The announcement by a U.S. investor that he has a deal to lease a swathe of South Sudan for farmland has again focused attention on foreigners trying to snap up African agricultural land.

A few months ago, South Korea’s Daweoo Logistics said it had secured rights to plant corn and palm oil in an even bigger patch of Madagascar - although local authorities said the deal was not done yet. Investors from Asia and the Gulf are looking elsewhere in Africa too.

Investor interest in farmland – not only in Africa – grew sharply after food prices shot to record highs last year. Although commodity prices have fallen since, there is still anticipation of long term demand growth once the world emerges from its current economic troubles.

Philippe Heilberg, chairman and CEO of New York-based investment firm Jarch Capital, told Reuters he saw ripe opportunity for decades in south Sudan’s Mayom county. The deal covers land nearly twice the size of the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

Land is being leased from General Paulino Matip Nhial, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) - the armed wing of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in semi-autonomous South Sudan. Jarch Management is also buying an interest in a local company from Matip’s son.

But should Africa be handing out its land to foreign investors and will the local people and countries involved be the ones to benefit?

This commentary in the Financial Times made comparisons with the colonial grab for Africa’s resources and points out the damaging legacy that remains.

“There is a need for investment if the continent’s full agricultural potential is to be achieved. At a time of growing shortages, there is also an obvious need for African governments to prioritise domestic supplies. If the continent is to avoid repeating history, the big deals and speculation should come later,” it said.

Is it wise to discourage such investment, though, if investors are willing to bring big money to put the land to more efficient use than is currently the case? While some areas of Africa are densely populated and every scrap of ground is farmed, other hugely fertile areas are barely used.

Investors argue that they can bring jobs long term and will improve local infrastructure - perhaps more so than if they were taking land for less emotive mining or oil concessions - as well as increasing food supplies and foreign exchange earnings. Elsewhere in the world, mechanised agriculture and bigger farms have led to major productivity increases - although environmentalists argue they can cause damage too. Despite their best efforts, African governments have not always proven themselves the best at managing agricultural resources. Might Africa miss out on development that has helped fuel broader economic growth in countries such as Brazil?

Land ownership could also prove contentious. In the distant past, it was often held by communities as a whole or vested in traditional authorities. State officials now often have the greatest say. That opens the potential for official abuse of yet another valuable resource. Since governments can come and go unpredictably that also means an increase in risk for investors and can only be a further encouragement to cut costs for a quick return.

Heilberg said Jarch felt comfortable investing in Mayom and that the local politicians and population would be accepting of the investment.

“With risk, you have to look at risk and reward together - this is why we pick our areas very carefully,” he said.

So is major foreign investment in land a danger to Africa or is it an opportunity that the continent cannot afford to miss? Is there a way of making it work for everyone’s benefit? What do you think?

(Picture 1: A farmer cuts rice plants to sow at a paddy field in Ivory Coast, REUTERS/Luc Gnago)

(Picture 2: Boys carry sacks of weeds through fields of rice in Senegal. REUTERS/Normand Blouin)

Given that the leaders of the world’s most firmly capitalist countries are splashing around unprecedented billions to nationalise banks, prop up industry and try to get economies moving, it might seem churlish for anyone to question South Africa’s ruling ANC for planning to spend a bit more freely.

This weekend, the African National Congress set out its election manifesto priorities of creating jobs and improving education and health - promises interpreted by many as marking a generally leftward shift under the leadership of president in waiting Jacob Zuma.

But the plan raises the questions of how the spending will be paid for and how dramatic a shift to the left there will be - of major interest to investors as well as South Africans.

“Zuma did not attach a price tag to the manifesto, but ANC leaders privately admit, to allay fears of a tax hike, that it would be too costly to implement,” said this article in the Sunday Independent.

Africa’s biggest economy has grown significantly since the end of apartheid in 1994, although the dynamism had started to falter even before the global financial crisis spread gloom around the world.

South Africa’s poor and its workers had long complained that the benefits were not being shared around fairly and that only those in a new elite were thriving. The leadership under Zuma, widely expected to become president this year, was always going to be under pressure for more social spending from the ANC grassroots and the party’s union and Communist Party allies.

The pressure may have increased further with the emergence of the new COPE party after the ousting of President Thabo Mbeki. Although COPE’s electoral impact is uncertain and it has not yet spelled out its policies clearly, the fact that close allies of Mbeki are behind it has suggested it is likely to align more with the former president’s stance, seen as ‘pro-business’.

Zuma has always been at great pains to spell out to business leaders and foreign investors that there would be no dramatic changes under his rule. Flight of investment could further weaken the rand, mean job losses just at the moment when the ANC wants to create more and force up government borrowing costs.

That could make it even harder to finance populist pledges without resorting to measures that might create even more financial instability.

This article in South Africa’s Times raised questions over the ANC’s plans for the central bank and whether that would damage its standing as a pillar of macroeconomic stability seen as vital for growth.

It is certainly going to be a very tricky time. How substantial do you think any shift to the left is and would it be for the best? If conflicting promises have been made to different interest groups then which are going to be met? Can they all? If not, then what will be the reaction of those who feel disappointed?

(Picture: President of the ruling African National Congress Jacob Zuma dances on stage at his party’s election campaign launch. Reuters)

If you lived on an archipelago that defined paradise with palm-fringed white sand beaches and emerald green waters, you would expect a relaxed, lazy pace of life.

Lazy would be a generous description of the Seychellois soldier’s wave at the entrance to State House as I arrived with my local colleague George Thande - who is admittedly a regular visitor here.

The Seychelles were ruled by the French before the British and State House in the capital Victoria is every bit the luxurious colonial mansion: a lush garden exploding with tropical colours; an oil painting of Britain’s Queen Victoria hangs in the wood-panelled reception room close to a portrait of Castor, a runaway slave from the 19th century with a fearsome reputation; a Daimler and Rolls Royce are parked on the forecourt.

But President James Alix Michel, cannot afford to be relaxed. This is an exotic destination at the sharp end of the global financial crisis.

The Indian Ocean archipelago may lie thousands of miles from the financial hubs of the world, but the bankers on Wall Street and in the City of London, not to mention the celebrity visitors, help keep the Seychelles’ tourism-dependent economy afloat.

On Friday, however, Michel told Reuters he thought visitor numbers might drop by as much as 25 percent, a painful blow for a heavily indebted economy –  its $800 million debt is somewhat more than 2007 gross domestic product according to World Bank figures. The country, with only 85,000 people, is in desperate need of foreign currency to replenish severely depleted reserves.

When the Seychelles failed to service an interest payment on a $230 million bond late last year, it called in the International Monetary Fund, which pledged a 2-year $26 million rescue package. Now negotiations are underway with creditors over how to re-structure the debts.

On Friday, Michel called on creditors to forgive fifty percent of the country’s debts.

But should they be forgiven or was the previous government reckless in the way it borrowed heavily to invest in social projects such as free education, free healthcare and housing over more than two decades?

Or does the fault lie with the creditors who issued loans they perhaps knew were ultimately unsustainable? The government might well argue that while it had borrowed irresponsibly - if it felt for good reason - but there had been no shortage of people willing to stump up the cash.

President Michel is holding out for an oil strike under the Seychelles’ offshore plateau. Seismic surveys suggested there could be reserves of oil and gas amounting to billions of barrels. But that’s not for years to come.

The Seychelles can’t wait that long.

(Picture 1: Miss New Zealand, Lauralee Martinovich, poses for photographs after taking the 2nd Princess title in the 1997 Miss World Pageant in the Seychelles. Reuters/Mike Hutchings)

(Picture 2: Seychelles’ President James Michel poses for a photograph during an interview with Reuters in Victoria. Reuters/Richard Lough)

Kenya's power-sharing government was only born after weeks of election violence that killed 1,300 people. Zimbabwe's power sharing agreement is yet to bear fruit as southern Africa's former breadbasket crumbles into economic ruin.

So will power sharing in Central African Republic, where one of Africa's most forgotten conflicts has been simmering for more than half a decade, fare any better?

After 10 days of United Nations-backed talks, President Francois Bozize, a former army chief who seized power in a 2003 coup, has agreed with rebel and opposition leaders, including the man he deposed, to form a consensus government to rule until the next scheduled presidential elections in 2010.

The stakes are high. Despite its mineral riches, which include diamonds and uranium, Central African Republic remains prostrated by poverty and languishes near the bottom of the U.N. human development index. The country and its people are scarred by fighting before, during and after the 2003 coup that included mass rapes -- used as a weapon of war -- torture and killings now being investigated by the International Criminal Court. Low-intensity northern insurgencies since then have driven tens of thousands of civilians into the bush as they flee rebel and bandit raids, and government army counter-attacks.

From Sudan in the east, gangs of poachers marauding over the border have decimated CAR's historically rich wildlife of elephants and big game, which used to draw the world's rich and famous on hunting trips. Some conservation groups have even turned to hiring South African mercenaries to try to curb the poachers. From the north and east, fierce Chadian and Sudanese fighters raid over the frontier, while feared highway bandits known locally as "zaraguinas" prey on travellers and villagers alike, even striking over the western border into Cameroon to rob and seize children for ransom from wealthy cattle-raising tribes.This year, Ugandan rebels of Joseph Kony's notorious Lord's Resistance Army have sacked villages in the remote southeast corner of CAR.

Against this backdrop of endemic violence, can Central African Republic's power-sharing initiative deliver lasting peace? Can the former enemies, President Bozize and the rebel warlords, "bury the hatchet of war" and deliver the long-suffering nation and its people from "Satan and his demons", as former President Ange-Felix Patasse put it?
 
What do you think?

Much of the news that comes out of the Niger Delta, the vast network of creeks home to Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry, is generated either by militant leaders claiming spectacular attacks on oil industry installations or by the military, keen to publicise its victories flushing out crude oil thieves from camps nestled deep in the mangroves.

Rarely heard are the voices of the “boys” who have taken up arms and make up the rank and file of the militant gangs. Oil theft on an industrial scale or kidnappings for ransom make some of their bosses rich. Peace negotiations see others rewarded with the veneer of political legitimacy and a comfortable new government-funded lifestyle. But the grunts tend to share little of the spoils.

So an initiative to take them out of the militant camps and send them abroad to be immersed in the teachings of non-violent activists from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela raised - after the initial scepticism - a strong dose of curiosity. After the attempt to “reorientate their psyches”, the candidates would be schooled in skills meant to make them employable once they returned back home.

Would they be convinced that they could renounce violence and still fight for their rights? Did they really believe that theirs was a political struggle or were they simply interested in emulating some of their leaders and growing rich from stolen crude, ransom money and government pay-offs?

There are precedents in West Africa. Former child soldiers in Liberia and Sierra Leone who spent their formative years living by the gun have been reschooled and retrained, some integrated into the national army, others starting lives with newly-learned skills as carpenters or welders.

Negotiators trying to build peace in divided countries such as Ivory Coast or Democratic Republic of Congo have brought former rebels into the fold by making them stakeholders in the future of their countries, with varying degrees of success.

Could the same philosophy of constructive engagement work with the armed youths of the Niger Delta?

Some of the young men waiting in Lagos airport to begin the overseas part of their “reorientation training” reminded me of former child soldiers I had met in Liberia and Sierra Leone, or young Tuareg rebels in northern Mali and Niger. They had similar aspirations as young adults anywhere — to earn a decent living, be able to look after themselves and win respect from their peers.

“Anybody in violence wants out of violence, it’s just a question of finding a way,” one of them, Patrick, commented.

So could the programme work? If, with new skills, these former militants can return home and earn a living, could they persuade others in the community to lay down their weapons? Or is it an expensive waste of money, rewarding former criminals with the sort of opportunities that many in Nigeria can only dream of?

 A little while back, we asked who is and isn’t fighting corruption effectively in Africa. This week, a number of examples bring us back to the subject.

In Tanzania, two former ministers have been charged with flouting procurement rules over the award of a tender for auditing gold mining back in 2002. The pair, who deny wrongdoing, served in the government of President Jakaya Kikwete’s predecessor Benjamin Mkapa. One of them also served under Kikwete himself.

Tanzania’s pledge to fight corruption is under close donor scrutiny and given the level of aid that Tanzania gets - more than one tenth of GDP by 2005 figures - it has little choice but to show willing. There have been doubts in the past, however, about how serious the government really was about going after the most senior and the best connected.

“By hauling the long-serving politicians to court, the Government has dispelled the rumour that some influential personalities are being shielded,” commented The Citizen newspaper of the charges against the former ministers.

Is Tanzania's anti-graft drive now fully on course or will these two turn out to be scapegoats while others are ignored?

 

In Nigeria, the troubles of the former head of the anti-corruption agency are back in the headlines.

Nuhu Ribadu was sacked by President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration despite winning favour from many Nigerians, foreign investors and western donors as head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. He had targeted some senior politicians and was widely credited with doing more than anyone had previously, although critics accused him of pursuing only those out of favour with former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Ribadu’s position has been getting ever rockier since he was sacked and demoted. At the weekend, he and his family were bundled out of a graduation ceremony from the government institute where he was sent after being fired from his top post – although the presidency later intervened to say he would get his certificate after all and ordered an inquiry into the incident.

“The entire Ribadu family must by now be wondering, as are millions of other Nigerians, if it’s a curse to serve this country with all one’s heart and whether it’s a country worth dying for,” wrote Thisday’s Funke Aboyade after the ceremony.

Ribadu may now face a police disciplinary panel next month. Meanwhile, a top official of the anti-corruption agency has resigned after failing to report suspicious payments, another setback for the troubled body.

The very different examples bring up the issue of how politics complicates the fight against corruption - something in no way exclusive to Africa. Is it possible to fight corruption without truly independent and trustworthy police and courts? And if not, how is it possible to put those in place when leaders promise to stamp out graft but fail to live up to their words?

As one Nigerian leader remarked not so long ago: “This administration will mobilise all resources at its disposal to fight the menace of corruption.”

President Yar’Adua? His predecessor President Obasanjo? No. That was General Sani Abacha, who died in suspicious circumstances a decade ago with billions of dollars thought to be stashed in foreign bank accounts (If you still get emails from people purporting to be his relatives, it’s probably best not to reply).

Members of Guinea-Bissau's unruly armed forces have blotted the military's record again with another attack against the country's political institutions. Early on Sunday, Nov. 23, renegade soldiers, their faces hooded, sprayed the Bissau residence of President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira with machine-gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire. The president survived unhurt this latest apparent attempt to topple him.

But The attack underlined the fragility of the small, cashew nut-exporting West African nation, one of the poorest in the world and a former Portuguese colony which has suffered a history of bloody coups, mutinies and uprisings since it won independence in 1974 after a bush war led by Amilcar Cabral. The assault followed parliamentary elections on Nov. 16 which donors were hoping would restore stability and put in place a new government capable of resisting the serious threat posed by powerful Latin American cocaine-trafficking cartels who use Guinea-Bissau as a staging post to smuggle drugs to Europe.

How can a little-known African country like Guinea-Bissau, prostrated by poverty, its government and military undermined by the corrupting influence of multi-million dollar drug-trafficking, dig itself out of underdevelopment?

What should foreign donors do? Invest hundreds of millions of dollars to back security reforms to downsize and modernise the bloated army and struggling police and fund development programmes -- even though aid workers say the government and state often appear barely functional and incapable of presenting or implementing programmes.

Or, at a time of global economic crisis when financial resources are stretched and Africa seems filled with conflicts, election disputes and refugees, (Congo, Darfur, Chad, Somalia, Zimbabwe), should the international community look for more deserving (or strategic) cases than little Guinea-Bissau?

When world leaders meet in Washington to tackle the global financial crisis, Africa will be represented only by South Africa.

African officials meeting in Tunis this week to discuss the impact of the crisis argued that the continent needed better representation, given the effects that the turmoil is having in Africa as well as the continent’s growing financial importance. The complaint could apply equally to other developing countries.

The global crisis has come just as many African economies were turning a corner, buoyed by improvements in governance, technological change, debt relief, higher prices for their exports as well as inflows of funds from Asia and from Western investors seeking higher yields.

Many African countries have spent decades gearing economic policies to attract more private capital and dispel a reputation as unreliable investment destinations.

But turmoil on world markets has cut the supply of money as the world’s biggest banks shift funds from new projects to shoring up balance sheets, leaving African governments wondering how their infrastructure will get built.

African officials were dismayed not to have a bigger voice at the summit in Washington.

“Africa … was not associated even slightly with the preparation when it’s a question of deciding the future of the world to which this continent belongs, in fact and by right,” said Jean Ping, head of the African Union’s executive Commission.

Three African trading blocs comprising some 527 million people and with an estimated gross domestic product of $624 billion, have agreed to move towards a free trade area. It would span 26 countries from Egypt to South Africa, and would go a long way towards streamlining some of the continent’s numerous trading blocs. Africa is home to some 30 regional trade arrangements, and on average each nation belongs to about four groups, according to international financial institutions. This has led to conflicting and overlapping agreements.

So in a move to ease some of these issues, heads of state who chair the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), East African Community (EAC), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC),  met in the Ugandan capital to draw up a pact on integration, and eventually hoping to have a unified customs union. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said at the meeting’s opening that: “The greatest enemy of Africa, the greatest source of weakness has been disunity and a low level of political and economic integration.” The meeting’s final communiqué said a timeframe for integration would be considered in one year. Rwandan President Paul Kagame cautioned delegates that African nations must make sure to enforce the protocols and treaties that they’ve adopted. Heads of state at the meeting stressed the need to create economies of scale, bigger markets equal more opportunities to grow, they said.

But many of the existing blocs have already run into trouble. The EAC’s integration, for example, has had some hiccups because some member countries felt their economies would be dominated by neighbours.

So, should Africa think bigger and bigger or try to work on existing institutions? Do you think the creation of a free trade zone spanning COMESA, SADC and the EAC will take off, or will it just remain on the drawing board? What do you see as the major challenges in implementing this agreement?