Tanzania’s Land Rush

Description

After the global financial crisis of 2008, a new trend in foreign direct investments (FDI) emerged: investors’ rising interest in farmland in developing nations. This ‘land rush’ was a marker of increased land commodification and agricultural financialization, but has also been associated with global narratives of agricultural modernization, and development through FDI of ‘cheap, unproductive and/or idle’ farmland.
Yet, as this book demonstrates, global investment dynamics are dictated by complex economic, political, socio-historical dynamics in any host country. Focusing on the land rush in Tanzania, the contexts of six investment projects in the nation are examined and unpacked, helping to understand the ways in which political struggles over land, capital and authority all feed into determining the goals – and eventually the outcomes – of the ‘farmland investment game’.

Joanny Bélair is currently a postdoctoral fellowship at the Faculty of Geoscience, Utrecht University, Netherlands, and associated with LandAc, the Netherlands Land Academy.

Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Case selection and research method
Chapter 3. In brief, the legacies of historical land management in Tanzania and the potency of factional struggles within the CCM
Chapter 4. The national political arena
Chapter 5. Rufiji district, a local political arena
Chapter 6. Missenyi district, a local political arena
Chapter 7. Village politics, or a micro political arena
Chapter 8. Conclusion
References

Additional information