Eastern Cape Province in South Africa has experienced extreme drought events during the last decade. In South Africa, different land management systems exist belonging to two different land tenure classes: commercial large scale farming and communal small-scale subsistence farming. Communal lands are often reported to be affected by land degradation and drought events among others considered as trigger for this process.

Vegetation dynamics in relation to climatic changes and anthropogenic activities is critical for terrestrial ecosystem management. The objective of this study was to investigate spatiotemporal change of vegetation and their driving forces during growing seasons (between April and October and including the spring, summer and autumn) in the Tumen River Basin (TRB) using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and climate data spanning from 2000 to 2015. A linear regression, Pearson correlation coefficients and the residual trend (RESTREND) was applied for this study.

In the Global South, there is a push to drive agricultural modernisation processes through private sector investments. In West African drylands, land concessions are required for such agri-businesses are often negotiated through customary authorities, and inject large amounts of money into localised rural systems with low cash bases. The article argues that such transactions serve to increase area under crop cultivation on an inter-seasonal basis, as financial spill-overs allow for farmers to purchase larger quantities of agricultural inputs and prepare larger tracts of land.