Africa Is a Country

The Land Question

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The Land Question

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yGkJsR7-HY]

The Guardian’s John Vidal reports from Ethiopia’s remote Gambella region where in the last 10 years “1.1 million hectares, nearly a quarter of its best farmland” have been sold or leased to foreign companies by the Ethiopian government. The Ethiopian government says 36 countries including India, China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have leased farm land there. The World Bank estimates that at least 35 million hectares of land has been bought or leased on the continent as a whole. Vidal reports that 896 companies-including the “Saudi billionaire Al Amoudi, who is constructing a 20-mile canal to irrigate 10,000 hectares to grow rice”–have come to the region in the last three years. Poor, rural people are convinced by Ethiopia’s government “to leave their farmland to make way for foreign owned companies growing profit crops for export.” The companies hire the locals to work on the farms and pay them an average wage of one US dollar a day. As usual the Ethiopian government spokesman–the government receives tons of food aid while they sell off land–acts like nothing is going on.

Further Reading

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.

Sovereignty or supremacy?

As far-right politics gain traction across the globe, some South Africans are embracing Trumpism not out of policy conviction but out of a deeper, more troubling identification.

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.

Sinners and ancestors

Ryan Coogler’s latest film is more than a vampire fable—it’s a bridge between Black American history and African audiences hungry for connection, investment, and storytelling rooted in shared struggle.