Land appropriation, surplus people and a battle over visions of agrarian futures in Africa

The debate about ‘land grabs’ by foreign agents should not obscure the role of national governments or the accelerating process of appropriation of land by national agents. Much of the appropriated land is under forms of ‘customary’ tenure. In arguing that a fundamental problem is the denial of property in land to Africans, I lay out the colonial and post-colonial reproduction of ‘customary’ tenure as not equivalent to property rights, the documentation of mounting competition and conflict centring on land, and the more recent threats by national and international agents. Against this background, I question acceptance of an inevitable agro-industrial future which makes millions of Africans ‘surplus’ to the needs of capitalist investment.