Reflections following the passing of the African Union’s Guiding Principles on Large-Scale Land-Based Investment, the culmination of policy processes over the past decade. Rising food prices reflect the systematic neglect of agriculture over a long period. We need indicators and monitoring, cannot rely on technology to resolve political problems, need a system-wide approach and to create opportunities for young people to build livelihoods in farming and throughout the agro-food system.

This paper strives to introduce a discussion of the gender dimensions into the growing debate on large-scale land deals.

The Guiding Principles are designed to help a number of stakeholders develop larger-scale agricultural investments that are more likely to prove sustainable, beneficial, and successful for communities, investors and governments.

Pastoral and agro-pastoral areas in eastern Africa and elsewhere have long been regarded as peripheries in economic terms and in terms of social and cultural accomplishments. Although biased perceptions of the ‘unproductive’ uses of pastoralism have become outdated, government policies still do little to formally recognise or integrate pastoral lands as critical parts of rural livelihood systems and economic development models.

Large-scale agricultural land acquisitions might entail substantial welfare implications for the affected rural population. Whether the impacts are indeed as devastating as the popular notion of "land grabs" would suggest depends on a number of factors, including the size of compensation payments, productivity spillovers on smallholders, employment opportunities for displaced farmers, and changes in food prices.

Contains 6 chapters: introduction, accountability issues in urban land management, transparency and accountability in communal land management, corruption and land reform programmes, accountability issues in large scale land deals, gender, youths and land corruption. The findings show that land governance is fragmented creating opportunities for corruption in and across institutions.

Includes good for corporations, bad for producers; the push for corporate food systems in Africa; the UK’s role; towards food sovereignty; recommendations for the UK government. Concludes that the expansion of corporate control over African food and agriculture, under the guise of tackling hunger, is taking power and resources away from African producers and will further impoverish the continent’s people. The UK and other governments must end their support for initiatives which assist this corporate takeover.

Despite growing research on land deals in Ethiopia, there is still uncertainty on the real scale and features of the phenomenon, and some misperceptions continue to shape public debates. Report discusses the findings of a systematic inventory of land deals for agricultural investment in Ethiopia. It describes the scale, geography, drivers and key features of large-scale deals. It also discusses findings relating to the early outcomes of the deals.

Divided into 4 Sections: growing interest in land: large-scale land acquisition; reactions to rising interest in land at the national and international level; land reform and policy: types, impacts (including gender) and risks; land in fragile and conflict-affected states. A number of Topic Guides are being produced for DFID’s Climate, Environment, Infrastructure and Livelihoods Advisers. They are designed to be useful to development professionals.

African agriculture is in a phase of rapid commercialisation. Planners and investors in sub-Saharan Africa urgently need to consider how the choice of business model, the local context and the political environment affect outcomes of commercial ventures. Lessons from history have contemporary relevance.

Africa's biofuel potential over the last ten years has increasingly attracted foreign investors’ attention. We estimate the determinants of foreign investors land demand for biofuel production in SSA, using Poisson specifications of the gravity model. Our estimates suggest that land availability, abundance of water resources and weak land governance are significant determinants of large-scale land acquisitions for biofuel production.