Land Acquisitions in Africa

Abstract

A British-backed multinational company, ProCana, announced a very serious investment in 2007: they wanted to build a large-capacity bioethanol plant in the Massingir region of Mozambique. To this end, they wanted to lease a total of 30,000 hectares of land from the Mozambican government to grow sugar cane. According to the plan, the bioethanol produced locally from the crop would be loaded onto tankers in the port of Maputo and exported to Europe. The investment was valued at more than half a billion dollars, which would have created around 2,000 jobs, not to mention that it would have significantly contributed to the development of Mozambique's infrastructure and the growth of its exports.