The Great African Land Grab? by Cotula Lorenzo

Author:Cotula, Lorenzo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2013-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

5 | Winners and losers

What do the deals mean for affected villagers?

‘I am unhappy about what happened, but there was nothing I could do. I do not own the land. The paramount chief does, and he leased it to the company.’ A broad-brimmed straw hat shades much of the old man’s face – only the white beard is exposed to the sun. As a migrant to the area, for ten years Samuel grew cassava, maize and yam on land given to him by the local chief.1 Then, he says, a tractor came to plough the land. The paramount chief of Yeji, the main town in the district, had signed a forty-nine-year lease with a biofuel company now owned by an Italian investor. The deal involved plans to establish a jatropha plantation over some seven thousand hectares of land. Samuel says that he had to relinquish his farm, in exchange for 220 cedis from the company as compensation for his crops.2 He still has a small plot planted with cassava inside the leased area, and knows that sooner or later the tractor will come to claim that too. When that happens, he says, he will just stay at home – he is too old to set up a new farm elsewhere. Sitting in his new office in Yeji, the manager of the company – a young, soft-spoken, internationally connected man from this town – says that the project involved the taking of cultivated plots and common land. But he stresses that the company invested much in community consultations, that the farmers who lost land are being compensated, and that the venture has created many new jobs for people who badly needed them. Like those of many other company officials I have met while researching land deals, his words suggest a genuine belief that the new plantation will be a force for good in the local community.

Yeji is a small town on the banks of the northernmost arm of Lake Volta, and is the capital of Pru district, in Ghana’s central Brong Ahafo Region. Travelling to Yeji involves a three-hour drive from Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti Region and the seat of the powerful Asante king. In Pru district, the transition zone between the forest zone in the south of Ghana and the savannah zone in the north is ideal for a wide range of crops. Agriculture in the area is becoming more intensive. Fertilizer companies have set up shop in neighbouring Atebubu district, eyeing the many local farmers that grow maize and other food crops. The flat landscape facilitates the use of agricultural machinery. Along the road from Ejura, in the Ashanti Region, many tractors operated by small-scale farmers are working in the fields, refuelling at service stations or pulling trailers up and down the road – perhaps a legacy of the mechanized state farms that sprang up in the area back in the 1970s. Some farmers own the tractors, including through cooperatives, others rent them from specialized firms. It

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