Malagasy civil society wants to protect land from foreign investors

Farmland near Fianarantsoa in Madagascar (Illustrative image).

© Wikimedia Commons CC BY SA 3.0 Bernard Gagnon

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

In Madagascar, the collective Tany, from civil society, opposes in a press release that foreign investors can become owners of Malagasy land.

Yet this is what the International Finance Corporation (IFC) recommends in a report.

The implementation of this recommendation, according to civil society, could

ultimately

have negative repercussions on Malagasy agriculture.

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With our correspondent in Antananarivo,

Laure Verneau

Under current Malagasy law, foreign investors are not allowed to own land in Madagascar.

To encourage their arrival and thereby stimulate the private sector, slowed down by two years of pandemic,

the World Bank

therefore proposes to liberalize the Malagasy land market.

For Marcelle Ayo, the representative of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), an organization of the World Bank Group, in Madagascar: " 

Of course the Malagasy must first own their land, but there is enough space for larger farms.

It is also to make the legal framework clear for foreign investors who

circumvent this prohibition

anyway .

It wastes everyone's money. 

»

Fear of repercussions on small farmers

For

the Tany collective

, on the contrary, such a measure would endanger the economic, cultural and social rights of Malagasy people.

Three quarters of the population live from working the land, recalls the collective.

The inequality between big business and smaller local farmers would be unsustainable.

"

 Ensuring better access to land so that local communities can live in dignity and feed the nation cannot be confused with the establishment of

neoliberal

-style ' land markets'

 ", further denounces the Tany collective.

To modify the Malagasy land tenure system, it would also be necessary to change two controversial laws.

Civil society is concerned about an impromptu presentation of these already amended texts to the National Assembly during the current parliamentary session.

►Also read

: Civil society denounces human rights violations in a land dispute

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