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FORUM
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"Land Grabbing" in Africa : issues and perspectives
Massive purchasing of farming/agricultural lands, often by foreign
companies, has been broadly discussed in international media. This
phenomenon has been subject to several Macroeconomical analyses from
official institutions such as FAO and the World Bank.
Lionel Gbaguidi, a veterinarian from Benin, a speaker in our
conferences (Trieste, Montpellier and Geneva), worried about what he
observes, has sent us a paper which we think adds an essential local
point of view to the published Macro analyses.
We publish this paper in our Forum in the hope that it will trigger
similar testimonies from a significant sample (about 20 countries) in
Africa. Bernard Bachelier, Director of the FARM Foundation (and member
of our Scientific Council) has enthusiastically welcomed our proposal
for a collaboration with our Foundation on this venture. FARM has
already published Lionel’s text on their website. We are planning to
extend our survey to other African countries with a call for papers to
our correspondents from UbuntuNet and WACREN academic networks.
Internet for African science. Where do we stand, 3 years after Montpellier?
Nearly 3 years after our workshop in December 2007 at Montpellier, a lot has happened concerning Internet for African Science. The recommendations of our workshop have contributed to the adoption of the Africa-Connect and AXIS projects by the College-to-College meeting of African and European Commissioners meeting in October 2008.
The first grids in Sub-saharan Africa were established in Senegal and South Africa. Training schools for technicians and users were set up in Durban, with the participation of the French "Institut des Grilles", directed at that time by Guy Wormser. The African regional Education and Research networks in Africa (such as UbuntuNet and WACREN) are showing significant progress.
Finally, commercial developments (SEACOM installed high capacity cables in July 2009 and further development will come in 2010 and 2011), confirmed our opinion that a real mass market for Internet exists, such as was the case for mobile phones, provided that prices are within user’s reach. We ask then to African participants of our conference in Montpellier their account about those following points :
- How those changes eventually made a difference in your day to day life (price, speed), availability and use in universities for students and for researchers ?
- We are well aware that everything hasn’t be solved. What are the next steps you think we need to undertake in order to reach our Montpellier conclusions and vision?
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