The Economic Recolonization of Africa

Land Rush – Why Poverty?

Directed by Hugo Berkeley andOsvalde Lewat (2012)

Film Review

Land Rush is the story of the recolonization of Africa by foreign interests (US, Britain, China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia) and their collaboration with corrupt governments and tribal authorities to drive subsistence farmers and their families off their land. Their goal: to create massive for-profit industrial farms based on monoculture export crops.

Nearly 60% of remaining arable land is in Africa – the industrialized world has either paved theirs over or decimated their soils through factory farming.

The reason Africa is such an easy target is that only 10% of rural Africans own private title to the land they farm. The rest is traditionally viewed as a communally owned commons.

Lifting Africans Out of Poverty By Seizing Their Land

Land Rush specifically focuses on a US sugar baron seeking to create a giant sugar plantation…