Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to understand what dynamics of agrarian change emerge out of land deals by analysing some of the transformations led by the spectacular rise horticulture in the Senegalese River Valley Region between 2006 and 2017.

Paper long abstract:

Depending on the claims of outcomes, agricultural investments requiring land and/or labour, have been dubbed the land rush, or "land grabbing". This "global land rush" emerged in the turbulent context of socio-economic and political transformations post-2007. It made media headlines in the late 2000s, prompting what Oya dubbed the "literature rush" both from NGOs and later the academy (2013a). While the drivers, scale and actors in this renewed interest in land (and labour) are still contested, a body of knowledge interested in its differentiated impact and outcomes, as well as political reactions to these deals, is growing (Hall et al 2015). In this land rush debate, there have been missing dimensions such as social reproduction, the impact of different types of accumulation and type of labour-regime as well as their implications for capitalist development (Oya 2013). This paper is part of this wave of "making-sense" research (Edelman et al 2013) which goes beyond an earlier research.

Based on empirical evidence from Northern Senegal, I argue that some local communities and their leaders are seeking to attract agricultural investors in their communities through formal and informal agreements as a way to develop their territories in a context of relative disengagement from the neoliberal state. The investors on the other hand, disguise their use extra-economic means of coercion and strategies of accumulation under what I call "CSR paternalism". In this presentation, I analyse the nature of this form of land grabbing, and responses to it.

Paper short abstract:

Based on comparative anthropological research on LSLAs in Ghana, Malawi, Morocco, and Tanzania, the paper shows that the promise of material benefits through markets, land titling, compensation measures such as CSR acts as Anti-Politics Machine to hide the loss of the commons especially for women.

Paper long abstract:

We use James Ferguson's Anti-Politics Machine to critically interrogate the development discourses used to promote LSLA. LSLA are expected to lead to the conversion of some kinds of resources (land, water, biodiversity, wind ) into others (high-value crops, monetary resources or Infrastructures ). While some commons disappear (pastures, forests, hunting grounds) other are created through CSR measures (Infrastructure, Irrigation channels, special community funds, classrooms or dispensaries).

This paper explores the nexus between LSLA, anti-politics and CSR. Focusing on the public and private actors involved in - or impacted by - LSLA, we recount the drama of the grabbed commons. Combining approaches of New Institutionalism and Political Ecology, we ask: how is the access to resources impacted by the dissolution of existing commons, recognizing that many dimensions or power operate in an investment project, including gender, migration background, social status, age and lineage? Do new commons created by LSLA compensate for the loss of old commons? If the new commons do not compensate for the loss of old commons, why are people not raising their voices to preserve them?

Our empirical evidence from detailed case studies in Ghana, Malawi, Morocco, and Tanzania shows that, under the promise of development, a growing number of land users are deprived from access to commons; at the same time local to global elites are Increasingly interested in assuring high returns of capital investment. Powerful discourses or development, women empowerment, wasteland productivity increase, etc. serving as anti-politics machines hide increased state control and asymmetric power relations.

Paper short abstract:

Relying on archival sources, focus groups, interviews and secondary sources, this paper interrogates how land policies were used to appropriate land to certain families and individuals which created animosity, worsened food insecurity and generated conflicts in Jos Plateau.

Paper long abstract:

The people of Jos Plateau resisted and fought the British longer than any group in Northern Nigeria to keep their land. Land occupies a central position in African societies. Not only is land critical for agricultural production it also represents a sacred force binding the living and the dead. It is a symbol of connection and disconnection. Land is a jointly owned and shared asset among families, clans, kinsmen and communities which cannot be sold. However, with the gradual imposition of colonial rule in many parts of the emerging Nigerian state in the late nineteenth century and the stream of changes accompanying it, this notion of land began to undergo radical transformation including becoming a resource for economic accumulation for some Africans. Apart from intensifying struggles for land ownership and control, colonial land and administrative policies provided impetus for the expropriation of large expanse of indigenous farmers' land in Jos Plateau to certain Fulani and Hausa families. This trajectory of land administration in turn stimulated conflicts that has manifested in the post-colonial state as farmer/herder clashes, raised food security and cattle grazing questions and remained intractable. Scholarly analysis of land and land rights as the driver towards violence in Jos have neglected this dimension. Relying on archival sources, focus groups, interviews and secondary sources, this paper interrogates how land policies were used to appropriate land to certain families and individuals which created animosity, worsened food insecurity and generated conflicts in Jos Plateau.