A new land grab in Africa?

One of the many joys of what I do comes from the ability to spot emerging trends (thanks to my iGoogle system and the results of key word searches for material to post on websites): watching the countdown to the 2008 food crisis was one such trend. Of course the real sectoral specialists arguably dream about these issues. Against the background of the food crisis, a new trend is underway: for a good few months now news reports from a variety of very different sources indicate that foreign states want a slice of African farmland to produce not just biofuels but food for their own populations. Even Mauritius, as a member of the AU, seems to have struck a deal with Mozambique in this respect. The South Korean story about Madagascar made it into TIME last week. Now Gulf States have been advised to get in on the act as an article in the Gulf Times points out. "Bahrain Export Development Society chairman Dr Yousef Mashal warned the GCC must take steps to safeguard its food and water security, saying Africa was a major opportunity to do just that...a lot of joint ventures can be investigated in agriculture and Bahrain investors can look at buying land and farming it, producing goods, canning or freezing them and importing to Bahrain. This will be good for food security and in agro investment."