South Koreans acquire huge farmland in Tanzania

DAR es SALAAM, Thursday

South Korea says it has agreed to develop farmland in Tanzania - the latest in a series of such deals between rich and poor nations.

Korean officials say 1,000sq km will be developed - half for local farmers, half to produce processed goods for South Korea.

Seoul also signed a deal last year to lease a vast area of Madagascar.

Rich countries have increasingly sought farmland in poorer nations to help shore up food supplies.

Countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Kuwait are short of arable land and have been seeking agricultural investments in Africa.

But South Korea’s deal in Madagascar - which would have seen it lease an area the size of Belgium from the island nation - has been thrown into uncertainty.

Madagascar’s Government was overthrown in a coup earlier this year and the new leaders said they would scrap the deal, which was cited as one reason for the unrest.

The state-run Korea Rural Community Corporation says a memorandum of understanding will be signed with Tanzania next month.

The corporation says it will produce processed foods like cooking oil, wine and starch on the land.

Mr Lee Ki-Churl, a corporation official, said he expected Tanzanians to benefit from the deal.

“Some African countries export fruit and import fruit juice, or export olives and import olive oil, simply because their past colonialists did not teach them how to process food,” he told the AFP news agency.

“We plan to set up an education centre for Tanzanian farmers in the food-processing zone in order to transfer agricultural know-how and irrigation expertise to them.”

He said about 100bn won ($83m) would be spent to develop an initial 100 sq km of land over the next few years.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that the corporation hoped to exploit deposits of iron ore, gold and copper in other parts of the Tanzania to help fund its project.

The deal comes weeks after Tanzanian Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda visited Seoul, when the two nations promised closer ties.

Elsewhere, the Republic of Congo expects to finalise a multimillion hectare land deal with South African farmers by the end of this year, Congo President Denis Sassou-Nguesso said on Tuesday.

The deal, initially meant to give South African farmers 10 million hectares (24.7 million acres) of land to grow maize and soya beans, raise poultry and run dairy farms, was delayed by Congo’s elections in July, won by Sassou-Nguesso.

First drafted as a 99-year lease, the deal could be one of the largest of its kind in Africa, where countries with more developed agricultural systems are seeking to expand in a trend advocates say will help modernize farming in poorer countries.

President Sassou-Nguesso said in an interview he had spoken to South African President Jacob Zuma in New York, where both were attending the United Nations General Assembly.

President Sassou-Nguesso said they discussed him making a state visit to South Africa before the end of the year, and he hoped to finalize the land deal on that occasion.

“We think this might happen before the end of this year,” he said, adding that nothing had been finalised.

In August, the oil-producing central African nation said the deal needed to be changed as there were misunderstandings and the project risked depriving local farmers of land.

Asked whether the deal would still involve between 8 million and 10 million hectares of land, Sassou-Nguesso said: “We will only know exactly the numbers once our contracts are completed. It’s not a closed number, this can change.”

South Africa has one of the most developed agriculture sectors on the continent and its farmers are looking to expand into other countries. They are joined in the scramble for land by rivals from Italy, France, Turkey, China and Israel.

Analysts point to potentially huge rewards in investing in farmland as the world population grows, while many see climate change and biofuels choking off the supply of arable land.

Advocates of such land deals say they can act as a motor for development of the farm sectors of poor countries, while critics warn of a land grab to the detriment of local farmers.

President Sassou-Nguesso, who has been in and out of power in Africa’s No. 5 oil producer since a 1979 coup, won the July 12 election with 78 percent of the vote. The result was dismissed by the opposition, after rivals were banned or withdrew.

President Sassou-Nguesso said Congo also expected to reach completion point of the joint World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Highly Indebted Poor Countries debt relief scheme by the end of this year.

Congo’s economy is heavily dependent on its 220,000 barrels per day oil output, but President Sassou-Nguesso said plans to diversify the economy were under way. He said Congo offered good potential for investors in electricity, through building dams.

“South Africa for example can eventually import electricity from the Congo Basin,” he said.

Asked what he was doing to reassure investors that corruption would not be a problem, Sassou-Nguesso said: “Where is the corruption? It’s about production of electricity, there’s no possible corruption.

“All of Africa needs electricity and whoever invests in this sector will reap benefits because they will be able to produce electricity and sell it ... and there’s no corruption in this business.” (Agencies)