Will Africa Feed China?

249 Pages·2015·2.49 MB·English

by  Deborah Brautigam

Will Africa Feed China?

Will Africa Feed China?
Deborah Brautigam
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
List of Acronyms xiii
Maps xvi
Introduction 1
1. China and Mozambique: Fiction and Fact 11
2. “Begging with a Golden Bowl”: Food Security and
Commercial Farms 20
3. Seeds of Change: Foreign Agribusiness Comes to China (and Chinese
Agribusiness Goes to Africa) 37
4. Going Global in Agriculture: Incentives, Institutions, and
Policies 56
5. Feeding Frenzy: “The Dangerous Allure of Google” 76
6. Taking Root in Africa: China State Farm Agribusiness
Corporation 95
7. Sweet and Sour: Chinese Sugar Investments in Africa 112
8. Unfinished Business: Risks and Realities of China’s African
Harvest 130
Conclusion: Lessons, Rumors, and Challenges 151
Appendix 1: Chinese Agricultural Investments in Africa,
1987–2014 165
Appendix 2: African Agricultural Exports to China, 2004–2013 169
Appendix 3: Chinese Agro-technology Demonstration Centers in Africa,
2006–2014 173
Notes 175
Index 205

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An official in China’s Ministry of Agriculture once said to me: “It is dif-
ficult to study this topic, even for us.” I couldn’t agree more. Hunger and
food security, land grabbing, the fate of small farmers in faraway African
villages, Chinese migration: all important topics, all with inadequate data,
all covered by the international media with TV, radio, and newspaper sto-
ries of sharply varying accuracy. Over the past decade, fact and fiction have
merged into a conventional wisdom on China’s agricultural engagement in
Africa that does not match the realities on the ground. Peeling away the lay-
ers of myths required extensive fieldwork, grounded in an appreciation of
the long, complex history and evolution of Africa’s experience with China.
The result is, I hope, a more balanced and realistic account that can provide
a baseline for current and future analyses of China’s rise and the impact this
is likely to have in Africa.
This book had its origin in research I did during a year as a visiting
senior research fellow in the Development Strategy and Governance
Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in
Washington, DC. I thank Margaret McMillan, Paul Dorosh, Xinshen Diao,
Xiaobo Zhang, Kevin Chen, and Shenggen Fan for their help and sup-
port. I acknowledge with appreciation Johns Hopkins University School
of Advanced International Studies, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Smith Richardson Foundation,
who all funded parts of this research.
For their encouragement in urging me to dig further into the issue of
Chinese “land grabs,” I thank Tony Allan, Martin Keulertz, Suvi Sojamo,
Jeroen Warner, Philipp Baumgartner, and Carlos Oya. Participants at
a May 2014 conference we organized at Johns Hopkins University on
Chinese agricultural investment in Africa provided a terrific way to share
early findings from our fieldwork and compare notes. I am grateful to the
participants: Lila Buckley, Solange Guo Chatelard, Chen Xiaochen, Jessica
Chu, Sérgio Chichava, Josh Maiyo, Margaret Myers, Nama Ouattara, Louis
Putzel, Henry Tugendhat, Eckart Woertz, Xu Xuili, Yang Jiao and Zhou
Jinyan. For their perceptive comments at our conference, I thank Peter