The African Union (AU) has hailed Germany for providing assistance to universities in African countries to enhance research on effective land use and management. The enhanced research on land management policies is crucial for countries to avoid giving out free land to investors seeking to cash in on huge tracks of under-utilised land across Africa, known as land grabs.
AU Commissioner for Agriculture, Rhoda Tumusiime, said the German aid to the universities and research institutions was critical to efforts by AU to advance effective land management to grow local economies.
“Improved access to land is critical in dealing with agricultural problems facing Africa. There is need for sustained efforts to address these challenges. German support is critical towards this because the issue of land requires a lot of information to strengthen partnerships,” Tumusiime said at a Land Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Wednesday.
At talks with the Ethiopian government on 4 Sept. 2014, German Deputy Minister of Economic Cooperation, Thomas Silberhorn, announced 124 million euros to support universities in Ethiopia.
The funding for sustainable land management has helped 50 vocational schools and universities to offer land management courses, leading to reclamation of 180,000 hectares of degraded land.
Ethiopian agriculture minister, Tefera Debera, said pressure on land, for urban growth, agro-processing, mining and property development, required renewed attention to avoid misuse of land.
“The mismanagement of land and low level of technology application has contributed to low production of agriculture and led to poverty, food insecurity and perpetual hunger and at times to famine,” Tefera said.
The UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) says Africa’s massive mineral wealth potential was attracting investors into the mining sector, creating demand for the agricultural land in Africa.
Stephen Karingi, UNECA Director of Trade, said the land available in Africa represented a huge chance for economic growth if effectively used.
“Land can be considered as Africa’s strategic resource because of the population growth, Africa can position itself, thanks to its land resource, as the food reserve of the world,” Karingi said.
He said effective management of the land resource in Africa is important because of the high population growth rate. This is because Africa’s minerals is attracting investors from all over the world to its 12% of the world’s oil reserves and the 40% of the global gold reserves.
Africa faces a crisis with low agricultural production, which means 175-200 million hectares of land is required to feed the world’s middle class over the next 20 years, yet all this land is still to be found in Africa.
Tumusiime said the German support was crucial to the implementation of a new AU plan to use land for economic growth and industrialization.
“The issue of land is not taken on board some of the global processes because of limited evidence,” Tumusiime said.
PANA
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