Over the past few years, agribusiness, investment funds and government agencies have been acquiring long-term rights over large areas of land in Africa. Government concerns about food and energy security and private sector expectations of increasing returns from agriculture underpin much recent agricultural investment.
Together with applicable national and international law, contracts define the terms of an investment project, and the way risks, costs and benefits are distributed. Who has the authority to sign the contract and through what process greatly influences the extent to which people can have their voices heard. And the terms of the deals can have major and lasting repercussions for agriculture and food security in recipient countries. Yet very little is known about the exact terms of the land deals. Negotiations usually happen behind closed doors. Only rarely do local landholders have a say in those negotiations. Few contracts are publicly available.
This report analyses 12 land deals and their wider legal frameworks. The aim is to discuss the contractual issues for which public scrutiny is most needed and to promote informed public debate about them. Key issues relate to the contracting process, to economic fairness between investor and host country, to the distribution of risks, costs and benefits within the host country, to the degree of integration of social and environmental concerns, and to the extent to which the balance between economic, social and environmental considerations can evolve over often long contract durations.
In relation to many of these issues, a number of the contracts reviewed appear not to be fit for purpose: some are short, unspecific documents that grant enforceable, long-term and largely transferable rights to extensive areas of land, and in some cases priority rights over water, in exchange for little public revenue and apparently vague and potentially unenforceable promises of investment and/or jobs. Also, a number of the deals are being negotiated in legal contexts where safeguards for local interests are weak, and some contracts do not properly address social and environmental issues. As a result, there is a substantial risk that local people internalise costs without adequately participating in benefits, and major environmental issues are not properly factored in.
More generally, contracts are only part of the story. They only work if they are properly implemented. They are often negotiated under time pressure and unequal negotiating power. Different contractual regimes in force in the same host country may result in disparities of treatment for affected people or the environment. And the very fact that a contract is concluded indicates that a decision has been taken for the land to change hands.

You can find the document on the IIED website

By: L. Cotula (IIED)