[Excerpt translation from French to English provided by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre]

"The race for agricultural land, a time bomb in Africa", 12 August 2019

The massive purchase of agricultural land in Africa by some foreign powers poses a threat both to development and food security in the regions concerned... Local farmers thus acquire land from which they are subsequently dispossessed, as foreign powers increasingly question African land ownership in Africa....Yabg Haomin, president of Shaanxi Farm Agribusiness Corporation, a provincial agricultural society in China, first set foot in Cameroon in December 2015... Four years later, in 2019, an estimated 125,000 hectares of land was occupied by China in Cameroon.

Jean Ferdinand Pierre Ebong, financial consultant, talks about land grabbing for agricultural purposes: "This kind of approach by the Chinese is dangerous for Cameroonians. As this sector is dormant, those who have the financial means can take over the land. It is with despair that I shout scandal!"... "A Cameroonian cannot go to China to buy land to produce rice there, it is not possible. If they produced and it was for the benefit of Cameroonians, it would still be plausible. That is to say 70% remain in Cameroon, and 30% in China..."...

But for Charles Sielenou, an agricultural expert and founder of African Social Action, who works in agriculture, health and education, there is nothing to blame China for. Because China, with less than a million hectares of agricultural land in Africa, comes far behind the major land buyers on the continent, such as the United Arab Emirates (1.9 million hectares), India (1.8 million hectares), the United Kingdom (1.5 million hectares), the United States (1.4), and South Africa (1.3)... "For me, African land is our own atomic bomb. It is our weapon of deterrence. There will be more than two billion of us in 2050. The world will have problems feeding itself. We have most of the agricultural land not yet in use. But we can take this opportunity to influence the geostrategic balance of power..." [he argues].