Commercial Pressures and Legal Rights: The Trouble with the Law Regulating Agricultural Investment in Africa

As revived private-sector interest in African agriculture aggravates commercial pressures on land, the national, international and transnational legal frameworks define the rights, obligations, enforcement mechanisms and arenas for negotiation and contestation among the manifold actors brought into contact through agricultural investments. Historical legacies and recent developments have favoured the emergence of a legal system geared more towards enabling secure transnational investment flows than towards ensuring that these flows benefit people in the recipient countries. Promoting inclusive investment in agriculture means rethinking important features of the law, and enhancing the local capacity to exercise rights under the existing law.