The government proclaims land sales are part of a strategic, long-term
approach to agricultural reforms and economic development, that foreign
investment will fund infrastructure projects, create employment opportunities,
help to eradicate hunger and poverty and benefit the community, local and
national. The term “development” is itself an interesting one: distorted,
linked and commonly limited almost exclusively to economic targets, meaning
growth of GDP, established principally by the World Bank, whose policies and
practices in relation to land sales, the OI discovered, “have glossed over
critical issues such as human rights, food security and human dignity for local
populations”, and its philanthropic sister, the International Monetary Fund.
Meanwhile market fundamentalism drives the exported (one size fits all)
policies, of both ideologically entrenched organisations, that promote models
of development seeking to fulfill corporate interests first, last and at every
stage in between.