Foreign Investment in Land and Corporate Social Responsibility : an Investigation for Africa

Land acquisitions, emerged about 10 years ago, are an important issue for sustainable development in many countries in the South of the world, especially in Africa, which has experienced a diffused phenomenon of large scale acquisitions of agricultural land. The paper analyses who invests in agricultural land in Africa and for what purpose, while investigating investors’ profile and responsibility to ensure the economic, environmental and social sustainability of the investment. The study argues that investors may find it profitable to adopt Corporate Social Responsibility strategies in the context of land acquisitions, and provides evidence on the actual behaviour in terms of sustainability of the economic operators acquiring land in Africa since the year 2000. The results show that CSR initiatives are not sufficient to cope with the external social and environmental costs associated with land acquisitions, and that they thus need complementary actions by public, financial and civic actors.