Resumen de Grabbing of communal rangelands in Sudan: The case of large-scale mechanized rain-fed agriculture
Capturing of communal resources by investors is one of the pressing tragedies facing customary land tenure systems in Africa. This article aims to look into how large-scale mechanized agriculture is encroaching into communal rangeland in Sudan and its social and environmental consequences. It scrutinizes the steps that large-scale farmers (LSFs) have to follow in order to acquire communal resources. It is clear that the government overwhelmingly serves the interest of economic elites from urban centers by offering a diversity of support in a way that the rights of traditional local land users e.g., pastoralists and smallholder farmers are detriment. The most important formal change was the 1996 ministerial act which legitimized the illegal situation of the LSFs. At the same time, LSFs have not been forced to comply with regulations issued by state institutions. Using their financial potentialities, LSFs are not only accumulating large amounts of land but are also heavily involved in livestock rearing. Among the immediate consequences of converting communal property to individual property is creating a fertile environment for conflicts between different land users. Moreover, introducing of agricultural machinery in such marginal area is causing adverse environmental consequence such as severe soil degradation and desertification. The paper concludes that failure of the pastoralists and smallholder farmers to defend their land tenure rights might be explained by their political marginalization and the absence of their representative institutions. This calls for a new national land use legislation approach that incorporates the rights of rural communities and their associated traditional land use systems.
