Policy Briefs

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https://hdl.handle.net/10566/19

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Browsing by Subject "Africa"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    The biofuels boom and bust in Africa: A timely lesson for the New Alliance initiative
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2015) Sulle, Emmanuel
    Policies promoting biofuels development through financial incentives in Europe and in the United States of America are major drivers of the ‘land rush’ in many African countries. Yet, we know that most of the first projects have not achieved their intended objectives on the ground. Amidst these controversial and failed investments, which continue to hold large tracts of land in Africa, the G8 initiative called the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition is trying to attract substantial new private investment in agriculture in ten African countries. The New Alliance focuses on public-private investments, with host governments offering large tracts of land to investors. These land-based investments follow similar patterns to unrealised ambitions of biofuels investments. Given the evidence of negative impacts of biofuels investments on rural communities’ access to and control of land, water and forests, the New Alliance implementing partners need to consider lessons from the biofuels rush, and take different pathways to avoid such impacts.
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    Inclusive business models in agriculture? Learning from smallholder cane growers in Mozambique
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2014) Sulle, Emmanuel; Hall, Ruth; Paradza, Gaynor
    Amidst the increasing corporate investment in African farmland the term ‘inclusive business model’ has become a catchphrase touted as an opportunity for incorporating smallholder farmers alongside large-scale commercial farming projects. Inclusive business models require an enabling institutional and regulatory framework. Such frameworks now exist at the international level: the African Union Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa and FAO Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance on the Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forest in the Context of National Food Security provide a starting point. If translated and implemented, these guidelines can help develop transparent and accountable mechanisms that enable and strengthen the participation of smallholder farmers in the process of commercialisation, such as in the sugar industry in Mozambique. To enable equitable partnerships between corporate investors and small-scale farmers, governments need to prioritise public investment in agriculture, including research and development, that helps smallholder farmers increase and diversify their agricultural produce. Smallholders’ access to, ownership of and control over land and other resources should be secured. Based on our analysis of current large-scale sugar estates and milling companies, as well as smallholder involvement as outgrowers in the Mozambican sugar industry, this policy brief interrogates policy and suggests mechanisms for enabling and strengthening smallholder farmers’ participation in and securing returns from large scale investments.
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    International and regional guidelines on land governance and land-based investments: An agenda for African states
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2014) Sulle, Emmanuel; Hall, Ruth
    Global and regional guidelines have been developed in the period 2009–2014 to improve land governance in the context of large-scale land acquisitions in developing countries. These provide an opportunity for affected countries to make necessary reforms to mitigate negative impacts of such acquisitions. They also challenge governments, private companies and rural communities to know their rights and responsibilities and to act on them. Many African countries are yet to fully implement land and other natural resources policy frameworks developed by the African Union (AU) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). These require states to strengthen the rights of rural populations to access, control and own such resources and to decentralise land administration. To date, rural communities in many countries lack proper knowledge about their rights and responsibilities; the roles of public and private sector and civil society – in their national policies; and legal frameworks governing natural resources.
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    Multilateral environmental agreements and land and resource rights in Africa
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Saruchera, Munyaradzi; Kameri-Mbote, Patricia
    Many African countries are signatories to a number of international and regional environmental treaties. These include the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the World Heritage Convention, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Governments should meet their legal obligations under these treaties in such a way that the land and resource rights of the poor in their countries are not compromised.
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    Nepad, land and resource rights
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Saruchera, Munyaradzi; Omoweh, Daniel A
    The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) is an overarching programme for revitalising Africa’s fortunes. It has a visionary tone, yet the way that it proposes to overcome Africa’s underdevelopment uncritically adopts neo-liberal policy prescriptions that have repeatedly been shown not to work in Africa. Because it has been designed around promoting international foreign investment and attracting Western donors, Nepad may not address the real needs of the African rural poor or deal with the core problems hindering Africa’s development. By supporting the interests of multinational corporations, Nepad risks opening the continent up to further exploitation and degradation. Other problems that have been identified include the lack of civil society participation in its formulation. In spite of all of the problems associated with the programme, it is incumbent upon civil society to engage with Nepad and influence its development and ensure that land and resource rights for the poor are enhanced.
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    The new alliance on food security and nutrition: what are the implications for Africa’s youth?
    (Future Agricultures Consortium, 2016) Hakizimana, Cyriaque
    Young people are a growing proportion of Africa’s population and most live in poverty in rural areas. Despite urbanisation, in absolute numbers the rural youth are growing and agricultural development needs to prioritise opportunities for them to create land-based livelihoods. Large-scale land-based investments that allocate land and water to private companies are often justified with the promise of job creation, but typically create fewer jobs than the land-based livelihoods that they displace. Private investments in agriculture need to be designed to create opportunities for young people to create livelihoods for themselves and their families, both in primary production and also in upstream and downstream enterprises. Implementation of the New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition needs to avoid large-scale land-based investments and facilitate the process of developing young people as independent farmers and producers capable of establishing landbased and rural non-farm livelihoods on their own, and on their own terms.
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    The New Alliance on food security and nutrition: What are the implications for Africa’s youth?
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2016) Hakizimana, Cyriaque
    The ‘New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition’ (hereafter the ‘New Alliance’) is a partnership which was established between selected African countries, G8 members, and the private sector to ‘work together to accelerate investments in agriculture to improve productivity, livelihoods and food security for smallholder farmers.’ Announced by President Obama at the 2012 G8 Summit, the initiative aims at the fundamental transformation of Africa’s agriculture through market mechanisms based on large-scale land-based investments. Its pioneers anticipated that the initiative would simultaneously increase food production/ availability and food accessibility/affordability through market conduits, thereby lifting millions of rural Africans out of poverty.