The rush for African farmland has created new opportunities for political and customary institutions to extract rents from hitherto poorly monetized land resources. This has facilitated the formation of new alliances shaped around global capital. They in turn undermine social accountability and the potential for much-needed agricultural investments to contribute to rural poverty alleviation...Therefore, in the absence of sufficiently comprehensive and effective international regulatory frameworks, host country governments bear much of the farmland governance burden. Since they tend to be ill-equipped or disinclined to provide the necessary oversight, despite the hypothetical developmental potential of these investments, Africa risks importing the costs of global resource scarcities, while the gains are exported. This calls for an urgent exploration of innovative regulatory architectures that bring together different approaches, across scales, in a manner that is complementary and mutually reinforcing.