Since the 2000s, sub-Saharan countries–in efforts to meet the requirements of the Bretton Woods institutions, particularly the World Bank–have developed Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), setting out objectives and national development priorities. In the articulation of national goals for each country, the expectation for economic growth is generally prioritized as a path toward becoming an emerging economy. Clearly, it is understood that many of these countries will be “emerging markets” in the next two to three decades.[1] These PRSPs will have potential effects that could lead African countries toward three possible contradictions.
First of all, these documents only weakly reference reforms regarding the issue of local communities’ rights, even though these reforms are one of the most crucial elements to promoting sustainable and local economic growth. Reforms are projected for the land sector, forestry, mining and industrial development of territories, but they generally avoid the above-mentioned question.
Secondly, the first-generation PRSPs have largely been replaced by the second-generation PRSPs (PRSP II) and Growth and Employment Strategy Papers (GESPs). In both cases, priority is given to the development and growth of large scale projects, such as large-scale infrastructure projects (ports, dams, railways, transnational roads, etc.), agro-industrial megaprojects, and large mining concessions.[2] There is a need for appropriate studies that will estimate how important such land areas are. According to global estimates, between 600 and 800 large-scale projects are currently being implemented in sub-Saharan Africa.
As a result, land use options often overlap and neutralize each other in a juridical chaos; in addition, customary lands are occupied following expropriation of lands for “public purposes,” and customary forest and land rights are simply ignored.[3] It is possible that economic growth will follow this emerging “development engineering,” as it is officially named, but it will be to the detriment of Indigenous Peoples and local communities and their descendants, who won’t benefit from this type of development.
Finally, the risk is high that land grabbing taking place as part of the “emerging countries” race will lead to the rise of a new social grammar that includes violent protests and conflicts related to community rights and claims of unpaid compensation.
One case study that is particularly representative of this phenomenon is the current situation of women in Liberia who have been disproportionately and negatively affected by large-scale projects. A new report from Liberian NGOs and RRI Collaborators Green Advocates International, the Natural Resources Women Platform, and the Alliance for Rural Democracy revealed that foreign direct investment in Liberia has caused a host of human rights violations for women across Liberia. Promised benefits of employment, improved infrastructure, and medical care were only occasionally delivered, while women often lost access to the lands and rivers that form the basis for their subsistence, livelihoods, and cultures. These losses affect entire communities, but women were hardest hit given that their tenure rights under customary systems are less secure than those of men.
In these current social, economic and moral conditions, it appears, once again, that blind economic development at any cost and the security of land and forest rights are at odds with one another. The potential impacts of these new African contradictions, as a result of the “emerging market” movement, are to be taken seriously.
[1] It is also necessary to know what the concept of emergence covers, when we know that, according to the taxonomy in use, the only emerging country that has Africa today is South Africa.
[2] See Ethiopia, Sudan, DR Congo (with agro-industrial parks), Congo (with land reserves), Cameroon, Ghana, Madagascar, or in Senegal, DR Congo, Congo, in Angola for mining.
[3] According to the official phraseology.
To learn more about the RRI Fellows, click here.