OAKLAND, Calif. — As a major two-day conference

on Land Policy & Administration, hosted by the World Bank, gets

under way to supposedly improve land governance and

contribute to the well-being of the poorest, Oakland Institute’s

new report, (Mis)Investment in Agriculture: The Role of the

International Finance Corporation in the Global Land Grab. exposes

the role of the Bank’s private sector branch, International Finance

Corporation (IFC), in fueling land grabs, especially in Africa.

Land grabs — the purchase or lease of vast tracts of land from

poor, developing countries by wealthier, food-insecure nations and

private investors — has led to the acquisition of nearly 50 million

hectares of farmland, said Shepard Daniel, Oakland Institute’s

Fellow and author of the report. While rising food prices, demand

for biofuels, and investors seeking quick returns have been emphasized

as the principal drivers of this trend, the role of the World Bank has

gone virtually unnoticed. (Mis)advice from IFC’s Technical

Assistance and Advisory Services (TAAS) and Foreign Investment

Advisory Services (FIAS) to developing country governments to spur

foreign direct investment in agriculture has fueled the dangerous

trend of vast land deals in some of the world’s most vulnerable

countries, she continued.

Following the 2008 food and financial crises, World Bank was to

play a central role in what was intended to be a massive overhaul in

international food policy and a vast improvement to food security in

the developing world, said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of

the Oakland Institute. Evidence, however, reveals that World Bank

Group policies and efforts are doing just the opposite. IFC has

actually increased the ability of foreign investors to acquire land in

developing country markets. It is promoting products — such as

the ‘Access to Land’ and the ‘Land Market for Investment’

whose purpose is to open land access to investors. Further more the

creation of investment promotion agencies and rewriting of

national laws, has provided the institutional back up for such

investments. In doing so, it has overlooked the urgent problem of

hunger that persists in client countries, and lost sight of its

principle mission, which is to alleviate poverty, she

For instance, in Ethiopia, IFC’s recommended changes to policy and

legislature have completely transformed the landscape of Ethiopian

investment climate. Accordingly, huge investments in land market have

followed. Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world

with more than 13 million people in need of food aid, said Daniel,

but paradoxically the government has already offered at least 7.5

million acres of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of

the world’s most wealthy individuals to export food back to their own

countries.

(Mis)Investment in Agriculture

concludes that the promotion of investor access into developing

country land markets threatens local food security, displaces local

populations, and therefore operates in direct violation of IFC’s

Performance Standards as well as several UN Human Rights Conventions.