Food security is about more than land grabs

Foreign powers are not just engaged in African land. They are also engaged in African food systems, often in damaging ways. The conventional view right now is that land in Africa is a really big deal. Over the past few years, high-flying experts and journalists have continuously pumped out earnest reports on African land issues, often centred on the activities of foreign firms. Some of these stories have rightly honed in on the misadventures of Western companies - such as the US-based Herakles Farms' bungled forayinto oil palm in Cameroon - but most have focused on firms from emerging economies. Plenty of controversy and countless column inches, for example, have been generated by the Indonesian Salim Group's 60,000-hectare endeavoursin southern Nigeria, the effortsof Malaysian Kuala Lumpur Kepong (KLK) to acquire a vast swathe of Liberia, and the questionable multi-billion dealsconducted by the likes of India's Karuturi and Shapoorji Pallonji in Ethiopia. The speedy scaling up of African ventures by companies registered in the BRICS, South Korea and the Gulf states, and of wealth funds such as Singapore's Temasek, has understandably provoked a degree of panic. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, amongst others, have warned of "neo-colonialism," and the snowstorm of anxiety around land grabs has contributed to the creationof new global guidelines aimed at promoting better land governance. The guidelines are a step in the right direction, and the ongoing attention on land is important and completely warranted. However, overly fixating on land grabs risks obscuring more fundamental issues that ultimately underpin our concerns over the future of food in Africa. There is a danger that by concentrating only on grabbed land, broader food security challenges might remain cloaked in darkness. Better out than in? The time has come to move away from land-centric accounts and to examine how foreign powers have not only occupied African land but also African food systems. This is nothing new. From the salt flats of Senegal through to the shores of Lake Victoria, imperial conquest and colonial enterprise have left a lasting footprint on what and how Africans eat. The cultivation of inedible export crops such as rubber and cotton, for instance, continues to mean less land is available to grow food for local consumption. In ideal cases, sales from these crops give growers the purchasing power to buy the foods they want in the markets. But often, the persistent underperformance of cash crops and low incomes from plantation labour contributes to hunger. Alongside these legacies of colonialism, there are also more recent forms of foreign involvement in African food systems. Today, global commodity traders, industrial food manufacturers and retailers exert control over food volumes, prices and qualities across the continent. Control over land is of course a central element in this story, but there are also many others. For starters, it is worth noting how foreign investments in sectors other than agriculture have always had massive impacts on the potential for Africa to durably feed itself. It is significant, for example, that as governments across the continent leverage funds from the BRICS and elsewhere to build large-scale transport networks, the railways, roads and ports being constructed are primarily aimed at bolstering Africa's links to Asia and Europe. Rather than helping domestic or regional integration, which would make it easier for foods and other goods to be transported and exchanged within Africa, these forms of outward-oriented infrastructure make it quicker and simpler for Africa's crops to leave, and for food imports to enter. For example, financed by China's EXIM Bank, Cameroon is constructing a highway between Yaoundé and Douala as well as a deep seaport. Unlike infrastructure that would enhance sub-regional linkagesor a transport corridorthat could run across central Africa, these mega-projects are geared towards exports and imports in and out of the continent. The road not taken, literally, is bad news for the movement of African foods and for African people.