Towards land equality? Exploring how cancelled land deals affect smallholder farmers’ land access and livelihoods in Eastern Africa

The world is facing an unprecedented land inequality, not least in Africa where smallholder farmers lose land to private corporations. Land is the basis for smallholder farmers’ livelihoods. In addition, African smallholder farmers produce a major share of the continent’s food. Thus, the unequal land distribution is a major obstacle to food security and poverty eradication.

It is also a major obstacle to building sustainable societies in general.

Our research on large-scale agro-investments in Tanzania shows that there is an unexplored phenomenon that could contribute to a more equal land distribution: since the early 2000’s many such investments have been cancelled and millions of hectares of land have been left uncultivated.

Studying the effects of such cancelled land deals is urgent since they seem to affect smallholders’ land access and livelihoods negatively but also seem to offer opportunities to redistribute land to smallholders.

The aim of this project is to explore how cancelled land deals affect smallholders’ land access and livelihoods in Tanzania.The project will provide recommendations on how development policy and global sustainability standards better can support smallholders when land is redistributed, and better mitigate negative impacts of cancelled development projects.

This is urgent since Covid-19 causes many cancelled projects when development funds are re-allocated to handling the pandemic.