Large-Scale Acquisition of Rights on Forest Lands in Africa

Forest concessions can be very large, and currently concessions of more than 1 million hect­ares (in a single block) can be found in Congo (Brazzaville) and DR Congo. If one considers the cumulated area a group can have in the same country, this goes up to 5 million hectares (DRC). However, recent Large Scale Land Acquisition (LSLA) for arable lands are generally on a smaller scale, and rarely go beyond ten thousand hectares. The widely commented Daewoo deal that fell through in Madagascar covered 1.2 million hectares and its size is one explanation of its failure. The announcement by some media (Reuters) of a 10-million ha deal between Congo-Brazzaville and (white) South-African farmers was simply misinformation: the deal is actually for 200,000 ha of arable land in the Niari department with degraded infrastructures, which was conceded to foreign agricultural companies in the 1980s and abandoned due to the civil war and the resulting insecurity. Forest concessions are larger since the land use is different from agricultural land: low extraction rates on large areas are common. Scale is therefore one criterion that characterizes the difference between the LSLA and timber concessions, even though not a key one.