African Land Rights Systems

Chapter 2 - Land, Market, and Morality

51 Chapter 2 Land, Market, and Morality The preceding chapter focused on tracing the link between land, identity, and self-determination as a way of establishing the meanings, values, and functions of land. The analysis ensued raised several questions pertaining to the relationship between land rights systems and identity politics. Unfolding the root causes of the increasing land disputes is good, but insufficient to comprehend the scope of the problem under exploration without identifying its implications in other spheres of human experience. The aim of this chapter is to examine the relationship between land, market, and morality. The discussion begins with a reflection on the market influence on the trend of land-grabbing extended to the relationship between market and morality. This analysis is complimented by an examination of the relationship between privatization, incentive, and efficiency.1 Suggestions for correcting administrative inefficiency, within public institutions, are given by advancing the ethics of stewardship, management, and accountability. Market Influence on Land-Grabbing The trend of land-grabbing mostly exists in urban slums and rural areas endowed with farmland, freshwater, and minerals. This trend is one of the root causes of landlessness, inequality, and conflict. Slum-dwellers, peasants, and pastoralists can easily be evicted from their ancestral-land due 52 to the lack of formal documentation with a well-defined legal procedure of acquisition, ownership, and management. The root causes of the growing trend of land-grabbing could be situated at two levels, namely, international and national. At the international level, the third world countries have been experiencing a trend of land-grabbing sustained by market forces. The reasons surrounding the trend include the food crisis of the year 2008, which caused a dramatic increase of prices at the international food market.2 In search for a solution, without delay, the food importing countries produced a strategy of buying land from the third world countries to produce their own food. Several countries, notably the Gulf States, East Asia, and China, have been heavily involved in the venture. The second cause of landgrabbing at the international level is fuel crisis. The rising fuel prices and the diminishing reserves produced reasons for multinational corporations to acquire land for the production of bio-fuel energy as an alternative.3 These reasons stand out as a driving motive for the trend of land-grabbing in contemporary Africa. A number of multinational corporations believe that Africa, having vast, arable, and unused land, is appropriate for an agribusiness venture. For them, Africa is viable because land is cheap, and weak institutions and irresponsible leadership make it appropriate for the free market to flourish. These perceptions have opened up a floodgate for foreign investors to acquire land for large-scale farming and oil exploration. Some financial institutions, as a component of the free market system, facilitate the venture. Local leaders, without critical reflection, embrace these strategies thinking that promises of job creation, tax revenue, and infrastructure 53 improvement will automatically bring about rapid economic growth. Before one could think of the benefits of selling land rights to foreign investors, as a venture for economic development, the following questions must be answered. Are multinational corporations able to bring about economic development to the local population? Are they concerned about the prevailing economic condition of Africa, the condition of underdevelopment, or are they simply doing business? How can we be sure that they are not taking advantage of the weaknesses of the local administration in public institutions? Did people struggle for independence in order to sell ancestral land to foreign corporations and turn the local population into a resource for casual laborers? Is the transfer of land to those who are able to make it productive a guarantee of development for the local population? Is selling land rights a right thing to do in search for economic development? Have people exhausted all possibilities for economic development to the extent of taking the option of selling the most productive land to foreign investors? Is it right to evict indigenous people from their ancestral land in order to accommodate foreign investors? Is rendering indigenous peoples landless, homeless, and unemployed an economic development? These questions may sound provocative, but they are very important. At the national level, apparently, land-grabbing is generating more insecurity than economic development. The reason is that large quantities of the best agricultural land and fresh water are taken by few individuals for speculation and the resultant economic...