Introduction: Contested Landscapes—Analysing the Role of the State, Land Reforms and Privatization in Foreign Land Deals in Africa

TL;DRAbstract

This introductory chapter of the book gives an insight into recent debates on foreign land acquisitions (FLAs) before analyzing the role of the state, land reforms and privatization in shaping foreign land deals and accompanying agrarian changes. It also traces the anatomy of other chapters, and shows how authors speak about the role of the state in transnational, foreign and domestic land acquisitions, land reforms and privatization. The chapter shows how new landscapes are being actively produced through dynamic encounters between various actors involved in a land deal, and how these transformations affect smallholders and their families reliant on land in Africa. Overall, though in different ways, the chapters demonstrate the central role of the state (encouraged by economic policy) in creating the fertile ground for large-scale land deals, in addition to highlighting the importance of detailed empirical studies to distill the rootings and becomings of these processes. Keywords:Afri

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