[Please see: Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible
Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food
Security for further information].

Some conclusions
regarding the TPLF/EPRDF’s Control of Ethiopia:

Government
ownership of land is equivalent to TPLF ownership of land, to be used as they
choose. The TPLF
strategic plan for hegemony of all of Ethiopia, including exploiting its
resources for its own interests, will actively war against reversing poverty
and conflict in the country. [Please see the link here http://www.enufforethiopia.net/pdf/Revolutionary_Democracy_EthRev_96.pdf
to: TPLF/ERFDF’s Strategies for
Establishing its Hegemony & Perpetuating its Rule.[vi]]

This
is a disturbing plan for one, ethnic-based party, the TPLF, to gain permanent
control of Ethiopia and its resources that few insiders and even fewer
outsiders have seen.
A
government that in and of itself has a policy that views any outside its party
as enemies or people to be exploited, has egregiously failed to perform its
duty to protect the rights of the people and must be reformed.

A
regime that actively promotes division, controls religious expression,
criminalizes dissent and perpetrates robbery and violence against its own people
has egregiously failed to perform its basic duties and should not be supported
by international groups.

A
regime that lacks accountability and transparency and where corruption is
rampant should not be supported by the international donors, the World Bank,
the IMF, USAID, development groups like the Gates foundation. Ethiopia lost
US11.7 billion in illegal capital flight from 2000-2009 and in the year
following the beginning of the land leasing program in Ethiopia, the Task Force
for Financial Integrity and Economic Development [vii]
(FTFP) reported that the
amount doubled to $3.26 million (USD)—with the majority of that increase
coming from corruption, kickbacks and bribery. 

International
Developmental organizations, like World Bank, the IMF, USAID, development
groups like the Gates foundation, report success in helping small farmers in
Ethiopia, but the majority of that aid is directed by the TPLF/ERPDF to one
region—the TPLF’s own region of Tigray. Financial support to institutions,
economic enhancement programs and democracy-building are directed to
pseudo-institutions run by the TPFL/ERPDF.

Military
support received from donor countries is believed to have been used to perpetrate
human rights crimes.
This autocratic regime, with a documented history of human rights crimes,
should not be the recipient of such support until a full and independent
investigation is conducted.

Solutions:

The
solution to this burgeoning problems of land and natural resource grabs is to
have a government where the law can protect the people and where the law is not
only limited to the elite, its cronies and partners. For positive change to come, citizens
must be able to claim their rights—human, civil, land and religious. Until
there is such a government to protect the rights of the people, which upholds
democratic principles of free speech, freedom of movement, freedom of assembly,
freedom in the media, an independent judiciary and institutions, an independent
appeal process, a non-politicalized military and similar aspects of free and
open societies, the people will be seen as impediments to whatever the
government wants for its own interests. No one is safe in such a political
climate. This is where donor countries like the US can become involved in
pressuring these governments to be accountable to the people; not supporting
autocratic regimes that are creating poverty by pushing people off their land.
Africans who used to feed themselves from farming their own land are now hungry
and needing food aid. Some who have been hired to work
on these agricultural farms, are often working for wages below the World
Bank’s minimum wage standards.

Overall,
the donor countries, like the US, should try to side with the people,
supporting them in having the freedom to elect their own government. If land
grabs, human rights abuses and increased resulting food insecurity continue, it
could create conflict, displacement and instability. This is not just about a
land grab but is a life-grab which will affect the lives of Africans for
generations to come. The multi-dimensional impacts are broad, long-lasting and
difficult to measure. Environmental impacts are frighteningly inadequate. Sometimes
the environmental assessments have not been done or when done, are voluntary or
simply not enforced. Few controls are put on users of water and few, if any,
studies have been done on the impact of water use on the lives of people in the
surrounding areas or downstream. This is about human rights and human freedom. The
donors and investors should look into this and take it seriously. The donors
should think beyond themselves and about the people to whom the land belongs.

The following recommendations are for the US and other donor
countries:

Put
pressure on the Ethiopian government to recognize human rights and provide
social and environmental safeguards in land investment practices. Ethiopia is
dependent on international aid and as such, donors are in a powerful position
to demand that Ethiopia lives up to its international obligations and
implements the above recommendations. Aid flows should be restricted if
Ethiopia is not living up to international human rights, good governance, and
indigenous rights standards.

Ensure
that not aid monies are going into any project that will be involved in land
investment in its present form. Aid monies should not be funnelled
towards projects that will make it easier for land investment in its present
form to continue to take place.

Aid flows
be considered to aid and assist Ethiopian government in achieving the above
goals. Many of the above recommendations will more easily be implemented if the
financial support is available to support them.

In conclusion:

By
2025, nine billion people are expected to be in the world and these people will
need food. The search for this food has fueled the land grabs in Africa. The
exploration for suitable agricultural land and water sources has gone to where
the most vulnerable people live and these are the people who are the victims. The
weakest and most vulnerable populations of the world, already deprived of their
rights and freedom are like these people in Africa. The focus has gone to the
places where there is no rule of law, where people are not valued and where
there is no participation in the decision-making by the people. 

Africans
lack human freedom. They live on one of the poorest and most hungry continents,
but not because they do not have arable land or water. What they lack are
governments and strong institutions that protect the people. This is why
unscrupulous investors are robbing the weak and the vulnerable. The need for
food, water and shelter is not only critical to the more developed nations or
the powerful, but the same needs exist for the weak and the vulnerable in
Africa. 

You
do not see it happening in the most agriculturally productive countries in the
world, like in Saskatchewan, Canada, America’s Midwest or other free
countries because there is a rule of law that is followed, but you can see it
in a place like Ethiopia and in other parts of Africa.  This is what I call robbing the
innocent. It is a daylight robbery and must stop. We are not against investment
but it is immoral and wrong to rob the most vulnerable in our global society. It
demands that free, conscience-minded people speak up. For some of the more
powerful and wealthy to unjustly take the resources from these people will
create conflict and instability in our global world.

As World
Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim states, “Securing
access to land is critical for millions of poor people. Modern, efficient, and
transparent policies on land rights are vital to reducing poverty and promoting
growth, agriculture production, better nutrition, and sustainable development.”
But he also presents one of the most crucial challenges as he warns, “Additional efforts must be made to
build capacity and safeguards related to land rights – and to empower civil
society to hold governments accountable.” 

The core
principles of the SMNE are about sharing and caring about others. What
this means to us is that humanity should be valued above our diverse identity
factors—putting humanity before ethnicity.

The
dehumanization of others precedes most every act of injustice and evil; meaning
that lasting peace and the prosperity of others can only come to our world if
we care about the freedom, justice and well being of others for “no
one is free until all are free.”
Our
humanity has no ethnic, national, gender, political or religious boundaries.

Until
Africans are free; the world will not be free. We can build a better, more humane,
more just and more harmonious world than this by simply recognizing the face of
our Creator in every one of our global brothers and sisters! Will you not be a
bystander and help create a better world for all of us?

Notes