This chapter traces different phases of land appropriation in Sudan and highlights the enormous amount of land that has been reallocated since colonial times (1898–1956). Furthermore, it discusses the legal instruments used for this ‘land grab’ and the rationale explicitly put forward for such actions. Despite the strategy of developing the agricultural sector to spearhead the country’s overall development, outcomes have been modest and, as I will suggest, the rural poor shouldered its costs disproportionately. National governments, nonetheless, pursuing development but also eager to satisfy their own need for foreign currency, have continued to foster large-scale investments in mechanized agriculture, irrespective of the risks associated with foreign investment in agriculture. This chapter will suggest that the current government (since 1989) has been unable to protect investors’ rights and to enforce contracts on the ground, as is evidenced by the low implementation rate of projects. Therefore, it is proposed that it is pursuing extractive rather than developmental policies. The government’s dire need for resources to finance the on-going civil war, and the greed of some of its top officials may have blinded it from seeing the necessity of addressing some major challenges, such as good governance, which are impairing both the success of foreign investment and rural populations’ livelihood opportunities.

Background : Global Price Hikes , Crises and the New Demand for Land

Several colluding factors have led to the phenomenon often referred to as global land grabbing. I will here concentrate on three intertwined drivers of this new dynamic in commercial demand – rising fuel prices, speculation on agricultural commodities futures, and the recent food crisis (2006–08) (Anseeuw et al. 2012b). First, in the early 2000s, oil prices rose sharply, boosting the global development of alternative energy sources. For instance, US President George Bush offered huge financial incentives to farmers in the Midwest to turn their maize into biofuel (ethanol). Simultaneously, the European Union (EU) encouraged companies in its member states to find land for the production of biofuel. It is estimated that this type of investment constituted 75 per cent of new agricultural investments of EU companies abroad (Palmer 2010).