One of the major trends affecting agriculture in Africa today with implications for global agriculture is the recent rush to secure lands for food production from Africa to feed rich but resource-poor emerging economies. Von Braun and Meinzen-Dick (2009) estimate that between 15 and 20 million ha of farmland has been involved in these transactions, worth about $20–30 billion. While low wage emerging economies benefitted from the industrial outsourcing revolution, Africa could benefit from the new wave of global food outsourcing. Several factors influence this accelerating demand for farmlands. Rising land prices in the developed countries, due to the food crisis and the commodity price increases, have increased the cost of food production. Demand for land for use in biofuels production has risen and companies are looking elsewhere for low-cost lands in developing countries to produce crops for use in biofuels production. Rising population and increased demand for food in places like China and India, where increases in per capita income is driving demand for high-value foods such as dairy, meat, eggs, and horticulture, is pushing such countries to look elsewhere to meet their food needs. The volatility of the global commodity markets, uncertainties arising from export bans on foods during the peak of the food crisis, and fear of reliance on thin global food markets drives countries to look for barter trade models to secure their food supplies. Increasingly water-constrained countries in oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, etc. are investing billions of dollars acquiring lands in Africa to secure their food supplies. The same applies to China and India, which are experiencing yield plateaus due to declining water tables, high cost of irrigation, and limited response to use of mineral fertilizers (Songwe and Deininger, 2009).
The rush for agricultural lands in Africa underscores the growing importance and role for Africa to help meet the growing food needs in a rapidly changing global agricultural and food demand landscape. This opportunity should be harnessed properly. What is needed is an equitable win–win situation: for African countries, smallholder farmers, and the investor nations or firms. A number of critical policy issues deserving attention include: (a) the need to develop a clear code of conduct to provide better governance systems on land transactions; (b) how to ensure that the communities benefit adequately, perhaps through greater reliance on co-ownership by communities of such farms as investors; (c) assessment of the environmental impacts of large-scale mechanization; (d) how to secure property rights of the poor, especially women and indigenous populations who become more vulnerable under customary land tenure systems; and (e) enforcement of the principle of prior consent to ensure that communities that are affected are included in the negotiations and kept fully informed of any changes in land use or ownership or contact arrangements.