The governance of large-scale farmland investments in Sub-Saharan Africa

Growing global resource scarcities and increasingly unstable commodity markets have in recent years propelled large numbers of investors to seek access to the cheap and fertile farmlands of Sub-Saharan Africa. Though potentially providing its often neglected agricultural sector with much-needed investment capital, with many of these investments threatening to deprive the rural poor of vital livelihood resources and contribute to environment degradation, these investments have become a topic of heated debate in the public, political, and academic arenas. Amidst a rapidly growing body of research on particularly trends and outcomes, this book examines a critically under researched aspect of this trend, namely, host country governance. With an absence of sufficiently comprehensive international regulatory frameworks, the investment governance burden often falls solely on host country governments, which in the African context are typically ill-equipped or disinclined to provide adequate oversight.