Is Water the Hidden Agenda of Agricultural Land Acquisition in sub-Saharan Africa?
P Woodhouse and A S Ganho
University of Manchester
Abstract The many headlines focusing on ‘land-grabbing’ have distracted attention from the role that access to water plays in underpinning the projected productivity of foreign direct investment in acquisition of agricultural land in developing countries. This paper will review the explicit and implicit requirements for access to water for irrigation in planned agricultural projects on land that is subject to such foreign investment deals. It will focus particularly on land acquisition in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where, for savanna ecosystems that cover some two thirds of the area, rainfall uncertainty is the principal constraint to increased agricultural productivity. To the extent that foreign investment ‘land grab’ deals result in the expansion of irrigation in SSA, it is therefore arguable that they may accelerate significantly the development of water infrastructure that will reduce uncertainty and risk inherent in much of African agriculture. For this to be the case, the benefits of such water resource development will need to be broadly distributed. There is, however, some evidence that foreign investment may compete with existing water use, given that land deals have in some instances included provisions for priority access to water in cases of scarcity. Using available secondary sources, the paper will assess the extent to which impacts on water use may constitute a significant hidden agenda of land deals.
Introduction: Land Grab and water requirements Availability of adequate moisture is a fundamental requirement for agricultural use of land. Designation of exclusive rights to use land provides prior rights to ‘green’ water (rainfall and plant transpiration) on that land. However, in many contexts it also implies a demand on ‘blue’ water resources (rivers, lakes and aquifers), since agriculture typically accounts for 7080 percent of such water ‘abstracted’ (pumped, stored or diverted) in less industrialised economies (UNDP, 2006). However, in current debates about the impact of foreign investment in agricultural land, the consideration of water has been peripheral. In part, this may be due to the more or less purposive construction of water as a distinct ‘sector’, notably since the International Conference on Water and the Environment in Dublin in 1992 (Young et al. 1994), and the subsequent establishment of the ‘World Water Council’ and the highprofile World Water Forums it has convened every three years since. The consolidation of water as a domain of separate professional and academic concern has been further reinforced by the political importance of access to water for drinking and hygiene as a ‘basic need’ or ‘human right’. While often accounting for relatively small percentages (typically ten to twenty percent) of the total water resource use, failure to invest sufficiently to provide adequate access to water for drinking and washing has become emblematic of wider development failure and immiseration, as indicated by the prominence of drinking water and sanitation improvement among the Millennium Development Goals. It is not to detract from the importance of this ‘water and sanitation services’ agenda to observe that ‘the water sector’ has come to be primarily associated with it, and the identification of water as integral to land use correspondingly weakened.
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Is Water the Hidden Agenda of Agricultural Land Acquisition in sub-Saharan Africa?
P Woodhouse and A S Ganho
University of Manchester
Abstract The many headlines focusing on ‘land-grabbing’ have distracted attention from the role that access to water plays in underpinning the projected productivity of foreign direct investment in acquisition of agricultural land in developing countries. This paper will review the explicit and implicit requirements for access to water for irrigation in planned agricultural projects on land that is subject to such foreign investment deals. It will focus particularly on land acquisition in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where, for savanna ecosystems that cover some two thirds of the area, rainfall uncertainty is the principal constraint to increased agricultural productivity. To the extent that foreign investment ‘land grab’ deals result in the expansion of irrigation in SSA, it is therefore arguable that they may accelerate significantly the development of water infrastructure that will reduce uncertainty and risk inherent in much of African agriculture. For this to be the case, the benefits of such water resource development will need to be broadly distributed. There is, however, some evidence that foreign investment may compete with existing water use, given that land deals have in some instances included provisions for priority access to water in cases of scarcity. Using available secondary sources, the paper will assess the extent to which impacts on water use may constitute a significant hidden agenda of land deals.
Introduction: Land Grab and water requirements Availability of adequate moisture is a fundamental requirement for agricultural use of land. Designation of exclusive rights to use land provides prior rights to ‘green’ water (rainfall and plant transpiration) on that land. However, in many contexts it also implies a demand on ‘blue’ water resources (rivers, lakes and aquifers), since agriculture typically accounts for 7080 percent of such water ‘abstracted’ (pumped, stored or diverted) in less industrialised economies (UNDP, 2006). However, in current debates about the impact of foreign investment in agricultural land, the consideration of water has been peripheral. In part, this may be due to the more or less purposive construction of water as a distinct ‘sector’, notably since the International Conference on Water and the Environment in Dublin in 1992 (Young et al. 1994), and the subsequent establishment of the ‘World Water Council’ and the highprofile World Water Forums it has convened every three years since. The consolidation of water as a domain of separate professional and academic concern has been further reinforced by the political importance of access to water for drinking and hygiene as a ‘basic need’ or ‘human right’. While often accounting for relatively small percentages (typically ten to twenty percent) of the total water resource use, failure to invest sufficiently to provide adequate access to water for drinking and washing has become emblematic of wider development failure and immiseration, as indicated by the prominence of drinking water and sanitation improvement among the Millennium Development Goals. It is not to detract from the importance of this ‘water and sanitation services’ agenda to observe that ‘the water sector’ has come to be primarily associated with it, and the identification of water as integral to land use correspondingly weakened.
to read full article please click on
/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IS%20WATER%20HIDDEN%20AGENDA%20.pdf
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