Corporate Greed in Africa-The Green Green Gold of Ethiopia
by GRAHAM PEEBLES
Weekend Edition March 9-10, 2013
Ancestral land that for generations has served as home and livelihood for
hundreds of thousands of indigenous people in Ethiopia is being leased out,
on 99-year renewable contracts at nominal sums to foreign corporations. The
land giveaway or agrarian reforms as the government would prefer to present
them began in 2008 when the Ethiopian government, under the brutal
suppressive Premiership of Meles Zenawi invited foreign
countries/corporation to take up highly attractive deals and turn large
areas of land over to industrial farming for the export of crops. India,
China and Saudi Arabia were all courted and along with wealthy Ethiopians
have eagerly grabbed large pieces of land at basement prices; rates vary
from $1.10 to $6.05 per hectare (HA), comparable land in India would set you
back $600 per ha.
A total of 3,619,509 ha, the Oakland Institute (OI), a US based think tank,
estimate has been leased out. Land made available by the forced re-location
of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people under the government's
universally condemned Villagization progamme, which aims to forcibly
re-locate over 1.5 million people from their homes.
India corporations have taken the lion's share, acquiring around 600,000 ha
concentrated in Gambella and Afar, split between 10 investing companies. The
term 'investing' implies benefits for Ethiopia, which is misleading;
'profiteering', or 'exploiting' sits closer to the truth of these land
deals, as the OI make clear, "taking over land and natural resources from
rural Ethiopians, is resulting in a massive destruction of livelihoods and
making millions of locals [farmers and pastoralist communities] dependent on
food handouts". With small scale farmers being evicted from their land,
prices of staples such as Teff, used by millions throughout Ethiopia to make
Injera (bread), has rocketed in price, according to Ethiotribune 22/5/2012,
increasing fourfold since 2008.
Corporate expansionism: small change big profits
In line with its ambitions of diversity and world food dominance - Karuturi
Global, the world's largest grower of roses, leads the Indian charge,
leasing 311,700 ha in Gambella. Not satisfied with this, GRAIN (an
international NGO, working to support small farmers) report Mr.Karuturi
"wants to set up farming operations [throughout Eastern and Southern Africa]
on more than 1 million [ha]" - too much never enough in corporate
expansionism.
Almost a quarter of Gambella's 25 million ha has been earmarked by the
federal government for agricultural 'development'. Karuturi, whose profits
"rose 55.13% to Rs 1.21 crore [10 million] in the quarter ended June 2012",
took their chunk without even seeing it, paying only $1.10 per ha. For the
Indian giant it is, John Vidal in 'Land Grab Ethiopia (LGE)' says, "the sale
of the century". 'Green Gold' is how Mr. Karuturi in GRAIN ('Who's Behind
the Land Deals'), describes his 300,000 ha of Ethiopian soil, "for which he
pays $46 per ha per year including water and labour and expects at least
$660 [per ha] in profit per year". (Ibid)
In addition to paddy, Indian farmers are being sub-contracted to grow maize,
cereals, palm oil and sugarcane amongst others. All of which are destined
for export, either to India or Europe, where companies farming in Ethiopia
(and other Sub-Saharan African nations), benefit from lower import duties
applied to developing countries, notwithstanding the fact that the land is
leased to, and the crops produced and sold by, multi million-rupee rich
companies.
Another major Indian company leasing land in Gambella is the decidedly green
sounding BHO Bioproducts. Following the corporate rhetoric, BHO Chief
Operating Officer Sunny Maker told Bloomberg in 2010 that, they have "plans
to invest more than $120 million in rice and cotton production", which, by
2017, should "generate about $135 million a year from sales divided equally
between domestic [Indian] and international markets." He added that the
"incredibly rich fertile land", will all be "cleared within the next three
years". Cleared yes, violently, indiscriminately and totally; villages,
people, forests, woodland, all destroyed, burnt, relocated, displaced,
desecrated. The governments promise to such prized investors is that the
land is handed over stripped of everything and everyone. Dissent is not
allowed and dealt with brutally should it occur, as Anuradha Mittal,
Executive Director of OI makes clear. "The repression of social resistance
to land investments is even stipulated in land lease contracts, [it is the]
state's obligation to 'deliver and hand over the vacant possession of leased
land free of impediments' and to provide free security 'against any riot,
disturbance or any turbulent time."
The 'rich fertile land', lovingly cultivated at the hands of the men and
women who have farmed it for generations, is unlikely to be nurtured so
carefully by Indian (or indeed Chinese or Saudi Arabian) corporations with
their thirsty 'GM seeds' (Ibid). For as Oxfam in their detailed report 'Land
and Power' diplomatically point out, "investors short time scales may tempt
them into unsustainable cultivation, undermining agricultural production."
The devolution of development
Land is a prime cut asset in the commercialisation of everything,
everywhere, and the "rich fertile land" in Ethiopia is cheap, even by
Sub-Saharan African standards. Along with long-term leases, the government
offers a neat bundle of carrots, including tax incentives and unrestricted
export clauses, incentives that the OI state "deny African countries
economic benefits" from land deals that the Ethiopian regime wraps up neatly
in its complete disregard for the human rights of the indigenous people.
Government indifference encouraging corporate irresponsibility - and they
need little encouragement. Businesses hardly seem to be grabbing the land,
so much as accepting it as a gift, parceled up and ready to be torn open.
In exchange for such attractive deals, the Ethiopian government has been
extended, the OI reports "a $640 million line of credit. over five years to
boost sugar production in the country's Lower Omo region". Not a
philanthropic gesture, more a sales trap by India's EXIM (export and import)
Bank, who stipulate, "Ethiopia must import 75% of the value of the credit
line in the form of Indian goods and services."
The government-owned sugar plantations in the Lower Omo are themselves
attracting a great deal of concern and criticism from human rights groups,
who highlight the environmental and human damage being perpetrated.
Government acts of violence and abuse, in the various land deal regions, are
justified under the overused and misleading title of 'development'; a term
appropriated by the international monetary machine - the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF) primarily - misunderstood and distorted by
government development agencies, acting in line with foreign affairs
policies by promoting national self interest and perverted by the corrupt
ideologically-blinkered governments of developing nations.
An undeveloped ideological trinity whose actions have drained the 21st
century sacred cow and its stable mate 'growth' - dry of any true and
relevant meaning. Far from supporting human and or social development the
"unfair terms and near give-away prices [of land deals]. are hindering
development.. Foreign corporations and the World Bank are pressuring African
leaders to give them exemptions from taxes, import and export duties, and
local labor laws - not to mention water and mineral rights that could be
worth billions", the OI confirm.
More concerned with sitting at the top table and cultivating the right
international allies than with doing their constitutional duty and serving
the needs of the people, the Ethiopian government is in danger of giving
away, and for peanuts, it's 'rich and fertile' land to overseas companies
who have no interest in Ethiopia, it's environment, its culture and even
less in its people.
Increasing hunger
Hunger and poverty stalk the land of both Ethiopia and India. 12 - 15
million people survive on food aid in Ethiopia, which ranks bottom of the
World Hunger Index at 76. India, with the highest rate of malnourished
children in the world, where 25% (around 270 million) of the world's hungry
live, despite the fact that, according to the World Food Programme (WFP),
"the country grows enough food for its people", it comes in 65th of the
hungriest nations, below Niger and the Sudan - neither of which, to my
knowledge, boast 61 billionaires and 200,000 dollar millionaires unlike
India. And whereas "most countries have made consistent progress in reducing
hunger, India has seen hunger rise over the last decade compared with the
late 1990s."(Ibid) This so-called economic miracle nation refuses to feed
it's own people.
Food insecurity, the WFP makes clear is caused not by lack of produce, but
by an unwillingness to share the Earths bounty equitably. The states in
India with the greatest numbers suffering from hunger and malnutrition, WFP
records "include Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa,
Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh"; these are the states where the poorest
(Adivasi - indigenous and Dalit) people in the country and quite possibly in
the World happen to live. The poor are dying of hunger not because India
cannot feeed everyone, as the United Nations report on regional cooperation
makes crystal clear, "the root cause of hunger across the sub-region and the
world today is not a lack of food. It is the economic and social
distribution of that food which leaves populations undernourished and
hungry."
Men women and children living in dire poverty starve to death, in India,
Ethiopia and throughout the world. They starve and die for want of the food
that is rotting in warehouses, food served up to rats or destroyed by the
Indian government, because it is cheaper to burn it than to distribute it to
those in need. As Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the Food and
Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (26/01/13) said, "globally, a
third of all food produced is wasted, and. if one could avoid this waste it
would be possible to feed all the hungry people [in the world] and have food
to spare." Food to spare!Such is the inhumane ethos that underpins market
fundamentalism, that allows men women and children, young and old to starve
- simply because the do not have the financial means to feed themselves.
Shame on governments Indian and the rest, that allow such inhumane injustice
to prevail, as a wise teacher said, "throughout the world there are men,
women and little children who have not even the essentials to stay alive;
they crowd the cities of many of the poorest countries in the world. My
brothers, how can you watch these people die before your eyes and call
yourselves men".
The commercialization of the countryside in India and Ethiopia, which is
displacing large numbers of small-scale farmers and concentrating crop
production in the hands of multi-nationals, is intensifying existing levels
of hunger. Substantive agricultural reform and real development would see
the army of skilled small scale producers, with generations of local
knowledge and love of the land, supported with the needed capital and
technology, given access to markets that corporations bring. Such an
agrarian revolution, ethically founded, environmentally healthy and socially
sustained, would build long-term food security and feed the hungry.
Soft targets easy profits
India as the WFP makes clear, has no domestic need for food produced by the
overseas industrial farms that are causing such far-reaching damage, to the
hundreds of thousands of displaced people of Ethiopia as well as the natural
environment. The movement in Ethiopia mirrors what is taking place to a much
greater degree in India. The government has shifted all support away from
Indian farmers and is supporting the transfer of land from the rural poor to
large companies - wealthy government benefactors, causing the displacement
of millions (60 million to date, according to Arundhati Roy) of indigenous
people.
Corporations are targeting countries Oxfam 7/02/2013 makes clear, with "poor
governance", that "allow investors to secure land quickly and cheaply..
[They] "Seem to be cherry picking countries with weak rules and
regulations". Needy nations like hungry people make easy targets for
multi-national man, whose pockets governments are desperate to nestle
inside. The driving force behind such destructive land developments,
undertaken by corporations obsessed by an insatiable desire for growth and
world leading economic development, is, as Oxfam suggests, profit and profit
alone.
Graham Peebles is director of the <
http://www.thecreatetrust.org> Create
Trust. He can be reached at: graham_at_thecreatetrust.org
<mailto:graham_at_thecreatetrust.org>
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Received on Sat Mar 09 2013 - 09:45:24 EST
