Lhe African continent, which alone owns a quarter of the world's fertile land, concentrates 41% of land transactions, out of a total number of 1 transactions around the world, according to a recent report by the NGO ActionAid International, dating from the end of May 515. Since the year 2014, more than 2000 large-scale transactions have been documented, for a total area of 1 million hectares, said the NGO, which clarified that it is also likely that many of medium or large-scale acquisitions to this day remain neither documented nor quantified. This twenty-page report, titled Heist on Land: How the World is Opening the Way for Corporate Land Grabs, reveals the extent of this phenomenon that threatens not only the survival of millions. people around the world, but also ecosystems, forests and endangered animal species.
The NGO took a great interest in Africa, because this continent has become the new attraction of multinationals, pension funds and large agro-food groups which have acquired, with the complicity of local governments, millions of hectares of arable land.