Life
American Institutions using hedge funds to buy African land
While the West is accusing China of the “re-colonization of Africa”, it is also worth checking out what Western nations and their instituitions are doing on the African continent.
It has a well known fact that major American Universities, including Vanderbilt and Harvard, have been working through British hedge funds and European financial speculators to buy or lease vast areas of African farmland in deals.
The scale of the rush by speculators, pension funds and global agri-businesses to acquire large areas of developing countries is far greater than previously thought, and is already leading to conflict, hunger and human rights abuses, says Oxfam.
The new land rush, which was triggered by food riots, a series of harvest failures following major droughts and the western investors moving out of the US property market in 2008, is being justified by governments and speculators in the name of growing food for hungry people and biofuels for environmental benefit.
