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The persistent agrarian crisis facing sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and the recent food price hikes have provoked greater urgency among governments, civil society actors and development agencies to identify public policies that can accelerate agricultural transformation towards achieving food security and nutrition, as well as sustainable and inclusive rural development. Considering that 75 per cent of the SSA population is involved directly or indirectly in farming and related employment, the strategic role of family farms in such a transformation is increasingly being recognised by key actors (FAO 2013; 2014). There is less agreement on the nature of and prospects for family farms in SSA, the scope of their contributions to agriculture, food security and rural development, and the measures required to address their most critical challenges. [.]

La trasformazione agraria in Africa non č riuscita a causa di una combinazione di fattori, tra cui l'alienazione della terra che si č verificata soprattutto nell'Africa dei settler, e sta crescendo altrove, e il super-sfruttamento del lavoro agricolo nelle economie contadine dell'Africa non settler. Negli anni sessanta, l'alienazione dei terreni č stata interrotta, ma la cattiva integrazione del continente nel sistema capitalista mondiale ineguale, in particolare il sistema alimentare mondiale, č cresciuta sotto il neoliberismo dagli anni ottanta. Gli errori nelle politiche di aggiustamento si sono intensificati dopo la recente crisi finanziaria mondiale portando a un aumento di privatizzazioni e concentrazione dei terreni agricoli, anche sotto il controllo del capitale straniero. La persistenza della produzione di beni agricoli per l'esportazione ha minato la produzione alimentare per il consumo locale, mentre gli investimenti pubblici nelle tecnologie agricole sono diminuite. L'alternativa della sovranitŕ alimentare centrata su piccoli produttori autonomi richiede un intervento significativo dello stato e lo sviluppo del capitale umano, per ristrutturare il sistema alimentare e per migliorare la protezione dei consumatori e del commercio. Il caso dello Zimbabwe viene presentato come esempio di resistenza agraria al neoliberismo.

Zimbabwe's recent fast-track land reform was redistributive, but it retained significant enclaves of large-scale agro-industrial estates owned by transnational, domestic and state capital, despite unfulfilled popular and domestic elite demands for land. Such estates were encouraged by the state to produce agro-fuel (ethanol from sugar), sugar, tea, coffee, timber and citrus, with wildlife ranching for domestic and export markets, alongside expanded small food producers. This outcome reflects the unresolved contradictions of seeking autonomous development in the context of sanctions, domestic political polarisation and declining agricultural production, while promoting reintegration into broader world markets. Neoliberal policies replaced dirigisme by 2008 to promote stabilisation and agricultural recovery but with limited impact. Foreign agricultural investment in Zimbabwe is nonetheless atypical of the current neoliberal land grabbing in Africa, since Zimbabwe reversed past inequalities and retains some state autonomy, and residual land concentration remains contested.

Since 2000, there has been an escalation of land-related conflicts in Zimbabwe, Côte d'Ivoire, the Delta region of Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa. These con- flicts are examples of numerous national struggles for access to land in Africa and reflect the failure of the African state to address the land and development nexus on the continent. The land question in Africa is a by-product of globalised control of land, natural resources and minerals in general, reflecting incomplete decolonisation processes in ex-settler colonies along with the penchant for for- eign 'investment' in a neo-liberal policy framework that marginalises the rural and urban poor. Global finance capital is increasingly entangled in conflicts over land, as the exploitation of oil, minerals and natural resources expands into new African enclaves that highlight the external dimension of distorted devel- opment. These processes define the significance of land in the political economy of African development. This paper examines the complex social and political contradictions that shape land struggles, including their colonial and post-inde- pendence trajectory. The failures of neo-liberal land reforms, based on market forces and their confrontation by popular demands for redistributive reforms are discussed.

A research paper on Zimbabwe's land redistribution policy. ; The land reform programme in Zimbabwe has raised a number of critical political economy questions. The massive transfer of land within a short period of time and without international financial support calls for a rethinking of our understanding of the process of land reform in Africa (Berry, 1993; Platteau, 1996; Moyo, 2000). Across the African continent, competition over land intensified in the late twentieth century, leading to rising land values, increasingly commercialized patterns of land acquisition, concentration of landholdings, prolonged litigation, and sometimes to assault and even murder. Evidence of growing land pressure and increasing conflict has prompted some observers to argue that land reform, once considered a low priority on a continent with plenty of land to go around, is now a matter of urgency. Rather than debate the case for or against land reform per se, this chapter explores the trends in land acquisition in Zimbabwe in the context of broader debates over economic and political transformations. The purpose of this chapter is to walk the reader through the land acquisition process throughout the 25 years of Zimbabwe's independence. The chapter focuses on land acquisition which has been an area of contest throughout the independence period. The chapter should be read concurrently with chapters by Matondi and Munyuki-Hungwe (chapter 3) and Makadho (chapter 7) to get a clear picture of the linkages of land acquisition, redistribution and national land policy.