South Korea to rent Tanzanian farmland
28th September 2009
Simon Harding
South Korea will develop 1,000km/sq of Tanzania farmland, in a deal struck between the industrial East Asian nation and one of Africa’s poorest countries. Under a memorandum of understanding to be signed by Korea’s Rural Development Corporation (RDC) and the Tanzanian government half the land will provide food exports to Korea, the other half will be developed in collaboration with local farmers.
The deal is the latest in a string of similar agreements between cash-rich land-poor countries, such as Korea, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and China, and impoverished African nations with large tracts of cheap farmland. Farmland in sub-Saharan Africa costs around $800-1000 per hectare, around twenty times cheaper than in the UK. Rising food prices and the emergence of food riots in many nations in the past year have prompted countries like Korea to invest in overseas farmland to secure their food supplies against rising global demand. Last year, Korea signed a deal with Madagascar to rent an area of farmland the size of Belgium. However, following political unrest on the island nation, the future of this deal looks shaky.
‘We plan to set up an educational centre for Tanzanian farmers in the food-processing zone in order to transfer agricultural know-how and irrigation expertise to them’, said Lee Ki-Churl, an official at the RDC. The Korean government expects to spend $83m on the whole project over the next couple of years.
The RDC claims Tanzania will benefit from the deal. Its farmers will produce bigger yields due to the training they will receive, whilst the processing zone will boost the country’s ‘value-added’ manufacturing base by producing cooking oil and refined starches.
Whilst Africa desperately needs manufacturing growth, the Korean deal has the potential to threaten local food security. When global food prices rise 500km/sq of Tanzanian farmland will be producing for export rather than the local market. To avoid a situation in which local Tanzanians are suffering food shortages whilst the Korean-owned export area continues to ship food out of the country, the RDC must ensure that the training and support given to local farmers allows enables them to increase production in a sustainable manner, so that even if Korea pulls out of Tanzania, there will be some lasting benefit to local agriculture and food security.
Also see: ‘South Korea agrees Tanzania land deal’, BBC News, 24/9/09. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8272506.stm