In a series of meetings, Saudi government officials, bankers and agribusiness executives told an institute delegation led by Zeigler that they intended to spend billions of dollars to establish plantations to produce rice and other staple crops in African nations like Mali, Senegal, Sudan and Ethiopia. “They laid out this incredible plan,” Zeigler recalled. He was flabbergasted, not only by the scale of the projects but also by the audacity of their setting. Africa, the world’s most famished continent, can’t currently feed itself, let alone foreign markets.
NY Times
How mad can I be when Garvey had long since warned Africa what would happen we didn't get our acts together. How many African nations depend on volunteer doctors. How many wells are dug instead of water works? How much clothes are dumped on the market rather than home grown? How much diamonds for Jewelry is taken? How much coultan for cell phones are taken? Uranium? How surprising should it be that they'll look to grow food for themselves?
Update:
Daewoo Logistics had signed an agreement to take over about half of Madagascar’s arable land, paying nothing, with the intention of growing corn and palm oil for export.
Paying nothing? Who are we kidding here? Either the leadership of Madagascar is so incompetent as to give up use of land for nothing or, more likely the leadership of Madagascar pocketed some "nice" change in this deal. C'mon now.
Last fall, Paul Collier of Oxford University, an influential voice on issues of world poverty, published a provocative article in Foreign Affairs in which he argued that a “middle- and upper-class love affair with peasant agriculture” has clouded the African development debate with “romanticism.”
I've been saying this for years. People think it's all cute that people are pulling water up from a well when they know full well THEY wouldn't live like that. What? Can an African get a sink and faucet please? And yeah, boo hoo that some old ways of living are going to have to change. How's that depending on foreigners to eat working out. Thought so.