{"id":2421,"date":"2011-06-02T12:37:56","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T12:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=2421"},"modified":"2011-06-02T12:37:56","modified_gmt":"2011-06-02T12:37:56","slug":"investors-need-to-carefully-manage-issues-around-land-ownership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2011\/06\/02\/investors-need-to-carefully-manage-issues-around-land-ownership\/","title":{"rendered":"Investors need to carefully manage issues around land ownership"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Jumanne Abdallah Maghembe, Minister of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives of Tanzania<\/p><\/div>\n

Investors in Africa\u2019s agriculture sector need to be aware of the complexities surrounding land ownership.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jumanne Abdallah Maghembe, Minister of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives of Tanzania<\/p>\n

Speaking during a session on agriculture at this month\u2019s World Economic Forum on Africa, Tanzania\u2019s agriculture minister, Prof Jumanne Maghembe, said that land is a worry for many people and that it needs to be managed properly.
\nStandard Bank recently warned that investors buying farmland in Africa need to do their homework before making purchases in a sector potentially fraught with political and emotional risks. \u201cInvestors need to be mindful of the fact that land in Africa is an emotive as well as a survival issue. The potential risks associated with these deals include cash-strapped local people losing not only their homes but also their source of food and future income as buyers secure the full rights to crops and land,\u201d the bank said in a research report.
\nMaghembe explained that in Tanzania there are two laws that govern land. The Land Act covers the land that is managed by the central government; the Village Land Act states that land within the boundaries of a village belongs to the local community. \u201cTherefore, when you are thinking about investments in land in Tanzania, it has to be an interplay between the investor, the village and the government. You have to work this very carefully,\u201d he said.
\nHe said that investors in Tanzania\u2019s agriculture sector need to work together with outgrower farmers as well as smallholders to ensure that everyone benefits from the investment. There needs to be a win-win relationship for everyone involved.
\nAccording to Maghembe, smallholders must gradually grow with the larger farmers so that they can one day be able to start their own commercial operations.
\nDyborn Chibonga, CEO of the National Smallholder Farmers\u2019 Association of Malawi (NASFAM), who also participated in the session, said that smallholder farmers in Africa can play an important role to change the face of agriculture on the continent. He noted it is wrong to think that only large-scale farming can bring about change in African agriculture.
\nChibonga\u2019s comments came against the backdrop where Malawi has managed to produce a surplus of maize for a number of seasons through the subsidising of agricultural inputs such as seed and fertiliser.
\nAccording to Chibonga, smallholder farmers should not be left out of the picture as foreign governments and the private sector purchase large areas of land in Africa. \u201cThe concern is that the smallholder farmers are being left out of the picture, when we\u2019ve proved . . . that smallholder farmers can be part of the equation. They need to be involved in the value chain. What we should be doing rather is to look at smallholder farmers being involved all the way from the policies to the markets, so that they can produce and be able to value-add . . . [the products] that is required either by the foreign governments or big industry.
\nHe also mentioned that land purchases should be more transparent. \u201cWe just hear that the new friend of Africa, China, has bought certain tracts of land. You don\u2019t know how much they bought. You don\u2019t know where it is. You don\u2019t know the conditions attached to that purchase.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Investors in Africa\u2019s agriculture sector need to be aware of the complexities surrounding land ownership. Jumanne Abdallah Maghembe, Minister of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[699,301,700],"class_list":["post-2421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agriculture","tag-africa","tag-land","tag-ownership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}