Paper short abstract:

This paper is concerned with analysing the drivers, processes and impact of medium scale land acquisitions in Northern Ghana. It highlights the changing landscape of global land rush actors from big transnational corporate entities to domestic businessmen and public servants .

Paper long abstract:

A combination of crude oil and food price hikes in 2008 provided the impetus for large scale land acquisitions by multi-national corporations for the production of biofuel feedstock and grain. The ensuing policy discourse of what became known as land grabs focused more on foreign investors who were perceived as dominant players, acting in collusion with local elites and state institutions in Africa to acquire large tracts of land while alienating smallholders in the process. Outcry against the selling of land by customary and state authorities, with detrimental consequences for smallholders galvanised scholarly research and also fuelled much of the agitprop opposition by civil society groups across several countries in Africa. This tacit opposition to land grabs, coupled with significantly diminished economic prospects of biofuel feedstock following the fall in crude oil prices led to decline in large scale land deals by multinational corporations and the abandonment of several large scale biofuel feedstock plantations. The ensuing spaces created by the withdrawal of multinational corporations were almost immediately filled by domestic interests in land. This new or re-emergent internal dynamics in land relations portrays a scenario in which political figure heads, urban elites and civil servants dominate land acquisitions and drive medium scale agricultural investments. This paper is concerned with analysing the drivers, processes and impact of medium scale land acquisitions in Northern Ghana. It highlights the changing landscape of global land rush actors from big transnational corporate entities to domestic businessmen and public servants buoyed by emerging agribusiness opportunities