Engaging parliamentarians on large scale land investments in Africa

Africa needs agricultural investments that facilitate inclusive and broad-based growth.  The investments must be transparent and fair in order to respect and protect the land rights of the rural communities and women.

These issues were highlighted by the Pan African Parliamentarians (PAP) and Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC) Parliamentarians Forum in a workshop co-organized by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, African Land Policy Initiative, International Land  Coalition, the Land Policy Initiative of the African Union, European Parliamentarians with Africa, Oxfam, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Future Agricultures Consortium, Africa Forum  and NEPAD. The Conference was held in Johannesburg from 11-12 August 2014.

The conference was the fourth and final one in a process that has taken place in the four sub regional parliaments of West, East, Southern and Central Africa African parliaments respectively.

The Pan African Parliamentarians were appraised of the achievements by the Pan African parliament since it launched a campaign to raise awareness against of Large Scale Land investments in 2010 by the researchers, community members and policy making institutions. Parliamentarians were provided with evidence based stories of ongoing research on the phenomenon through academic papers, policy briefs, video evidence and testimonies from affected women and civil society organizations that work with these communities. The video recorded by the Zambian Land Alliance highlighted tangible experiences of the affected communities to the Pan African Parliamentarians.

The presentations echoed the lack of transparency in contract negotiations; disproportionate livelihood loss, unsustainable business models and consistent weak governance and poor oversight and lack of readiness on the part of the African continent to negotiate effective contracts.  The few positive cases were still experimental, few and far between.  Legislators were challenged to reflect on the current investment models and provoked through the presentation of alternatives and different ways of thinking about large scale land based investments.  Although the campaign to engage regional parliamentarians in the debate on large scale land investments was a success, the PAP proposed measures have not yet implemented at the national levels.

Parliamentarians’ response showed their increased appreciation of the dynamic of large scale land based investments in their countries.  They also singularly and collectively decried their weak oversight ascribed to, among other clauses in the investment contracts which prohibited public disclosure of contracts. The turnover of parliamentarians linked to their five year term of office was also cited as another factor that undermines their capacity to exercise their mandate and sustain the momentum.  The Pan African Parliament has 10 committees and yet member countries second five parliamentarians to PAP. The result is that some countries are not represented on five committees. This further undermines the reach and effectiveness of the Pan Africa Parliament and its resolutions. The Pan African Parliament lacks resources to invest in the knowledge production for parliamentarians. This was attributed to the failure to pay subscriptions by member states.  The legislators also cited limited resources, lack of information and the failure by their member states to ratify and uphold regional and international instruments that they ratify.

Parliamentarians also cited their limited powers to enforce regulations and resolutions on national governments as another challenge. It was also clear that parliamentarians do not share a common understanding of the issues raised and challenges posed by large scale land based investments. This was evidenced by the type of clarifications that they MPs seek from the participating experts. The lack of a common language also posed some barriers in debates and sharing and dissemination of information among members of the PAP.

Here are suggestions to improve the effectiveness of Pan African Parliamentarians’ role in improving the governance of large scale land transactions in Africa:

• Continuous supply of evidence based knowledge on the large scale land based investment and their impacts in Africa
• Technical secretariats to support committees with skills, knowledge and continuity of debates throughout the parliamentary cycles. The same secretariat would also monitor and evaluate progress on land based investments
• Sub regional engagement on the subject through regional and national parliaments
• Parliamentarians need to demonstrate and motivate political will at the highest levels of the government to address the staggering public investments in agriculture.

By Gaynor Paradza and Emmanuel Sulle

Land Rush, Day 1: Food availability doesn’t always equal food access

While proponents of corporate farms argue that large scale land investment will enhance food security, activists and academics alike are highlighting how detrimental such land deals could be for the food security of those who are moved off the land to make way for corporate farming.

Speaking at a meeting of the Pan African Parliament yesterday, parliamentarians, civil society, academics and agribusiness came together to discuss how to make large scale land investment work for Africa.

Civil society activists, such as Constance Mogale from the Land Access Movement of South Africa (LAMOSA), highlighted how moving women off land to make way for investors meant that women could no longer produce food to secure their livelihoods. As this leaves affected women all but destitute, they also cannot access the food being produced by the commercial farm which had replaced their activity. Food security for the poor and vulnerable is often not about availability, but about access. Increasing production through commercial farming, therefore, does not help those who do not have cash to purchase their food.

Echoing Constance Mogale’s point, Prof Ruth Hall (PLAAS/Future Agricultures) explained that large scale land deals are not just creating land loss, but are actually restructuring the entire food system towards a model in which the food system is controlled and owned by multinational corporations. Corporate farming is leading to the supermarketisation of the food system, limiting access for those who cannot pay. She gave the example of South Africa, where most food is produced by the corporate sector. South Africa is food secure, produces abundant food and even exports food, yet many South Africans are going hungry, simply because they cannot afford to buy it.

While African governments enter into investment deals under the belief that large scale commercial farming will improve the lot of the hungry populations, the evidence from these examples suggests the opposite: these types of land deals often make the vulnerable even more vulnerable. Therefore it is essential that African governments look more closely at the fine print of such deals. They must ensure that the benefits of investment will accrue to their populations, not just to profit-hungry corporate investors.

by Rebecca Pointer, Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) 

Dams, flooding and displacement: the Tokwe Mukorsi dam

Image: Satellite-detected water bodies at the
Tokwe Mukorsi Dam (source: Reliefweb [pdf])

Zimbabwe's heavy rainfall this season has had its costs. The most dramatic has been the major flooding in Masvingo as the long awaited Tokwe Mukorsi dam filled more rapidly than expected. Rather than filling gradually over four years, with a phased process of relocation of people, it did so over a matter of weeks. There were threats to the dam wall, and a fear a major catastrophe might result.

Dramatic satellite images of the extent of flooding have been shared, and SABC broadcast a short news item on the unfolding drama, showing images of the floods, and the damage caused. The flooding has resulted in over 4500 people having to be evacuated at short notice, and shifted to a number of holding camps in the lowveld.

It has been declared a national emergency, and considerable resources have been deployed in response. Funds from the US as well as China have been offered, and whole fleets of CMED vehicles have been commandeered to move people. Emergency camps have been established, and feeding programmes instituted.

In December, while visiting our research study site along the Ngundu-Chiredzi road, the first phase of relocation was on-going, and we witnessed a string of trucks, tractors and trailors carrying people and their possessions heading to Nuanetsi ranch. They had left their ancestral lands, their homes, fields and grave sites, with the promise of compensation, new homes and access irrigated land and the water that was to cover where they once lived. But in February, as the scale of the massive rainfall and rapid filling of the dam became apparent, this turned from an orderly, planned move, to an emergency.

The Tokwe Mukorsi dam has been long in the planning. From the 1980s it was part of a strategic development of lowveld water resources, essentially to guarantee supply of water to the sugar and citrus estates. It was always political, wrapped up in national and local lowveld wrangles. Funding though has always been a challenge. The project has been on and off for decades. But in recent years, it has moved ahead, and Italian engineers and local companies have been involved. However, the engineers’ plans had discounted a once in 30 year rainfall event and had projected the gradual filling of the dam on the basis of more common rainfall patterns. This risk assessment of course proved incorrect, prompting the current disaster.

To the credit of the authorities, the response has been swift and losses have been minimised. No-one, as far as I can tell, has lost their life directly as a result. Dislocation and misery has resulted, and the make-shift arrangements at the holding camps have been reportedly appalling. But, everyone agrees, it could have been much, much worse.

This event has raised some bigger issues. We must ask, what is the role of such big infrastructure projects in development? Who gains and who loses? And how should displacement, compensation and relocation be managed when wider development priorities trump local concerns or resistance?
These are dilemmas being faced the world over. There is a wide obsession with the big, prestige project. Nehru proclaimed that ‘dams are the temples of modern India’. The Three Gorges dam in China has become a symbol of Chinese modernity. And in Ethiopia, the controversial Ghibe dam was a pet project of the late prime minister, Meles Zenawi. In the Rhodesian era, of course Kariba represented such a vision. And in recent decades, Tokwe Mukorsi has been associated with a similar rhetoric.

In the late 1990s, the World Commission on Dams made the case building on mountains of evidence that very often large scale is not best. A more diverse approach to water management, involving a variety of approaches to capturing, storing and distributing water is more appropriate. This advice however has been rarely heeded. The big project brings money, patronage, backhanders and more. And big projects can be seen as prestige legacies of particular people and politicians. Engineering development has its appeal: one solution, rather than many; and a technical one that needs a particular type of expertise. Yet the argument about big dams continues to rage. A paper out this month by Antif Ansar, Bent Flyvbjerg and colleagues suggests they are mostly economically unviable, bring massive costs of displacement and again a more diverse set of options is preferable. Not a new argument at all, but stated forcefully with recent numbers.

The Oxford study focuses on mega-large hydropower dams which Tokwe Mukorsi is not, but many of the same issues apply. There was repeated and systematic underestimation of costs, and as the flooding has shown the risk assessments have been found wanting. Tokwe Mukorsi was intended to benefit the large-scale sugar estates in the lowveld, not the local community. Resettlement was of course part of the plan, with a view that those displaced would become outgrowers in new sugar plantations. But will these offers be upheld, and what are the other more intangible losses suffered through displacement? Will those in Chivi who remain behind benefit from the new water? Or will it be ‘protected’ as part of ‘watershed management’, so upstream users lose out to the more powerful downstream? A game park has been mooted for the area, but who will benefit from this, as this takes up the banks of the new lake area?

When the immediate challenges of dealing with the flooding and its consequences pass, these are the bigger questions that will have to be dealt with. The minister of state for Masvingo, Kudakwashe Bhasikiti, has asked for new ideas on how to make use of the development potential of this new water. This is a welcome move, as past projects – whether Kyle/Mtirikwi or Kariba – have excluded local people from this conversation. Maybe the new Tokwe Mukorsi water can be used to benefit local development through small-scale irrigation, as well as profiting the estates in the lowveld.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and originally appeared on Zimbabweland