Land purchases by rich nations in the developing world are swallowing up as much as one-third of some African states, undercutting efforts to raise food production, Oxfam has warned.
Demanding an immediate moratorium on World Bank funding for the acquisition of tracts of property, the charity said its figures showed an area the size of London was being sold off to foreign investors every six days.
The World Bank has tripled its lending to land deals over the last decade to more than $8 billion (£5 billion).
"The World Bank is in a unique position to help stop land grabs becoming one of the biggest scandals of the century," said Barbara Stocking, the Oxfam chief executive. "Investment should be good news for developing countries not lead to greater poverty, hunger and hardship."
Land investment in Africa has grown by a factor of two in some years as food prices rise and Gulf states join Asian tiger economies in trying to secure food and energy supplies through direct investment. Liberia, a war torn and impoverished West African country, has sold off more than three tenths of its entire land mass in the last five years. Full story...
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Demanding an immediate moratorium on World Bank funding for the acquisition of tracts of property, the charity said its figures showed an area the size of London was being sold off to foreign investors every six days.
The World Bank has tripled its lending to land deals over the last decade to more than $8 billion (£5 billion).
"The World Bank is in a unique position to help stop land grabs becoming one of the biggest scandals of the century," said Barbara Stocking, the Oxfam chief executive. "Investment should be good news for developing countries not lead to greater poverty, hunger and hardship."
Land investment in Africa has grown by a factor of two in some years as food prices rise and Gulf states join Asian tiger economies in trying to secure food and energy supplies through direct investment. Liberia, a war torn and impoverished West African country, has sold off more than three tenths of its entire land mass in the last five years. Full story...
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- Grabbing land in Africa and trying to justify it...
- Squeezing Africa dry: behind every land grab is a water grab...
- The global land grab...
- The Indian land grab in Africa...
- Africa is being stolen bit by bit for the rich...
- Chinese and Arabs are buying poor countries’ farms on a colossal scale...
- Farm evictions and farmer kidnappings continue across Zimbabwe...
- How China is transforming Africa! Excellent documentary...
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