Introduction
Desert represents about 94% of Egypt’s geographical area. Since the coup of 23 July 1952, when Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the monarchy and became president, successive governments have adopted policies to create large-scale agricultural projects in the desert to face the challenges associated with food dependency, population growth, and agricultural crises in the Nile valley and Delta (Bush 1999; Côte 2002; Mitchell 2002; Hopkins and Saad 2004; Ayeb 2010; Dixon 2014; Sims 2014; Alary et al. 2018). The main goals of Egypt’s allocation policy for agriculture desert lands include 1) building new rural society and creating jobs; 2) expanding the habitat and agriculture surface; 3) increasing agricultural production and enhancing food security; 4) attracting national and foreign investors for the agribusiness development in the desert; and 5) promoting agriculture for exportation (GARPAD [General Authority for Reconstruction Projects and Agricultural Development] n.d.). Egyptian agricultural policymakers believe that dependence on small farmers is not a good solution to feeding the country. Policymakers have replaced small farmers with large-scale farming and agribusiness in the new reclamation of land in the desert (Bush 2016). Desert agriculture was promoted as a solution to the questions surrounding Egypt’s agrarian context. However, this solution does not consider the complex nature of agrarian questions and does not necessarily lead to the anticipated agrarian transformation.
Land reclamation projects have always raised critical questions and debates related to land distribution, land use and subsequent rights (Mitchell 2002; Dixon 2014). Most studies on land reclamation development focus on the East and West Delta land reclamation projects and Resettlement Scheme, while investigating new settlers’ living conditions and institutional regime in reclamation projects (Tadros 1978; Hopkins et al. 1988; Adriansen 2009; Alary et al. 2018). Other studies, adopting a political economy perspective, focus on the holistic evolution of land reclamation projects and inequality issues (Springborg 1979; Mitchell 1995; Bush 2007; Sims 2014). As Alice Kelly and Nancy Lee Peluso (2015) have demonstrated, the control over land by the privatisation of state land represents today’s frontier for capitalist expansion.
Commodification of state land facilitates today’s land-grabbing or large-scale national and international land acquisitions in the global South (Wily 2012). One aspect of the ‘global land grab’ in Egypt relates to the role of Egyptian finance capital. More specifically, Marion Dixon (2014) has looked at the context of frontier expansion through appropriating land inside Egypt, Sudan and other southern neighbours’ countries and Christian Henderson (2019) has examined the roles played by Arab Gulf investors of large-scale acquisitions of land in Egypt and Sudan in trying to secure their countries’ food security. In both studies, domestic acquisitions are not represented in the analysis, although they are dominant players.
Recent evidence points to the involvement of a diverse array of actors: international private investors, state-owned corporates and fund; domestic entrepreneurs, company shareholders, the diaspora and urban elites (Deininger 2011; De Schutter 2015; Benjaminsen and Sjaastad 2002; German, Schoneveld, and Mwangi 2013; O’Brien with the Kenya Land Alliance 2011; Anseeuw et al. 2013; Hall, Scoones, and Tsikata 2015). This article provides empirical analysis of the interactions around land control, state intervention and power relations in Egypt. I suggest examining not only why the land reclamation projects have failed to improve food production and population redistribution, but also, what exactly the land reclamation project does. What are the multi-layered consequences and effects of these projects on the ground? I argue that the research on land-grabbing in Egypt needs to go beyond the formulation of large-scale farmland acquisitions by foreign investors, in order to examine the question posed by Hall, Scoones, and Tsikata (Ibid.) regarding the type of land control and property rights assignments in which state land is situated. In addition, this research explores the mechanisms and dynamics of how different actors can hold onto state land, who wins and who loses out, and what the historical and contemporary institutional and political formalisation of access, claims and exclusion encompasses.
The notion of primitive accumulation opens several possible avenues for us to think about the origins of capital as a social relation. Furthermore, it allows us to consider and analyse the extra-economic means of capital accumulation, especially with regard to political and legal power (Ince 2014; Hall 2013).
The article draws on a set of complementary methods, namely narrative discourses. Policy and institutional analysis were carried out to understand what type of desert agriculture development trajectory the Egyptian governments have historically planned, and have currently envisioned, as well as how the different governments seek to enable these discourses and policies. In addition to deeper analysis of the policies and institutions, I closely examine primary sources through newspaper coverage on desert land allocation issues. Fieldwork was conducted in the Wadi Al-Nukra project area from May 2017 until February 2018 in southern Aswan to examine the diverse forms of land access, as well as relations and conflicts between actors and institutions.
The politics and discourses of agricultural land reclamation 1952–2017
Table 1 looks at agricultural land reclamation and summarises the similarities and differences at the level of state discourse, policies, the size of the planned and actual reclaimed areas, and the nature of the type of beneficiary in agricultural land reclamation projects over the last six decades. After the coup d’état of 1952, Nasser called for the ‘building [of] a new rural society’ based on the values of Arab socialism (Abdel Nasser 1962). He established large state farms and distributed parcels to small farmers. Despite the optimistic discourses and plans, only limited progress was made. The contribution of desert agriculture to total agricultural production was less than one per cent (Voll 1980). In the late 1970s, Anwar Sadat created the slogan ‘greening the desert’ to reframe agricultural development policy. Sadat’s open-door economic policy was designed to encourage both the private sector and foreign investors to reclaim new lands and replace government companies that were described as combining high cost with low efficiency. There was not a significant increase in allocations of reclaimed land in this period (Hussein et al. 1999). During Hosni Mubarak’s rule (1982–2011), agricultural land reclamation operations continued. The state encouraged investors by facilitating access to land and by offering tax inducements for investment. In 1998, the Egyptian state signed a contract to sell 103,784 acres in the Toshka project, in Aswan Governorate in southern Egypt, to the Saudi-based Al-Mamlaka, an agricultural development company owned by Prince Walid bin Talal. In addition, contracts with the same land surface were signed with other Gulf corporations such as Al-Dahra Amaratian Company and Al Rajhi Saudi Company. In the Sharq al-Oweinat project, in the New Valley Governorate, four Gulf-owned firms acquired 163,236 acres on a project totalling 277,104 acres (Henderson 2017). This indicates that the acquisitions of large areas by Gulf investors started before the global food crisis in 2008, the date identified by many scholars as the starting point for this trend (Keulertz and Woertz 2015). Although this period witnessed the expansion of the role of the private sector and land acquisitions for Egyptian and foreign investors, it also witnessed the renaissance of Mubarak’s programme for young graduates, which began in 1987. Between 1987 and 2003, this programme distributed 69,962 plots of land to 75,000 families of landless farmers and young graduates (Adriansen 2009). The implementation of the Tenancy Law (Law 96 of 1992), liberalised agricultural rents – raising them in some instances by more than 400%, and gave landowners the right to evict tenants at the end of a five-year transitional period. The law had harmful effects on the livelihoods of approximately one million farmers and their families, and led to a significant increase in the level of rural poverty (El Nour 2017; Saad 1999, 2002; Bush 2002). Yet their benefits from land reclamation were very limited.
| Period | 1952–1970 | 1971–1981 | 1982–1997 | 1997–2011 | 2014–2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discourse | The parallel valley Self-sufficiency The new peasant (socialist) | The invasion of the desert Population redistribution The new farmer (modern) | Population redistribution Facing unemployment Food security | Reconstruction of the desert Facing unemployment Self-sufficiency | Retrieving the right of the state Self-sufficiency The new Egyptian countryside |
| Policies | State capitalism Public reclamation companies expand individual ownership | Economic openness Growth of the role of the private sector Break-up of state farms | Structural adjustment Mubarak project for young graduates Export agriculture | Mega projects Economic reform programme State social role | Investment support Giant projects Export agriculture |
| Beneficiaries | • Small farmers • Landless farmers • Agricultural workers | • Big investors | • Unemployed fresh graduates • Landless farmers • Big investors | • Unemployed fresh graduates • Landless farmers | • Youth • Big investors |
| Target area (million acres) | 4.15 | 3 .11 | 2.8 | 2.9 | 4.15 |
| Reclaimed area (thousand acres) | 947 | 128 | 1605 | 667 | - |
The period between the January 2011 uprising and the arrival of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to the presidency witnessed a decline in land allocation policies as a result of pressure from the revolutionary forces and broad public debate on suspicions of corruption and waste of public resources (El Nour 2015). For example, in April 2011, a few months after the departure of Mubarak, the Administrative Court issued a decision nullifying the contract for the sale of land mentioned above to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s company. Subsequently, a decision was issued by Egypt’s Prosecutor General to restrain and prevent its legal transfer to the prince’s company. Following this, the Saudi government intervened within the framework of an Egypto-Saudi ‘initiative of understanding’. They agreed that the prince would keep 25,946 acres and hand over 77,838 acres to the Egyptian state (CNN Arabic 2011). In 2014, President Al-Sisi announced that he would proceed with reclamation projects of 4.15 million acres. As a first step, 1.56 million acres were targeted for the new land reclamation plan. The state established the Egyptian Countryside Development Company, a new public company that ultimately managed the plan. Despite the attempts of the state to maximise the returns, by setting land prices very high compared to the previous stages of the land reclamation plan, the emphasis on investors was clearer, given the allocation of three-quarters of the area to investors. The state allocated 75% of the project land for national and international investors (USDA 2016).
Institutional framework and governance access to agricultural desert lands
There are several actors involved in the management of desert lands: one of the main actors is the General Authority for Reconstruction Projects and Agricultural Development (GARPAD) which is affiliated to the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation. GARPAD has management responsibility for 6.23 million acres (Almasry Al Youm 2018); its main function is to manage, exploit and allocate the desert lands for the purposes of reclamation and cultivation in the areas covered by the agricultural land reclamation Projects Plan.
The governance of GARPAD has many flaws in relation to the land allocation mechanisms and to the formalisation of individual property on the state desert lands. Arising out of this are problems relating to the formation of GARPAD’s board of directors, as well as to the legal frameworks governing the allocation of land under GARPAD’s control. GARPAD’s board of directors is chaired by the Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, and its council is composed of several ministers – Housing, Investment and International Cooperation, Water Resources and Irrigation, and Local Development – in addition to one representative of the National Centre for State Land Use Planning; one each from the Ministries of Defense and Finance; the director of the legal department of the Ministry of Agriculture; and the Executive Director of GARPAD (GARPAD n.d.). The overlapping of all these ministries and state agencies increases the complexity of decision-making processes.
The multiplicity of laws, regulations, and decrees that govern state land allocation and pricing produce many differentiated, complex, unclear and sometimes contradictory results (see Table 2). One example of this is in cases of squatting (wad’al yadd), which refers to the continuous, and undisputed, use of state land for a long period of time without obtaining the authorisation of the state. Civil law makes it possible to formalise property ownership if the property has been occupied continuously for 15 years and if the possession is safe, stable, and uncontested. However, Law No. 143 of 1981, as well as Presidential Decree No. 154 of 2001, imposes penalties and eviction process for squatting. Ministerial and Council of Ministers decrees were issued in 2002, 2006 and 2010 to regulate the conditions of squatters, and finally a presidential decree in 2017 legalised squatting.
Source: Author’s analysis of Egypt’s land management laws and decrees.
Between 2006 and 2016, the Ministry of Agriculture and GARPAD were the subject of many press and judicial investigations by activists and social and economic rights defenders (for example, the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, and the Land Center for Human Rights). The investigations accused the Ministry of Agriculture and GARPAD of facilitating the dispossession of state land by political and economic elites. These elites seized state land and changed the use of agricultural land to real-estate activities and tourist resort development as well as speculation. In September 2015, the Minister of Agriculture was arrested in connection with a corruption case involving illegal land licences (Reuters 2015).
Since 2014, the state strategy to control corruption has led to two basic measures. The first was Presidential Decree No. 75 of 2016 that led to the formation of a committee to monitor all forms of encroachment on state land and to restore the right of the state in cases of non-payment of monies due from the investors. The committee is also responsible for supervising the re-evaluation of land prices in cases of change of activity from agricultural to urban land uses. The committee recommended the legalisation of squatting. The second measure was to exclude GARPAD from land distribution processes. The state launched the Egyptian Countryside Development Company. This company, which is a holding company, received the land from GARPAD and is responsible for managing the sale and marketing of the project lands to different categories of investors.
Land tenure structure dynamics in Wadi Al-Nukra project
In the 1980s the state created a land reclamation project with a total area of 67,460 acres Nile-irrigated in Wadi Al-Nukra area. The project was included in the five-year plan (1982–1987) and managed by GARPAD. In 1986 the project became part of the Mubarak project for graduates.
GARPAD was assigned to prepare the project land for cultivation and for the construction of an irrigation and drainage network.1 The network that was then constructed is 167 kilometres long, consisting of a main project channel of 63.5 kilometres that brings water from the Nile to the project area, in addition to three main branches (afro’ raisiya), 11 main irrigation channels (tera’a far’yaa raisiaya) and 62 irrigation distribution canals (misqas) throughout the project land. The Wadi Al-Nukra elevation varied between 155 and 190 metres above sea level (Farag-Allah 2001), while that of the Kom Ombo plain varied between 50 and 90 metres. Eleven pumping stations (10 main stations and one substation) were therefore required along the distribution and irrigation network. This in turn raised the costs of construction for the project. A drainage network of 100.3 kilometres was also constructed. The drainage network consists of 40 main drainage channels distributed throughout the agricultural land of the project. This shows the size of the state’s huge investment in the project, whether through the construction of channels or through the provision of energy to operate the system, raising and pumping water to the land.
The region was historically part of the grazing territories of pastoral Ababada Bedouin tribes inhabiting the Ababdah plateau and moving through the Red Sea valley. Five new villages, Al Hikmah, Al Amal, Al Manar, Al Karama and Al Braem, were built to resettle (i’adat tawteen) the beneficiaries of the Mubarak project (see Figure 1).
After the villages were completed, the land was handed over to the beneficiaries in 2004 and the investors began to receive the land two years later. There were three categories of tenants: (1) beneficiaries (montafi’een), which are divided into two sub-categories, landless farmers and unemployed fresh graduates; (2) investors (either companies or individuals); and (3) people including squatters who held land around, and within, the territory of the project.
About 77% of the total official project lands were allocated to investors, while 23% were allocated to the beneficiaries. To implement the project, the Ababada Bedouin tribes, autochthone historical inhabitants of this area, were displaced to the margins of the area. Road and canal construction, in addition to the enclosures established by the agribusiness investors and new landholders, led to a reduction in grazing routes for these tribes. During my period of fieldwork, I studied the land tenure structure. The definitions I used included not only property rights, but also permanent or seasonal land use rights (Peters 2004); squatting and pastoral land also represent permanent or seasonal land use rights. The land tenure structure and these land use rights are set out in Figure 2.
In the following paragraphs, I describe the access to land, as well as the strategies and dynamics of every category of tenant.
Beneficiaries
Of the total area of 14,665 acres allocated to the project beneficiaries, 9211 acres were distributed to 1775 landless farmers, about 62.8% of the total area allocated to the beneficiaries. An area of 5246 acres was distributed to 1,050 unemployed fresh graduates, representing 37.1% of the total area. Most of these beneficiaries came from governorates in Upper Egypt. After being selected as beneficiaries through public competitions at the governorate level, a further lottery was run to determine the location of the 5.2-acre plot and farm house won by each candidate.
The beneficiary, as a holder of legal tenure, has the usufruct right to the land allocated to him or her2 until they have paid off all the instalments; they then own the land. The beneficiary pays annual instalments for 30 years before the land becomes their private property. The beneficiary has no right to pay the full price of the land in one payment. The aim of this restriction is for the non-fragmentation of agricultural tenure. The land price and the annual premium differ according to whether one is an unemployed fresh graduate or a landless farmer. According to the agricultural cooperative unit director, ‘The price of land for the landless peasants is 39,000 Egyptian pounds (LE) and the annual premium is LE1300. The land price for graduates is LE12,000 and their annual premium is LE400’ (Interview, agriculture cooperative director, 18 January 2018).
However, the beneficiary is not an owner, and therefore legally does not have the right to sell the land before fully owning it. A change was introduced in 2008, permitting beneficiaries to sell the usufruct rights to another person. In Al Amal village, there were 24 recorded cases of such sales and 70 cases in Al Manar village according to the agriculture cooperative data. The sale, including the name of the buyer, must be registered in the village agriculture cooperative, and the transaction cannot be formalised without official recognition by the agricultural cooperative. In addition to the money that the buyer has to give to the original beneficiary, the buyer has to pay higher premiums than the montafi’ (prepaying 14%, and the rest in the form of annual instalments of LE5000 for 20 years). The purchaser does not become a beneficiary but becomes codified (moqanan) and treated as an investor. The codified holder does not benefit from the services of the cooperative, such as access to fertiliser, as they are classified as an investor and not as a beneficiary.
The beneficiaries’ land administration is subject to the village’s agricultural cooperative of the village (each of the five villages has its own agricultural cooperative). These cooperatives are responsible for the distribution of holding cards (botaqat al-hyazaa) and registering and changing the holdings in a specific area. The cooperative also distributes subsidised fertilisers, registers the crop composition of beneficiary lands, and provides agricultural extension services. In 2016, the land under cultivation by the beneficiaries represented about 92.7% of the lands allocated to them (see Table 3). Two-crop rotation is applied to beneficiaries’ cropland: the main crops grown in the winter are wheat, alfalfa, onions, garlic, and fava beans, while in summer, they are maize, sorghum, medicinal plants and aromatic plants. The beneficiaries’ cultivation plots are divided between production for domestic consumption and the feeding of family livestock on the one hand, and commercial production for market on the other. Usually, beneficiaries allocate between one and two out of their five acres to household consumption.
| Beneficiaries’ villages | Area under cultivation (acres) | Percentage of cultivated land (%) | Area not under cultivation (acres) | Percentage of non-cultivated land (%) | Total area (acres) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Al Hikmah | 3498 | 99.1 | 31 | 0.9 | 3529 |
| Al Amal | 1868 | 98.6 | 26 | 1.4 | 1894 |
| Al Manar | 3383 | 96.5 | 125 | 3.5 | 3508 |
| Al Karama | 3233 | 79.4 | 841 | 20.6 | 4074 |
| Al Braem | 1712 | 97 | 52 | 3 | 1764 |
| Total | 13,694 | 92.7 | 1075 | 7.2 | 14,769 |
Source: Agricultural cooperative unit in Al Hikmah village, 2017.
Investors
The 51,892 acres of project land allocated to investors amounted to 77% of the total project land. Investors have two ways to acquire land: (1) from GARPAD or (2) from agricultural reclamation companies, such as Wadi Kom Ombo, Al ‘Aqahya Company, the Arab Company and the Valley Fertile Company. The companies sell the land at market prices, as these companies have bought the land from the GARPAD. The companies purchased the land from GARPAD at government-set prices of LE5000–10,000 per acre, and they then sell it on to interested investors for prices that vary from LE35,000–70,000 per acre. In 2016, the Arab Company sold an area of 855 acres at a price of LE39,000 per acre to a local investor (Al-Borsa News 2016). Al ‘Aqahya Company sells plots smaller than 50–100 feddan for ‘small investors’ and plots of 500–1000 acres to shared land reclamation companies and cooperatives. Purchasing land from GARPAD is a complicated process. The investor must first fill out a long application form setting out eligibility and enter the public auction organised by GARPAD and taking place at its headquarters in Cairo. Each successful buyer in the auction then signs a three-year lease for the land. If during those three years the investors prove they are serious about reclaiming and cultivating the land, the land ownership procedures are then set in motion. The land is then valued by GARPAD, after which the person or company pays 20% of the value of the land, and the remaining amount is divided into 10 annual instalments at an interest rate of seven per cent. If the investor wants to pay the total land price immediately, the land price is reduced by 10% and the investor is exempted from paying the investment return of seven per cent. Usually, large investors profit more from the public auction, and medium and big farmers receive the land from the land reclamation companies or by legalising the squatted status of the land – which is the third form of access to the land.
The ownership structure of investors is not set out in its entirety in this section due to the absence of detailed data in the local cooperative, and the absence of published data from GARPAD. However, through interviews, field observation, reports and press investigations, I was able to draw up a proximate image of the ownership structure in those areas controlled by big investors (Table 4). As we see in the table, more than 29,000 acres, or 57% of the land allocated for investment, was acquired by just six companies. Only 3010 acres were cultivated, 10.2% of the area. The Al Fath, Magrabi, Dakahlia and Daltex companies are the leading companies that export agricultural products from different parts of the food chain (including juice production, poultry industry, feed industry, seed import, trade in fertilisers and chemicals). They have close connections with the Chamber of Commerce, the People’s Assembly, the Export Council and the government. These companies also have large areas in other agricultural reclamation projects. The other two companies (Table 4) are active in the resale of land that they have acquired at speculative prices.
| Company name | Company owners | Owned area (acres) | Cultivated area (acres) | Ownership in other reclamation projects | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Al Fath Company | Family of former and current members of People's Assembly | 6746 | 1141 | 5000–6000 acres in West Delta (Nubaria) | The company is occupying 3113 acres under squatters’ rights; export-oriented production |
| Magrabi Agriculture Company | Family of former minister | 5189 | 1349 | 10,378 acres in Al Bhira* | Export-oriented production; juice production |
| Dakahlia Agricultural Development Co. | Businessman | 3632 | 104 | About 14,000 acres in West Delta* | A subsidiary of the Dakahlia Group (poultry, agriculture, and chemicals); export-oriented production |
| Daltex Company | Member of the Export Council of Agricultural Crops, member of the Egyptian Saudi Business Council, Deputy of the Agriculture Committee of the People's Assembly | 3547 | 104 | 12,000 acres in Awainat; 6000 acres in the West Delta; 3000 acres in Salihity | One of the largest exporters of oranges and potatoes; juice production |
| Agri First Company | Member of a former People's Assembly | 5189 | 208 | No information | Sells land to local farmers in parcels of 25–50 acres at EL40,000 per acre |
| Karakat Company | Businessman | 5189 | 104 | No information | Sells land at EL40,000 per acre |
| Total | 29,492 | 3010 |
Sources: Fieldwork, 2018; *Akhbar Al-Youm 2016.
Squatters
In terms of the civil code squatting is permitted, while other laws criminalise it.3 Local police and the Ministry of Agriculture sometimes launch campaigns to clear land and evict squatters. At other times, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Council of Ministers issue decisions and laws to regulate the status of the squatting.
In Wadi Al-Nukra, land squatting accounts for between 10,000 and 11,000 acres. As indicated in Table 5, there are four main categories of squatters in Wadi Al-Nukra. The first of these represents the capital accumulation and political connections of medium and big farmers from neighbouring villages in Aswan. This category is primarily made up of political and economic rural elites and medium-sized farmers who have worked in the Arab Gulf countries and have accumulated enough money to reclaim areas ranging from 20 to 200 acres. The second category is the local urban petty bourgeoisie (for example, doctors, merchants, judges, lawyers, accountants, engineers and teachers), who have usually founded land reclamation cooperatives and own shares. The cooperative uses all of their members’ networks and connections to legalise the land and convert it from squatted land into property. This group often uses the land to accumulate social prestige. The land is rarely cultivated and often sold after legalisation. The third category is investors that hold and enclose the land surrounding their property and obtain these further areas by legalising them at lower prices. The fourth and last category is forced takeovers of the land. By forced takeover, squatters hold the land for a certain period of time and then sell it to another squatting developer (medium and big farmers). Squatting by forced takeover sometimes takes place on land owned or controlled by others for the purpose of bargaining and obtaining financial compensation for leaving. Forced squatting activities increased between 2011 and 2014 but disappeared completely in 2014 when state control was restored. Landless or small farmers cannot access and occupy land by squatting in Wadi Al-Nukra. This exclusion of these groups is the by-product of their inability to put up the amount of investment needed in order to reclaim desert land, and the problem of powerful connections and local interests that deny them access to land.
| Category | Acquired area (acres) | Acquisition method | Purpose | Current estimated total area (acres) | Cultivated area (acres) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Big and medium farmers | 20–200 | Moved to live there and guard land | Agricultural production | 2500 | 2000 |
| 2. Professionals | 50–500 | Created association/ bought from others | Accumulation or speculation | 3500 | 1000 |
| 3. Investors | 500–1000 | Occupation of lands surrounding their owned land | Accumulation or speculation | 4000 | 0 |
| 4. Forced takeovers | 100–500 | By force, placing it under permanent guard | Compensation for leaving | 0 | 0 |
Source: Fieldwork, 2018.
Squatters in Wadi Al-Nukra are found along the principal irrigation canals, near the Kom Ombo villages and the Wadi Khrait project, between Stations 4 and 5. One of the squatters interviewed noted that ‘There are more than 15 unofficial irrigation points before Station 5’ (Fieldnotes, interview with squatter, 12 August 2017). There are also increases both in the number of squatters and in the area squatted between Stations 6 and 10. This illustrates the multiplicity of informal water pumping points along the main irrigation channels.
Some squatters confirmed that they had submitted their documents to the local authority for regularisation. Squatters formalised their controlled land into property after they submitted requests to buy the land from GARPAD. This is an exceptional measure related usually to gaining political popularity. Since the Mubarak era, legalisation by the state of squatted land has been linked to one of two things: (1) the president’s visit to one of the reclamation areas, or (2) imminent presidential or parliamentary elections. For example, during Al-Sisi’s last visit to the Wadi Laqita in Qena Governorate, Upper Egypt, in September 2017, a farmer asked him to legalise the conditions of squatters. The president gave direct instructions to governors to formalise the conditions associated with squatted land. This was just a few months before the 2018 presidential election.
Legal dispossession: strategic institutional ambiguity
The current political discourses for land reclamation are dominated by a vision of desert agriculture as the engine of agricultural development, population redistribution and agricultural modernisation. There is a shift in who the main policy actors are, from the state to private-sector investors, from small farmers to large-scale agribusinesses. However, small farmers and lower-class categories are not completely excluded. In the official public discourse on land reclamation, small farmers are usually cited as one of the main objectives of land reclamation policy. However, land allocation practices marginalise small farmers. This divergence between discourse and policy is the product of the ideological legacy of the Nasser era. After Nasser, successive regimes have gradually reduced social redistribution measures, although they have not entirely abolished them. Land reclamation policies during the Mubarak era were based on two parallel interventions: on one side, private-sector support for economic development; on the other, social care for low-income people, referred to as mahdoud al-dakhl, through land redistribution. The institutional framework has gradually transformed to reflect this political shift with the creation of new agencies, and with the development of new laws and regulatory procedures. However, as in the discourse, the old regulations have not entirely faded away. The political and the institutional context are shaped by overlap, complexity and contrast. This institutional ambiguity makes land management dependent on the bureaucratic and political apparatus of the state, which can decide at any moment to use any legal or administrative basis to allow or prevent access to the desert land. Subsequently, this allows those with political and economic power to acquire vast tracts of land. This institutional ambiguity is consistent with the economics of cronyism that developed during the Sadat and Mubarak eras (Gamal 2016; Adly 2016). The Mubarak era, mentioned above, is the period in which the largest transformation of state-owned land took place, as it was divided and converted to private property. In this perspective, the strategic ambiguity of land allocation is embedded in the broader national political economy (Peters 2004).
Agrarian society in the study area is starkly divided. The most vulnerable groups are the poor farmers and rural workers from neighbouring villages. These groups are too poor to access the project’s reclaimed land and therefore regularly sell their labour to others and then return in the evening to their villages. Beneficiaries at the small farm scale, with five acres, have a diversified farming strategy with various crops (cash crops and home consumption). They depend mainly on family labour, but also seasonally on waged labour. Large farmers and rural elites are those who are considered as having between 50 and 100 acres. These are the local elites and the rich peasants who have been able to accumulate capital by working for several years in the Gulf. They supervise their land and depend mainly on wage labour from neighbouring villages. Sugar cane is grown mainly on their lands for the purpose of supplying it to the sugar factory in the nearby city of Kom Ombo. Agribusiness and capitalists are the investors who follow modern farm management methods. The farm is run by engineers and administrative staff, and the owners are completely absent from the management of the farm. Export and non-traditional crops are grown, as are grape vines and fruit trees such as mangoes and bananas. The agricultural labour force of these capitalist farms is fully based on wage labour (coming from Delta) and unskilled local labour from neighbouring villages.
My analysis demonstrates the critical roles of state agencies, members of the elite and a national dominant class in desert land allocation. Agribusiness and capitalist investors in the area are figures at the national level (current or former members of the National Assembly, relatives of ministers, business leaders, traders and exporters). Most of these figures also hold vast areas of land in other desert reclamation projects. The formalisation of individual property from state desert land is part of the process of primitive accumulation, as state land is turned into private property by capitalist agribusiness investors. The results of the study show that within the category of investors, which had been allocated more than 77% of the project land, the proportion devoted to agriculture at the time of the research did not exceed 11%. Land was used for production as well as to maximise the owners’ frozen real-estate wealth or speculation. The concentration of property and land acquisitions in the desert reveals deepening social differentiation and class formation (Peters 2004; Bernstein and Woodhouse 2001). It is clear here that the focus on who acquires the state land draws our attention to the role of local elites (Hall 2011). In analysing the state land allocation issue as land-grabbing from below, this article emphasises the agency of local and national elites in their interactions with the land reclamation project. The political and economic elites consolidate their political and legal power to grant property rights to the state, thereby marginalising small farmers, who are unable to access political and legal networks.
Conclusion
The article has investigated different actors’ strategies to hold onto state land, and the historical and contemporary institutional and political formalisation of access, claims and exclusion from land reclamation projects. My analysis is situated in the broader political economic and social strategic uses of negotiability and ambiguity in relations over state land control taking place over the past five decades.
The investigation of land reclamation on Wadi Al-Nukra has underlined the importance of land acquisition by big investors, as a form of domestic land-grabbing. I have shown that domestic land-grabbing is the least developed and most dynamic aspect of state land commodification, which has been formally facilitated and supported by the Egyptian state from the 1980s. Investors have used different strategies to gain access to and control large-scale land, whether through buying by auction from the state or through squatting and then formalisation. The article has shown that most of these lands were not cultivated, but were shifted from public to private property. Domestic land grabbers did not contribute to an increase in food security or food redistribution to the population, while the process of land reclamation in fact promoted land speculation. These large-scale land acquisitions are not a way to reduce food insecurity, but rather a land-grabbing from below that accelerates the process of commodification of state land, concentrating land in the hands of the few.