International Political Economy and the Land Rush in Africa: Trends, Scale, Narratives, and Contestations

This chapter underscores the relevance of international political economy (IPE) to this book’s contents by discussing the transnational nature of large-scale land acquisitions and the multi-scalar networks that permit and accompany such processes of acquisition (or ‘grabbing’). We connect the question of land to IPE to uncover the polycentric forms of governance that surround land transactions and the ownership, access, and use of natural resources. The chapter presents the book’s central argument that the exploitation inherent to Africa’s contemporary land rush extends beyond the commodity price spike in 2007/2008. The book’s chapters are categorized based on existing literature, according to three themes: (1) the land-development nexus; (2) informality and ‘new’ customary land tenure landscapes; and (3) formalization, domestic agency, and legacies of legal pluralism. The final section examines scholarly areas not addressed in this book and considers how future research could contribute to, and amplify analyses of, land grabbing.