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Article

30 Dec 2013

Author:
Richard Schiffman, Sydney Morning Herald

Multinationals carving up Africa for food

A gold rush is happening in Ethiopia, but it's not a hunt for the yellow metal. It's a quest for the green gold of fertile farmland. A nation more associated with periodic famine…than with agricultural bounty is leasing millions of hectares to foreign companies that want to grow and export food to places such as Saudi Arabia, China, India and Europe. One-third of the Gambela area in western Ethiopia…is being leased for the next 50 years by the…food company Karuturi Global. Forests are being clear-cut, swamps drained, rivers diverted and whole villages moved…But at what cost - to land rights, to human health, to the environment, to national stability? It is a question being asked not only in Ethiopia but across Africa.