International actors increasingly work through global structures and deploy discourses to access, acquire and exploit vast tracts of arable land in Africa for various purposes (e.g. agricultural production, bio-fuel, multinational mining and conservation). These emerging practices are commonly referred to as “land grabs” by activists and NGOs. At the site of such projects, tensions emerge between divergent international and local conceptualizations of land, history, heritage, livelihood security, and sustainability. By coming into the public eye as “fait accompli”, the question is begged as to who dictates the terms of these engagements with Africa and Africans and who stands to benefit most? In any event, it is impossible to understand contemporary Africa’s economic configurations and “development” without regard to large-scale land acquisitions and local experiences thereof.

Large-scale foreign land acquisitions are often wrapped in the language of development initiatives, and on occasion enjoy the sponsorship or encouragement of various international organisations such as the World Bank. Regardless of backer or developer, initiatives are   legitimized as “economic growth” or “poverty alleviation”. However, the empirical basis upon which such assertions can be proved or disproved is fundamentally lacking, both within and outside the academic arena. This panel proposes a paper on an interdisciplinary analytical model to analyse large scale land acquisitions, their implementation, impact and legitimization; other papers offer empirically anchored studies in this only recently emerging field of scholarship, NGO activism and policy making.