In recent years up to 80 million hectares of land have been bought up - often at giveaway prices -- by financial investors, sovereign wealth funds and transnational corporations, a process which has come to be known as 'landgrabbing'. Some of this land has been acquired for purely speculative purposes: most of it is for the cultivation of export crops, and brings with it the exacerbation of water scarcity, expropriation of agricultural communities, destruction of biodiversity and deepening food insecurity. The intensive systems of cultivation lead to soil exhaustion and water depletion and pollution.
Squeezing Africa dry: behind every land grab is a water grab by GRAIN shows how investors are positioning to make "buckets, buckets of money" from the water which is being seized along with the huge tracts of land in vulnerable parts of Africa. Read it here [1], [1]