ADDIS ABABA, November 11, 2025 – As African leaders, policymakers and researchers gather for the Sixth Conference on Land Policy in Africa [CLPA], civil society groups are issuing a powerful challenge to the dominant development model that treats African land as “vacant,” “underused,” and open for exploitation.
New evidence shows how this myth fuels large-scale land grabs, ecological destruction, and community dispossession across the African continent.
As the African Union Commission, the African Development Bank and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa meet this week in Addis Ababa to talk Land Governance, Justice and Reparations for Africans and Descendants of People of The African Diaspora, this evidence highlights policy gaps that need urgent attention.
At a high-profile side-event at the CLPA, experts from Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa [AFSA], Institute for Poverty, Land, and Agrarian Studies [PLAAS] and the Oakland Institute will launch two landmark reports tomorrow.
The event will feature panellists from civil society and academia, and will be facilitated Prof. Ruth Hall from PLAAS at the University of the Western Cape. Participants will discuss how these narratives play out in their own countries and how African institutions can resist external pressures to privatise and commercialise land.
The reports
Land Availability and Land Use Changes in Africa – this report by PLAAS, AFSA and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy debunks the persistent claim that Africa holds vast tracts of unused farmland ready for industrial agriculture. The report exposes how competing pressures — from extractive industries, biofuels, and carbon markets — are driving massive land-use change and undermining communal tenure systems.
Climatewash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights, led by the Oakland Institute, warns that new World Bank programmes on land tenure and “climate goals” are clearing the way for agribusiness, mining, and speculative carbon markets, while dismantling customary and public land governance systems.
The two reports have a three-point call to action to reclaim Africa’s land.
End the myth and the grabs
Reject the false narrative of “unused” or “abundant” African land. Halt land grabs disguised as development or climate solutions, and guarantee Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) for all affected communities.
Reclaim policy power
Redirect public and donor finance away from industrial agriculture, extractivism, and carbon markets. Invest instead in agroecology, which restores soils, feeds communities, and strengthens Africa’s climate resilience.
Fund the real solution — agroecology
Free African land policy from the control of international financial institutions and corporate interests. Land governance must serve people, not profit — protecting communal tenure, women’s land rights, and ecological integrity.
During PLAAS’s October 2025 Land, Life and Society conference at the University of the Western Cape, academics, researchers and civil society organisations from around the globe highlighted these questions from their own experiences on different continents and vast contexts. The world is calling for natural resource redistribution, and the Cape Town Declaration, co-created by over 250 delegates from 53 countries, underscore the significance of prioritising redistribution to enhance the lives of the world’s citizens.
“These policies are the latest front in the capture of African land and resources,” said Mariann Bassey-Olsson of the AFSA / Friends of the Earth [FoE Nigeria], “They are sold as climate solutions and investment opportunities but in reality, deepen inequality, weaken land rights, and accelerate ecological collapse.”
Professor Ruth Hall of PLAAS added: “The idea of land abundance is a colonial fiction that refuses to die. Our research shows that Africa’s lands are already intensively used and deeply valued by millions of rural people. The real challenge is not to ‘unlock’ land for investors, but to protect it for communities and future generations.”
Frédéric Mousseau, Policy Director at the Oakland Institute, warned that the World Bank’s land reform agenda as it stands would be disastrous for Africa. “By promoting titling and land commodification under the guise of climate action, the Bank is opening the door for foreign interests to control Africa’s land and resources while destroying communal systems that have sustained African societies for centuries.”
The organisers call on African governments and regional bodies to reject the commodification of land, defend communal tenure systems, and reclaim sovereignty over land policy from financial institutions and foreign corporations.
“Land is life, culture, and identity,” said Bassey-Olsson. “Africa must not trade it away for false climate promises and corporate profits.”
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