News:

On Friday 28^th February, 2014 the Daily Nation published a cover story on scramble for land in Africa by rich countries. It was mentioned that in just five years, rich countries have acquired about 80 million hectares of land in Africa and other developing countries. Critics have dubbed this ''the big land grab'', or ''the new type of neo-colonialism''. The paper further revealed that foreigners have always owned land in Africa but what is new in this ''second scramble for Africa'' is the scale, size and more importantly the exclusion of civil society and local communities in the process

Comment:

Land grabbing on a large scale started being witnessed after the Berlin Conference a century ago whereby European colonial countries met in Berlin, Germany to strategize on how to share-out land in Africa. After ‘independence', African puppet rulers who inherited colonial thoughts and European colonialists continued land grabbing. For example in Kenya, the late first president Jomo Kenyatta used state institutions to grab thousands of hectares of land in Central, Rift Valley and Coast Provinces. This grabbing has led to Kenya witnessing re-current land clashes as 85% of the population depends on agriculture yet 84.4% of this own less than 3 hectares. In 2003, the Ndungu Land Commission was set up and in its report exposed how politicians, institutions and companies grabbed hectares of public land. This problem has never been solved other than being used by politicians during election period to inflame public emotions for their own political interests.

In Zimbabwe, it is the same story. Despite the ‘half-crazed president' Robert Mugabe pretending to be a hero, he uses the issue of white settlers as a tool to remain in power. Even after destroying the economy of Zimbabweans, he has used the issue to grab land and only distribute to his family and inner circle and not all citizens. It is estimated that Mugabe's family owns 40% of land in Zimbabwe. It is clear that African resources are plundered by internal and external parties.

Despite Africa being alleged to be independent, it is still a playground for Western colonial countries which still propagate colonialism under the pretext of foreign investment. Under this pretext, African rulers are able to grab hundreds of acres of land and sell to multinational agricultural companies. This makes many Africans live as squatters and at an impoverished level that is very high in the world even though Africa has vast land and many minerals like gold, diamonds and oil.

All this is caused by Capitalism which is full of self-interest that uses a measure of enriching a few which is the genesis of land grabbing. Africa will continue experiencing problems as long as Capitalism is implemented by African governments. It is only Islam that has the best land policies that will liberate Africa and the world in general from such problems.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by

Shabani Mwalimu

Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir in East Africa