The Economist discusses conditional cash transfer schemes here.

I first read of land acquisition deals in Africa about two years ago.  It was between South Korea’s Daewoo and the Madagascar government, and the details included leasing the land for 99 years, mainly for farming. The produce was to be exported, but Daewoo promised to invest 6 billion dollars over a period of twenty years in port facilities etc etc. The deal eventually fell through, primarily because of a change in government in Madagascar. Other deals in other parts of Africa were subsequently finalised.

A report prepared by IFAD in 2009 says that there have been ‘significant levels of activities’. In the five study countries on which the report is based, the available data showed that ‘an overall total of 2,492,684 ha of approved land’ had been allocated between 2004 and 2009. For perspective, ‘that is almost half the arable land of the United Kingdom and three times the arable land of Norway.’ In Sudan and Ethiopia alone, over the same period, the figures are 3.9m and 1.2m ha respectively.

The main reasons given for land acquisition include food security (remember the high prices of food in 2008), and biofuel production (EU has biofuel consumption targets; plus oil prices were also crazy high in 2008). Now, it has turned out that there probably are other issues underlying the acquisition drives.

From a new report prepared by the World Bank and leaked to FT, it seems that speculation might be a reason for what has now been described as ‘land grabs’. Speculators acquire land at extremely low rates, hold it for a while and then sell it off later at a higher rate.

The more troubling issue is that investors are crowding out poor, local farmers and producers. From Guardian:

They [the report] argue that investors crowd out the poorest local producers and at the same time invest little in improving the agricultural processes needed to meet the huge jump in world food production required to feed a burgeoning population.

There are also issues concerning the targetting of countries with weak land governance. Still from Guardian:

“Investor interest is focused on countries with weak land governance,” the draft said. Although investment deals promised jobs and infrastructure “investors failed to follow through on their investment plans, in some cases after inflicting serious damage on the local resource base”.

I am actually not too surprised by this. Land issues are extremely difficult issues in much of Africa. I wrote a column for Business Day on this sometime last year.

My general reaction to this is that land deals do not necessarily have to be bad. If African governments could make deals that favour their countries there wouldn’t be much to worry about. Sadly, however, we know that it is often not the case. As a kind of solution, the World Bank report recommends a Land Transparency Initiative

modelled on the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, which commits governments, mainly in developing countries, to disclose revenues from oil and mining groups to improve transparency on the deals. Critics noted that eight years after its launch, only Liberia, Timor-Leste and Azerbaijan, were full members of the EITI. But the draft said: “By establishing a consistent format for reporting on land acquisition and monitoring [the] process over time, it could provide access to information sorely missing.

Although it is doubtful whether this will work, it seems to be the only suggestion on the table at the moment.

Another one to watch.

Here and here.

From NEXT:

Nigeria’s consumer inflation eased to 10.3 percent year-on-year in June from 11.0 percent the previous month, its lowest level for more than two years, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday.

Growth in food prices, which form the bulk of the inflation index basket in Africa’s most populous country, also eased, to 12.0 percent year-on-year from 12.3 percent in May.

The growth in consumer prices, is the lowest monthly year-on-year increase since May 2008, when it rose to 9.7 percent, according to figures from the statistics office.

This is with the benchmark interest rate at 6%. Which is really low by Nigerian standards. In any case, I wonder how reliable the data is.

… called Baobab. The description in the current edition of the newspaper:

…it will delve into politics, econoics and culture, and comment on the successes of Africa’s peaceful elections and foreign investment as well as on Africa’s troubles.

This is hoping that the language in which the discussions and analyses are framed will not be one of despair (remember The Economist’s own ‘The Hopeless Continent’ headline?), and of disaster, war and warlordism (see this Guardian op-ed). Anthropologists know quite well that the language in which a discussion is framed influences the content of the discussion, and even frames the understanding of the content.

CNN Marketplace Africa on Segun Gele, a Houston-based Nigerian man who ties geles for a living.

On the hunt for an Imam on a Malaysian TV talent hunt show.

Aljazeera.

Here.

Three days ago, Nigeria’s Junior Finance Minister, Mr Remi Babalola, said that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation is insolvent. The Beeb:

“NNPC is insolvent as current liabilities exceeded current assets by 754bn naira ($5bn; £3.3bn),” Mr Babalola said at a government finance meeting.

He said the NNPC owed about $3bn (£2bn) to Nigeria’s Federation Account, which distributes oil money to varying levels of the country’s government.

Now, this is a company that controls about half of the oil produced by the country.

The federal government replies two days after:

the Minister of Information and Communications, Dora Akunyili, who read out the stand of the FEC at the presidential villa, said though NNPC is a growing concern, it is not broke.

“NNPC, from the auditor’s account, is a going concern, and does not have solvency issue as a corporation. Therefore, categorically, NNPC is not insolvent,” she said.

She added that there is always an outstanding balance between the federal government and the oil giant because of the regular transactions between them.

NEXT’s Tolu Ogunlesi asks:

The billion-naira question now is this: who is to be believed? Mr. Babalola, who, six months after saying he had no doubts about the precarious financial position of the NNPC, is insisting that nothing has changed (that in fact, things have grown worse), or Mrs. Akunyili (on behalf of the Federal Government) and the NNPC, who are telling us that Mr. Babalola has no idea what he is saying.

In case you are unduly puzzled, remember, this is a country that does not know the amount of oil it produces