Asian Land Acquisitions in Africa: Beyond the ‘New Bandung’ or a ‘New Colonialism’?

Abstract

The ‘New Bandung’ framework presumes a stable North/South order and opposition to it. This article examines how reigning orthodoxies on the acquisition of land and agricultural investments in Africa by Asian states and corporations do not fit this model. This holds even for core-centric models such as ‘accumulation by dispossession’, which fail to capture the collapse of accumulation strategies in the global North as they relate to new powers, policies and movements in the South. Rather than a crisis of accumulation, Asian investment represents an attempt to cater to higher food demands of rising elites in the ‘emerging economies’ and a class collaboration between them and African elites. This represents the end of a process of expansion of the global North that had begun circa 1750. It follows that the future can no longer rely upon North/South polar models and theories.