development

Madagascar – Island up for grabs?

Post by Amy Glass, MAAPD. Amy is currently based in Madagascar.

Madagascar has been in political turmoil these last few months, and there are no signs of improvement any time soon. Key to the recent downfall of former President Marc Ravolomanana was the announcement by South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics that they had leased 1.3 million hectares of land in the north of the island to grow corn and oil palms. According to officials of the former government, the agreement involved less than 4% of Madagascar’s largely unexploited arable land. Both parties cited considerable advantages for the country as a whole, including 6 billion USD in infrastructure development and 70,000 jobs. But what do deals like this really mean for the country’s rural poor, which make up almost 70% of the population?

Land maps for the deal were never made public, but local media suggest that subsistence farmers currently exploit much of it, either for crops or livestock grazing. How was this land to be mobilised ? Less than 10% of Malagasy land is titled, despite over a century of successive government policies. Historical efforts to control land have been associated with what might fairly be called land grabs, either by French colonists or Malagasy elite, and much of the current rural landscape retains the imprint of these former deals. Memories remain vivid, especially now as the latest government land registration process creeps forward, having been given a high-profile boost by the World Bank.

Resistance to land registration among rural populations continues, despite the new simplified process and lowered costs. In a country where land is believed to belong to the ancestors, land titling by the government is a strange concept. Rights to use land are arbitrated by traditional authorities. The customary land tenure system, although “insecure” from a foreign investor’s perspective, has offered flexibility and enough security within many rural communities, at least until now.

President Andry Rajoelina cancelled the Daewoo deal within hours of the military coup that brought him into power last month. He said at the time that the project couldn’t go forward because the Malagasy Constitution forbids the sale and lease of land to foreigners.Yet his current Minister for Land Reform now says something diametrically different. The new government supports such projects, and promises simply a “better approach.”

The latest land deal to hit the press is a 500,000 hectare rice project in Madagascar’s agriculturally rich lands of the northwest, negotiated between Ravalomanana and India’s Verdun International. Like the aborted Daewoo project, most of the land is currently being farmed. The company says it will pay local farmers a percentage of the rice produced in exchange for a 50-year lease, yet the project provides only 1,000 jobs, leaving 99% of the farmers unemployed. Large-scale agribusiness projects of this kind offer little by way of security to rural farmers. Will the Rajoelina government cancel this deal as well? The answer is far from clear.

The Daewoo land grab never got beyond the paper stage. Nevertheless, what has become known locally as the affaire Daewoo had a hand in bringing down the national government, and brought attention to the rapidly-growing phenomena of food outsourcing. Since the advent of the international food crisis and subsequent global financial meltdown, deals like Daewoo and Verdun are becoming common-place. Food-deficit nations from Asia and the Middle East are avidly seeking large swathes of arable land in poor developing countries with willing governments, all in the name of food security. Yet large-scale rural land projects are always a risky business, particularly where formal land titling is rare, poverty is deep, and where political and social tensions run high.

Further links

• International Land Coalition
• GRAIN: an international non-governmental organisation which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity

© 2009 People and Development.