While public opinion in Madagascar is worried about the final content of the amendments to the new land law regarding untitled private property (1), which are expected to be adopted during the current parliamentary session, a document from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank entitled “Country Private Sector Diagnostic (CPSD) report – Creating markets in Madagascar” published in December 2021 (2), is causing significant concern. As it recommends the “reform” of several laws so that foreign investors can own Malagasy land, the land-related measures need to be brought to everyone’s attention and denounced. It reminds us that the African Development Bank (AfDB already made its 2019 funding allocation from the Economic Competitiveness Support Program (PACE) conditional on the government of Madagascar adopting regulations on agropoles (3). Given that the implementation of these dramatic and unacceptable measures could render an already impoverished population even more impoverished we need full information and a broad debate.
I – WHAT ARE THE LAWS MENTIONED THAT WOULD ALLOW FOREIGN INVESTORS TO OWN LAND ?
1- The IFC and World Bank report starts with an analysis of the situation in Madagascar post-Covid 19. It highlights the country’s shortcomings and deficiencies, which have already been exposed many times, that would prevent the development of the private sector and the arrival of investors, such as governance and the lack of infrastructure in various areas. It then puts forward proposals to improve the “business environment” by calling for
– the reduction of “unfair advantages for certain incumbent firms”,
– the adoption of an investment law that “harmonizes the various laws and regulations […]“, a key condition for increasing
“investor confidence”
– and the acceleration of “reforms” that would incentivise new companies to come, specifically mentioning “the transfer of
ownership”. (2)
2 – The chapter on land points out that the land markets in Madagascar “do not function because of an insecure land tenure system that constrains access to land for agriculture production and private sector business development “. According to the report, “foreigners cannot definitively acquire land, and the leasing framework does not provide sufficient security for long-term investment”. It therefore suggests
– “Updating the legal framework and zoning […] (and) the « Framework Law » (to) clarify the procedure [..] regarding areas for investment, including agricultural investment zones,
– the adoption of the Private Titled Property Law, which aims to ease land transfer procedures and establish the opportunity for
land acquisition” (2)
The risk of the Malagasy government adopting these World Bank recommendations is very high. In a letter of intent to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) dated February 24, 2022, the Minister of Economy and Finance wrote “We will continue our efforts to promote a favorable business climate, which is essential to stimulate private investment, as contemplated in our PEM (4). […] In the context of a new law on investments, we intend to … reinforce equal treatment of national and foreign investors, and clarify … issues of access to land […] and property rights” (5)
All the laws mentioned have been strongly criticized by civil society organizations and other entities. If new versions of these texts are suddenly presented for a vote by parliamentarians during this May 2022 session, it would be completely unacceptable.
II – WHY DO THESE RECOMMENDATIONS THREATEN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MALAGASY ?
1 – Making it legal for foreign investors to purchase Malagasy land would be dangerous for the well-being of the majority of Malagasy people in the medium and long term, as well as for their economic, social, cultural and environmental rights. It would greatly increase inequalities and could quickly lead to a massive transfer of land to foreign investors while Malagasy nationals with modest incomes would be left with a minority share. The Malagasy have a very strong attachment to land, as the report states. Three-quarters of the population live by working the land. Land is not a commodity but a precious public good, a commons belonging to the whole Malagasy nation. Future generations have to inherit this land to ensure their food sovereignty and their development. Safeguards for the protection of private property, skillfully set out in the Constitution, have still not allowed Malagasy families to recover the vast and fertile lands over which colonists hold “definitive and unassailable” title. And now new laws could facilitate the acquisition of land titles by foreign investors ? Ensuring better access to land so that local communities can live with dignity and feed the nation cannot be equated with the establishment of neoliberal land markets. We insist that the legalization of land purchases by foreign companies and other entities in Madagascar must be rejected as contrary to the sustainable development of the Malagasy people.(6)
2 – The references in the IFC and World Bank document to zoning and the framework law refer to two very controversial texts :
– on the one hand, the law on special economic zones (SEZ) passed in 2018, after many twists and turns due to its rejection by ordinary citizens, civil society organizations and politicians, and whose implementing decree has not been issued by the competent authorities ; (7)
– on the other hand, the draft framework law on land with specific status, including areas dedicated to investment, which caused an outcry in 2020 from civil society organizations, protected area managers and donors working in the field of land, rural development and the environment (8).
During a workshop organized by the National Land Fund (Fonds National Foncier) in Antsirabe in March 2020 on this last bill, a presentation on agropoles was made (9). We later learned that the “adoption of two decrees on the creation and management of agropoles was one of the conditionalities for release of the 3rd tranche of AfDB budgetary aid for Madagascar under PACE III” (3). Like SEZs, agropoles allow a set of enterprises, producers and service providers located in a given geographical area to “benefit from measures such as tax incentives and investment protection” (10). The National Strategy for Agribusiness tells us that 4 million hectares of agropoles are planned to be created in the coming years in Madagascar (11). However, other countries that have tried this approach since the 2000s show that it does not always lead to the desired objectives and can lead to adverse effects for small farmers (12).
Given the current long-term leases of 30 years or more, Malagasy civil society organizations state that “as far as investment zones are concerned, several examples show that successive leaders have favored foreign investors by allocating them large land areas […]. Malagasy families who occupied these lands lost their homes and workplaces, as well as their ancestral lands where their culture was rooted. They saw their environment desecrated, denatured and destroyed, their water sources polluted and various diseases developped. Their impoverishment and suffering are undeniable” (13).
This observation by Malagasy organizations is confirmed in a study by the Land Matrix Initiative of 740 cases of large-scale land allocations (200 ha or more), including Malagasy cases, published earlier this month. It states that “the overwhelming majority of land investments in Africa are still too often made to the detriment of local populations and the environment” (14).
The consequences of allowing the outright sale of land, of any surface area, to foreign investors would be even more serious.
CONCLUSION
The demand for “access” to land ownership by foreign investors in Madagascar, as expressed in the World Bank’s private sector diagnosis, is outrageous because it does violence to Malagasy cultural values, cancels out any hope of sustainable development for the majority of the population, and aims to further enrich national and foreign oligarchs. It promises us even more inequality, not less.
If the unequal treatment of existing investors and newcomers is a problem, legal reforms should reduce the advantages of privileged investors. Under no circumstances should Malagasy generations of today or tomorrow be definitively stripped of their lands, which the legalization of land sales to foreign investors will certainly provoke.
The serious world food crisis that is emerging should push leaders to protect and strengthen the means of production of all Malagasy peasants by facilitating their access to more land, compared to the current average of less than 1 ha per farm. Relying instead on investors and granting them a right of ownership to Malgasy land would be seen as dismissing local farmers and condemning peasant agriculture to a certain death.
Logic and coherence in the fight against poverty and famine should lead decision-makers to focus on ways to support Malagasy peasants to independently produce food for their families and for the local market, instead of favoring agribusiness and supporting projects that are suicidal for the population, such as the sale of Malagasy land to foreign investors and “Madagascar, Breadbasket of the Indian Ocean” (15, 16).
20 May 2022
Collective for the Defense of Malagasy Lands – TANY
patrimoine.malgache@yahoo.fr ; www.terresmalgaches.info ; www.facebook.com/TANYterresmalgaches
The TANY Collective is now on Twitter : @CollectifTany
References :
(2) https://pressroom.ifc.org/all/pages/PressDetail.aspx?ID=26746 ;
https://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/publications_ext_content/ifc_external_publication_site/publications_listing_page/cpsd-madagascar
Quote from the « Note de présentation des projets de décrets régissant la mise en place des agropoles et les structures de promotion et de gestion des agropoles by the Ministère de l’Aménagement du Territoire, de l’Habitat et des Travaux Publics and the Ministère de l’Agriculture, de l’Elevage et de la Pêche, 08 November 2019. »
PACE III Evaluation Report – October 2019,
https://www.afdb.org/sites/default/files/documents/projects-and-operations/madagascar_-_programme_dappui_a_la_competitivite_economique_-_phase_iii_pace_iii_-_rapport_devaluation_de_projet_compressed.pdf,
cites among the “3.2.7 Measures supported by PACE III the reform measures aimed at modernizing the legal and institutional framework for the development of agro-industrial growth poles, through […] (ii) the adoption of the Law governing agropoles ; (iii) the adoption of the decree governing the structure for the promotion and management of agropoles ; and (iii) the adoption of the decree defining a transparent mechanism for the allocation of land in agropoles and the specifications for private investors and local populations.” In the 2022-2026 Country Strategy Paper, the AfDB no longer talks about agropoles but repeatedly states that it supports the improvement of the business environment.
https://www.afdb.org/fr/documents/madagascar-document-de-strategie-pays-2022-2026.
(3) PEM : Plan Emergence Madagascar
(4) https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2022/03/16/Republic-of-Madagascar-First-Review-Under-the-Extended-Credit-Facility-Arrangement-Press-515241 page 66 paragraphe 38. (Traduction libre)
(5) https://www.assemblee-nationale.mg/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Loi-n%C2%B0-2007-036-sur-les-Inv.%C3%A0-Mcar.pdf
https://p1.storage.canalblog.com/28/03/448497/130046385.pdf
(6) https://edbm.mg/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Loi-n-2017-023_ZES.pdf
(9) Comité technique « Foncier & Développement », 2022 (à paraître) Les zones économiques spéciales et le foncier : tendances globales et incidences locales au Sénégal et à Madagascar, AFD, MEAE
(10) Presentation during the Réunion de validation – Plan de mise en œuvre – Stratégie nationale de l’Agribusiness – Madagascar, Visio-conférence 15 juillet 2020.
(11) http://65.39.154.62/post/view/30273-madagascar-pire-que-le-projet-daewoo-la-strategie-nationale-de-l-agrobusiness
https://ccfd-terresolidaire.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/rapport_pcaa_exe_ok.pdf
(13) https://landmatrix.org/documents/142/LMI_Africa_Report_on_investor_practices_2022.pdf
(14) https://actu.orange.mg/madagascar-doit-redevenir-le-grenier-agricole-de-locean-indien/
(15) https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/21822-madagascar-grenier-de-locean-indien-des-engagements-a-risques-a-mener-avec-precaution
https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22600-madagascar-grenier-de-locean-indien-que-les-paysans-ne-deviennent-ni-les-oublies-ni-les-victimes