The land grabbing, in Italian “land grabbing”, is the phenomenon whereby governments, multinationals or private investors purchase or appropriate large portions of land in the poorest countries, often to the detriment of local populations. The tendency of the most powerful to grab other people’s lands is nothing new, it is as old as the Human Being himself, what differentiates our era from those of the past are the disproportionate dimensions of the phenomenon and the involvement of one plurality of actors. The systematic nature of land grabbing it puts local populations at risk, who are defrauded of even the last valuable asset they have left: the earthstolen with practices that are often not very transparent or forced, transformed into land for industrial crops, mineral exploitation or financial speculation.
What does it mean land grabbing and how it happens today
From both a “quantitative” and “qualitative” point of view, the phenomenon of land grabbing Today It’s different than what happened in the past. During the Colonialism (15th-18th century) andImperialism (19th century) were only the European powers to conquer vast territories across the globe, suffocating the independence of local populations, especially in Africa and Asia. Today, however, the race to land grabbing has become generalized and involves new powers as China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emiratesbut also “unsuspected” countries, whose name is not usually (and erroneously) associated with phenomena of exploitation, such as Netherlands and the Swiss.
Not only that: while in the Colonial era the European powers occupied the African and Asian territories for exploit its natural resourcesin particular those underground, e conquer new markets of outlet for its own manufacturing; today the old and new players aim to grab the fertile areas, however convert them to food production or crop development with an industrial vocationsuch as those linked to the so-called “green fuels” (biofuel).
The new “race to Africa”
Although the land grabbing has now become a problem in every corner of the world, once again they are the African countries to bear the brunt of it. According to data published by “Land Matrix Initiative” from the year 2000 to today they have been further 1,000 agreements signed by states or foreign companies with African countries whose object is the exploitation of local lands. The country most affected by this phenomenon was Mozambiquewith 110 large-scale agricultural land deals, but also Ethiopia, Cameroon And the Democratic Republic of Congo have stimulated foreign attention. It is important to remember that there is also one of the protagonists of this new “race to Africa”. ItalyThat has entered into agreements for the exploitation of the land with eleven countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, Gabon, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Liberia and Senegal.
The sad fate of local populations: the consequences of land grabbing
The big losers of this modern variant of “gold rush” (in this case “agricultural gold”) are once again the defenseless local populations. Tightened in a vice formed by the effects of climate change, authoritarian governments, interests of major foreign powers and unscrupulous multinationalsAfrican farmers are seeing their margin for maneuver increasingly restricted and, often, they are forced to abandon their ancestral lands and swell the already large group of the underprivileged, who end up concentrating in large urban areas in search of a paid work.
If we consider that the about half of Africa’s arable land (1.2 billion hectares of land) has already been affected by phenomenon of appropriation described and that the trend shows no signs of decreasing, it is not difficult to predict that in the future local communities will see a further compression of their living spaces (a phenomenon that has already acquired the name of land squeezing) with the result of accentuating the already marked social tensions and thegeopolitical instability general of the continent.
