Neo-Colonialism and Agricultural Land Grabs

Sustainability of the land deal between Syria and Sudan

Water scarcity and rising populations compel food insecure nations to rely on world markets to import food. Since the beginning of the new century, there has been an increasing trend for nations to lease or buy overseas land to secure their own food supplies through direct production. The Global Financial Crisis and food price spike of 2007-2008 sparked a proliferation of these ‘landgrabs’. These deals are driven by the food-water nexus: water scarcity is limiting factor in global food production.

Cultivating foreign lands for domestic benefit is a colonial phenomenon. Landgrab deals are the most recent adaptation and have been thus criticised as a form of neocolonialism. This dissertation examines one of earliest deals in which Sudan leases land to Syria for agricultural production. The aim of this dissertation is to determine the sustainability of the Syria-Sudan deal with particular attention to water rights. It applies the sustainability questionnaire proposed by the FAO in their research paper Landgrab or Development Opportunity as a framework for measuring sustainability in the Syria-Sudan deal. Data is taken from document analysis and the historical case study of the Gezira Scheme under British colonial rule.

This paper proposes that the deal is not sustainable and that it is unlikely to assist Syria’s agricultural goals nor Sudan’s development aspirations.

Dissertation submitted for the MSc Water Science, Policy and Management Oxford University Centre for the Environment