The Republic of Congo has offered approximately 11 million hectares of farmland – six government farms of 135,000 hectares in the Niarri Valley plus 10 million hectares – to South African farmers in an effort to increase the country's food security. This initiative was announced by the Congolese agriculture minister Rigobert Maboundou in April 2009. In the current situation the country, devastated by years of political tensions and economic looting of its resources through a rentier politics, imports 99% of its food, mainly from France.
The size of the area, which amounts to a third of the country (formerly known as Congo-Brazzaville), is approximately twice that of Switzerland, and is said to be suited to producing maize (of which South Africa is the main African producer), soya bean, cotton and coffee, as well as supporting poultry, cattle, and dairy farms. These territories offer favourable climatic conditions, with two growing seasons that would allow commercial farmers to produce two harvests a year.
The agreement – set up among other purposes to attract South African farmers – has been enthusiastically welcomed by Theo de Jager, the deputy president of the farmers’ union Agriculture South Africa (AgriSA), in the light of the fact that total South African arable land is only six million hectares. The agreement is very favourable: it includes leasehold for 99 years at zero cost, while other enticements involve a five-year tax holiday on corporation tax and the dismantling of taxes on the import of agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilisers, machinery, and other farm needs (Reuters 2009a, SustainableBusiness.com 2009). This means that commercial farmers would be able to import a John Deere tractor for less than the cost in South Africa, as there would be no tax or import duties. The farmers will be allowed to take all their profits out of the country, and although the project is being labelled as a food-security initiative, they are under no obligation to sell their output on the domestic market. However de Jager argues that ‘there is little danger that a large part of the food produced will leave the country again … The food prices on local markets in the Congo are high. Hence, it will be more attractive for farmers to sell their products there’ (Reuters 2009b). It is assumed that any surplus products will leave the country towards the bigger market of the nearby Democratic Republic of Congo and/or to the EU. Furthermore, in order to secure the investments a bilateral agreement was recently signed between South Africa and the Congo that stipulates compensation for expropriation. In such a case, the tenant has to be compensated for investment in infrastructure and loss of income and must receive another piece of land with equal production and income potential (Farmer's Weekly 2009). The agreement also stipulates compensation in the case of losses due to war, armed conflicts, riots, and other similar situations.
In such a context, what are the benefits for Congo? Besides the fact that the Congolese government will probably not have to import food from abroad for the consumption of its elites because it will be available locally, the government will allegedly benefit from the upgrading of transport infrastructure (harbours, railways, and roads), technology transfer, foreign investment, and access to the credit market. The World Bank and United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization have pledged to help with the establishment of new infrastructure and the development of new markets. At first glance, rather than benefiting Congolese communities these kinds of investments seem to be highly favourable in terms of profitability to capital, in view of the carte blanche they have on the terms of exploitation of natural resources, including water, the very low cost of rural labour and as a result of the fiscal concessions and duties exemption included in the ‘package’. In theory this kind of capital and farmers’ expansion, as paraded by the promoters, will bring development. In practice, however, these types of economic and political interventions, implemented in land grabs, are highly unsustainable in ecological and social terms, thereby increasing the vulnerability of local communities.
Furthermore, while in such a context it is likely that South African farmers would find it convenient to exploit the low cost of the Congolese labour force, it is important to notice that their spread will bring the establishment of a pattern of highly mechanised commercial agriculture, with its requirements for fertilisers, technology, times of work, and standardised large-scale production, implying minimal absorption of the existing labour force. In addition nothing is said about the rural communities who used to produce cassava for their own consumption, and who will be removed from their natural environment and separated from their means of production in order to make room for the new commercial farms, as the land involved in the project is classified as ‘underutilised’.
The land deal will be the largest in recent African history, resembling the practices of the colonial concessionary companies that emerged in the last quarter of the nineteenth century under the ferocious reign of Leopold II of Belgium. This similarity, and the striking continuity with an allegedly past pattern of colonial exploitation, sounds an alarm bell for the future of the continent in the face of a new scramble for African land. In fact this is just a part of a wider process that is taking place on the continent. The conjunctural coincidence in high food prices and low land prices has pushed many ‘food insecure’ governments to invest heavily in land, and countries that rely on food imports to feed their people are snatching up vast areas of farmland abroad for their own offshore food production. The Gulf States and China are among these, while in Africa it is mainly Egypt and Libya (GRAIN 2008). In addition, the depth of the financial crisis has spurred many food corporations and private investors in search of profits to look to foreign farmlands as a source of future revenue. In this way land is becoming increasingly privatised and concentrated into few hands, giving rise to a neo-colonial, agro-imperial pattern of domination and exploitation. This could be defined as a new wave of accumulation by dispossession, or primitive accumulation going on in the midst of acute global financial and food crises and impelled by the neoliberal attack on the state control of agriculture. Other descriptions further show the plan to be a form of permanent dispossession or plundering, and an ongoing feature of the development of capitalism as a world and socio-historical system.
Returning to the South African farmers’ expansion, this will give the farmers the chance to spread risk, delocalise agro-commercial production, and further extend their reach across the continent. This movement of capital and settlers/farmers, which resembles that of recent years towards Mozambique, Tanzania, and other southern African countries, seems to be among other things also a consequence of internal South African dynamics, such as land restitution, rising production costs, low protection, and other political factors. The dramatic outcome is the undermining of local indigenous modes of subsistence and social reproduction, and the increase in the category of poor and landless people in Africa.