ABSTRACT
As the site of most large-scale land and resource transfer at this time, sub-Saharan Africa is the reference point of this chapter. While advocates point to Africa’s arable potential, they acknowledge that suitable zones are largely remote and limited to certain parts of the sub-continent and require immense infrastructural support to be brought under industrial production (FAO 2009; Deininger and Byerlee 2010). Doubts have also gathered that industrialising agricultural production takes sufficient account of water needs, the realities of skewed and fragile water availability including erratic rainfall, the propensity for mismanagement and loss, and the already taut dependence of millions of immediate and downstream smallholders upon stressed water-bearing ecosystems (Smaller and Mann 2009; Baumgart 2011; Keulertz 2011; Wood-house and Ganho 2011).
