Social and Environmental Impacts of Agricultural Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Africa — With a Focus on West and Central Africa

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Summary

Because most large-scale land transactions being tracked in Africa are quite new, a lot of information exists on their size, but very little reliable information exists about their actual impacts. Yet there is such a large scale of land-use change planned, that stakeholders must build on reliable information to predict and avoid or mitigate negative impacts. This study focuses on the reported social and environmental impacts, as opposed to the predicted or likely impacts, of large-scale land transactions (LSLAs) in Africa, with a focus on West and Central Africa (WCA). The core of the report is an analysis of 18 case studies that are among the best-documented LSLAs in terms of their impacts, but the studies are not a representative sample. The 18 case studies cover Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Rwanda, Senegal, and Sierra Leone in WCA, and they cover Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia in East Africa. Impacts were classified into five groups: tenure impacts, land governance process and impacts, economic and livelihood impacts, human and sociocultural impacts, and environmental impacts.

Authors

Richards, Michael