Implications of Land Grabbing and Resource Curse for Sustainable Development Goal 2 in Africa: Can Globalization Be Blamed?

Abstract

Globalization, as described by Joseph Stiglitz in his books Globalization and its Discontents and Making Globalization Work, draws on both pains and gains. These two seemingly incompatible positions, where globalization is used as a platform to partner or collaborate with other countries by grabbing lands for sustainable developmental initiatives such as the attainment of SDG 2, but ends up dispossessing the host communities of their lands, form the crux of this paper. Although not all land grabbing is illegal, especially if lands are leased within the confines of a country’s land tenure laws, the reality in some African countries shows that lands are grabbed without following land tenure laws. This partly limits the capacity of African countries to effectively control and monitor the activities of foreign land grabbers or investors on leased lands. This loophole in the governance of arable lands in Africa has made many foreign partners use Africa’s arable lands for their own benefit at the expense of Africa’s food sovereignty initiative. It has partly made Africa appear to be a resource-cursed region, where it can hardly feed its population despite its global partnerships and huge land resources. Drawing on systematic desktop reviews of the literature, this study asks if globalization is contributing to Africa’s hunger index and resource curse. The findings expand the discussion on how Africa is still not able to feed its population and end hunger, despite the potential offered by globalization. It suggests approaches through which Africa can optimize globalization in ways that support determined efforts at ending hunger in Africa.

1. Introduction

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the greatest challenge of the current period and need to be pursued with all countries making a pragmatic contribution (Ali et al., 2023). Globalization, which is the interdependence of the world’s populations, economies, or cultures, is driven by cross-border flows of people, investment, trade in goods and services, and information unquestionably has advantages and disadvantages [1]. While its benefits include trade liberalization, access to information, a vast flow of capital goods and services, technology transfer, and access to foreign aid, it is criticized for promoting unhealthy competition among states, exploitation of resources and labor, imbalanced trade, and the loss of domestic jobs [1]. Through globalization, nations have lost control of their resources, thus leading to what is known as the resource curse. It arises when a country or continent is not fully benefiting from its huge resource endowment [2]. Similarly, globalization stimulates land grabbing, which is the acquisition of large-scale land by an individual or entity, public or private, domestic or foreign, following laid-down land regulations. Land is usually allocated through ownership, lease, concession, quota, or general power. It could be legal or illegal for purposes of resource control, commodification, and speculation [3]. However, the motive behind international land grabbing has provoked studies that question the utility value of globalization in Africa. Land grabs, whether legal or illegal, somehow occur at the expense of agroecology, stewardship, subsistence farmers, food sovereignty, and human rights [4]. It has partly heightened poverty and hunger through the very thing (globalization, via global partnerships and collaborations) that the world believes will aid the achievement of the end to hunger. This is true even though the world has experienced tremendous improvement and civilization in technology, migration, productivity in food production, and innovations in global connectivity [5]. However, through globalization, developed countries such as China, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and a host of others have maintained a stranglehold on Africa and its resources, including large-scale arable lands, as they promise to support the continent through partnerships, financial assistance, loans, humanitarian services, technology transfers, and other veiled collaborations [6]. Although these interventions are aided by the spirit of globalization, their consequences outweigh the benefits accrued by Africa [7]

Today, despite huge deposits of raw materials and natural resources in Africa as well as globalization spreading to the continent, Africa continues to struggle and lag behind other continents in critical indicators of development [8]. Africa still suffers greatly from poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2) was proposed as part of globalization policy to end hunger by 2030 [9]. However, Africa seems to lack the capacity to achieve this goal, despite the description of Africa as a raw material continent [10,11]. The inability of Africa to feed its populations and end hunger despite the huge availability of arable landed resources, and the deliberate leasing or allocation of lands to foreign partners to boost food production in Africa raises some serious questions, such as: why is Africa still faced with the problem of hunger? Could Africa’s hunger index rate be connected to the fallouts of globalization? Why is Africa not able to feed its population despite collaborations, collective action on climate change, and partnerships with developed countries? Can the resource curse in some African countries be linked to globalization? These questions are better addressed by focusing on international land grabbing, especially those specifically allocated for large-scale food production. Since the attainment of SDG 2 requires partnerships in terms of the transfer of technology that can combat harsh climatic threats or the leasing of lands to grow large-scale food production, this can enhance Africa’s capacity to feed its population. It is therefore important to examine big international land grabbing drawn from different ethnic groups in host communities. One other reason for this choice is that globalization drives international land grabs, hence, the focus of this article.

All the foregoing questions are well documented in the SDGs, which are an element of globalization. Collective action on climate to boost food security and protect lives, the influx of multinational corporations (MNCs), and corporate social responsibility (CSR) to partner and engage in the transformation of African communities and assist in the best possible ways to boost food security in Africa, among others, are essential features of globalization [12,13]. However, the reality in most African countries shows that many developed countries, international organizations, and international non-governmental organizations, as well as global financial institutions or partners, have deployed the deceptive strategy of land grabbing, foreign aid, and assistance to impoverished Africa [14,15] The displacement of 15,000 Ugandans described in [16] to pave way for the planting of timber to mitigate climate change problems by New Forests, a British company, under the auspices of the United Nations Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program is one amongst numerous examples of land grabs and displacement problems in Africa [11,17]. It raises the question as to whether the same dispossession of land and displacement can take place in the US or China [18], and the answer is that it could not happen, even though the US itself was created due to land dispossession [19].

It is the contention of this article that, similar to the era of colonialism, African countries are forcefully taken over or seized by foreign imperialists. Although not with force in this era, Africa’s arable lands are subtly under the control of foreign investors or partners due to weak regulations on land tenure systems in some African states. It portrays an unlawful allocation of lands to foreign investors at the expense of local peasant farmers, human rights, and stewardship. In the name of global partnerships for agricultural development, food sovereignty in Africa is gradually waning due to the imposition of obnoxious food policies. These policies include genetically modified organisms (GMOs), mono-cropping as against the agro-ecological model, soulless capitalism, and the granting of low-interest credit or loans, among other unhealthy practices by Africa’s global partners [20,21]. African lands have been deceptively used by these global giants to further under develop and annex Africa [22,23,24]. China’s interest in Africa, especially in sectors such as agriculture, technology, infrastructure, and finance, aptly buttressed its resource control motive in some African countries [25,26]. Similarly, the West, especially the United States, through its dominance in organizations such as the UN, WHO, World Bank, FAO, IMF, and WTO, has imposed Western-oriented policies that have consistently made Africa’s economy dependent on the West [10,27]. The policy of collective action on climate change may look good on paper, but many African countries lack the capacity to procure technology for the timely detection and prevention of climate change impacts, hence Africa’s current dependent status [11,28]. The policy outcomes or goals of these Western-oriented policies do not always ‘trickle down’ to local communities in Africa [11,29]. For example, the erection of sophisticated machines to control, detect, and mitigate harsh climatic conditions often leads to the displacement of indigenous people and the dispossession of their lands with little or no compensation [30]. This does not only affect the capacity of peasant farmers to produce food but also creates tendencies toward hunger and poverty. Hunger is imminent when local farmers are dispossessed of their lands by foreign farmers in their host local farming communities. This is because it is on record that most global giants, having acquired land, used the same land to create more job opportunities and feed their own populations at the expense of indigenous African people [31].

The case of Africa as the most vulnerable continent, despite its lowest contribution to greenhouse emissions, heightens the already existing poverty and hunger index in Africa [32]. This is because, in addition to the inherent climatic problems suffered by Africa, the displacement of Africans from their lands in order to combat climate change has further impoverished them [33]. The large scale of arable lands, the inability of African farmers to predict uncertainties over future supplies of food, and increasing demand for food and biofuel drive foreign companies, land speculators or investors, and superpowers to Africa in search of lands, which some of them have subtly used to relegate Africa’s food sovereignty and undermine peasant farmers [34,35]. Heightened international interest in the acquisition and leasing of land adversely affects food production at local and national levels [36]. Land grabs, especially those allocated without due process, often lead to the displacement of people and the dispossession of their lands. As people are displaced or dispossessed of their lands, it becomes very easy to grab land, which in turn limits the capacity of local peasant farmers to productively produce food [21,37]. How could local peasant farmers engage in farming after the dispossession of their lands? This question further points to the fact that land grabs are strongly related to the resource curse, which is the inability of Africa to fully benefit from the abundance of its land resources, raw materials, and global agricultural partnerships. Africa is currently not food sovereign and cannot adequately feed its populations despite being labeled the raw materials continent. Hunger still exists in Africa, despite the fact that it is home to valuable raw materials or natural resources [38]. This brings to the fore the importance of this article, which tries to examine how land grabs (legal acquisition of land for development, speculation, and commodification) and resource curses (i.e., hunger amid massive abundances of raw materials that can be used to grow food) undermine Africa’s quest to achieve SDG 2. Zero hunger is the dream and goal of the world, including Africa. The extent to which this goal is achieved through effective utilization of the potential of globalization remains the focus of this article. Indeed, the positive and negative implications of globalization in Africa have received attention. However, empirical evidence is scarce on how globalization through land grabbing heightens hunger on an already hunger-ravaged continent. Research in this direction will guide the design of an Afrocentric policy intervention to resolve the problem of land grabbing and the resource curse, which, in the long run, will boost food security in Africa. The objective of this article is to assess this interdependent initiative by enhancing collaborative efforts and global partnerships to promote vibrant and mutually beneficial food security in Africa. The findings are significant for theory and policy. Theoretically, it expands the discussion on the dimensions of land grabs and resource curses and how they undermine the attainment of SDG 2. The findings also suggest a means by which African countries can optimize indigenous knowledge systems and technology to enhance strategic efforts at improving food security in Africa. More importantly, it expands knowledge on the relevance of integrated food security and sustainability in Africa.

Integrated food security requires an innovative multi-partner initiative to improve food security, nutrition analysis, and decision-making. This shows that the sustainability of food security in Africa depends largely on contributions from other countries [39]. The attainment of SDG 2, that is, zero hunger in Africa and other emerging economies, also depends on the ability of Africa to engage in multi-level partner initiatives that can promote its participation in the analysis and decision-making process to improve food security and nutrition [40]. One of Africa’s important engagements in multi-partner initiatives, which further aids integrated food security, is that Africa, through these initiatives, can produce food that can sustain its teeming population [41]. In other words, this initiative can enhance the sustainability of Africa and other emerging economies towards ending hunger and malnutrition. Thus, Africa needs to be more proactive in innovative multi-partner decisions with other countries to boost its food security [42].

Following the introduction section, the article utilizes the social constructivist as a theoretical construct in explaining food security and SDGs in Africa. This article appraises the patterns and nature of land grabs, the resource curse, and their implications for food security in Africa. The next section discusses the impact of globalization on Africa’s hunger index rate and the resource curse. It concludes with discussions on issues of indigenous knowledge systems and technology to boost food security in Africa. To achieve all these goals, the article utilizes a systematic research method that was sourced through extensive desktop reviews of extant studies that discussed issues in detail relating to the subject matter. The rationale for the choice of this method is based on the fact that issues of globalization, land grabbing, resource curse, and SDGs, especially those empirically analyzed, are readily available in the literature, hence the need for thorough systematic reviews. It is hoped that a systematic review method provides the opportunity for a detailed analysis, which is the focus of this paper.

2. Social Constructivism, Food Security, and SDG 2

Social constructivism advances the knowledge that theories are constructed due to the social development of an environment. Constructivism posits that the construction of knowledge is the product of social interaction, interpretation, and understanding. It posits that there is no perfect theory that is not fallible [43]. It argues that the social dimension of human relations is germane to the much-touted fourth industrial revolution (4IR) and food security in Africa. It allows for the training of people, especially women, who are known to be custodians of organic seeds for sustainable food production [44]. It is a variety of cognitive constructivism that emphasizes the collaborative nature of people in an environment. It argues that the development of society largely depends on social interactions and relations among those living in the environment. To interact in a locality, native intelligence or indigenous knowledge is required. It is needed to boost food security in Africa, and the functionality of the technology largely depends on human relations and interactions, which are largely based on local indigenous knowledge. All components of food security—availability, accessibility, affordability, and quality—are interdependent and can only be developed and sustained through healthy human relations and social interactions in an environment.

The theory provides alternative ways to conceptualize food security among states in the global system. It sees food security as a social construction, which makes it easier to understand how people are mobilized to promote food production, availability, accessibility, affordability, and utilization. In the analysis of food security, understanding ‘reality’ as a social construction means that identities, national interests, and security threats are socially constructed through interstate interaction and domestic political and strategic cultures [45]. Social constructivism has emphasized the role of international organizations as sites of social interaction that can produce changes in actors’ identities and interests. Walters [45] specifies how norms, not just material power, provide the basis for an intersubjective understanding of social purpose among states. This understanding was shown to be critical to the formation and durability of the post-war international order. Social constructivism advocates for models and standards through mutual and cooperative interactions that can influence states’ decisions to change their attitude against the use of force and coercion against other states in the international system. This explains why land grabs and resource curses are social constructions emanating from the environment. Social constructivism believes that these social constructs can be amicably addressed by socialization and diffusion, which are largely based on interactions and human relations.

Since the issue of international land grabbing is mostly perpetrated by actors such as international organizations and states, social constructivism advocates for authority, that is, “the ability of one actor to use institutional and discursive resources to induce deference from others” [46,47]. It underscores that international organizations (IOs) are not just servants of states; authority provides IOs with self-sufficiency regarding states and non-state actors. It is also opined that IOs sometimes accomplish more than states can accomplish; they adequately transmute broad mandates into specific ways of acting in the world that change the behavior of state and non-state actors and use knowledge and authority to regulate the social world [46]. Authority itself is understood to be a social construction that is deployed to check the excesses of some states or IOs in the international system.

This theory adequately explains the implications of land grabbing for zero hunger, as it stipulates that there should be mutual social interactions and human relations in the form of the sharing of ideas and knowledge on how to adequately tackle the issues of land grabbing and the resource curse that has been bedeviling the African continent. On the global scene, international organizations and other actors are expected to amicably discuss the issue of land grabbing, which somehow has given more foreign partners more control over resources and raw materials in Africa. This requires concerted efforts for sustainable solutions. Inclusion and consultation with the indigenous people over the use of their lands are essential for the attainment of these solutions. This might have led to the conclusion that human relations in terms of the sharing of indigenous knowledge and technology are required for sustainable food security in Africa [48,49]. Africa’s quest for food sovereignty could be better achieved through global partnership and collaborative efforts aimed at considering the plight of peasant farmers, inclusiveness, and respect for the human rights of host communities.

The achievement of SDG 2 is well captured in the core principles of social constructivism. Zero hunger is a construct that is envisaged to be achieved through collaborations and mutual social interactions among citizens in society. Joint collaborations and interventions between the government and the people to address issues of poverty and hunger will serve as spurs for general development and food security [37]. Social interactions and the dynamism of constant change in the international system largely determine the quality of partnerships and collaborations among states toward the call for the eradication of hunger [48]. To end hunger, Africa’s capacity to produce quality food depends on human relations and interactions. These social interactions should include women, who are more active in food production [49,50]. The empowerment of women is a strong requirement for food security in Africa. This is because women are more reliable custodians of organic seeds for sustainable food production [51]. Social interactions that include women, according to social constructivism, strengthen their productivity in food production. This is due to the fact that women are good managers of credit facilities to boost food security [52]. Thus, ensuring more access for women to relevant inputs will promote food security and empower the landless majority in the state with a greater focus on women and girls [53].

3. Methodology

A qualitative research method forms the basis of data collection in this article. It draws on systematic desktop reviews of key issues of land grabbing and resource curse in Africa. It has been argued that a systematic approach is appropriate for studies that uniquely provide detailed summaries of reviews in response to research questions [54]. Since this study draws on research questions (such as could globalization be responsible for Africa’s high hunger index and could it be responsible for Africa’s resource curse?), thus, it is more convenient to adopt a systematic review method. Its validation hinges on the fact that a similar approach has been used in studies and research conducted in education, engineering, humanities, social sciences, tropical medicine, and health [55,56,57]. Evidence shows most studies that used this approach provided answers to research questions in the form of findings [58]. Data were also drawn from empirical studies, verifiable government documents, online materials, periodicals, newspapers, journals, and policy notes for comprehensive reviews and discussions of findings or answers to the research questions. These data were analyzed using thematic descriptive content analysis.

4. Land Grabbing and Resource Curse: The Misery of Hunger in Africa

Land grabbing and the resource curse are not new in Africa. Africa has long continually suffered from these contemporary issues, which partly contribute to the misery of hunger in Africa [11]. Land grabbing is simply the practice of large-scale land acquisition by individuals, entities, governments, international organizations, and foreigners for speculation, investment, commodification, and resource control purposes [3]. It is the lawful acquisition of large-scale lands, especially those that follow the laid-down procedural means or approach of host countries. Evidence shows that some developed nations, foreign investors, and governments, in a bid to partner with Africa and end hunger or combat the impacts of climate change, have grabbed land for food production and biofuel needs [59]. Land grabbing as the right or power to land resources or large quantities of land acquired in a bid to respond to the food security crisis adequately, combat the impacts of climate change, and meet financial exigencies [60]. Although this is a global practice, the way it is acquired in Africa seems to be restrictive of Africa’s quest for food sovereignty, agroecology, and human rights. This is because it has governance problems, such as deficient information or data on large-scale lands and the exclusion of host communities from the land allocation decision-making process, among others [21]. It tends to favor more foreign investors, governments, or states at the expense of stewardship and peasant farmers in home countries.

Peasant farmers, who largely depend on land as a means of livelihood, are more affected by unlawful land grabs. It also impacts herders, who are forest-dependent [61]. African governments with weak regulations on land tenure systems often violate existing communal and customary land tenure laws to re-allocate land to foreign governments, speculative investors, and organizations for agricultural development [11]. This inordinate practice by some African governments has partly contributed to the forceful acquisition or dispossession of land from the real owners under the guise that such land will be used for developmental purposes [21]. However, the reality in most African states reveals that land grabbing for developmental purposes hardly translates to the development of host communities where the lands were originally acquired [61]. It is the poor, displaced, and marginalized communities that lose land in Africa, mainly because they lack the power and influence to compete with foreign land speculators or investors. It is imperative to note that despite Africa’s endowment of land resources and raw materials, hunger and malnutrition still persist on the continent. This is otherwise known as the “resource curse”. A resource curse is an inability to fully benefit from the abundance of resources endowed or available in a country or state. Africa, despite its huge land resources and raw materials, as well as its initiative to lease land for developmental purposes, still cannot feed its populations [37,62]. It is a resource curse for Africa if, after partnering with foreign land speculators or investors through the leasing of its landed resources and huge raw materials, its people still suffer from hunger. One in five people, or 21% of the African population, still suffers from hunger, while 282 million are undernourished [63]. This negative outcome of Africa’s land leasing or grabbing initiative has been blamed on a lack of accurate data on the scale, trends, geographical distribution of land, and actors in large-scale land deals [61].

Land deals, especially those in large quantities, are shrouded in secrecy and not transparent [21]. Variations in timescales, methodologies, and criteria for land deals make it very difficult to compare information about land grabbing in Africa [64]. From the foregoing, it can be deduced that the inability of African leaders to follow procedural and approved regulations on land tenure or the unlawful leasing of land to foreign partners is partly the reason for the resource curse in Africa. It shows that there is a strong relationship between land grabbing and the resource curse in Africa. African governments that jettisoned lawful allocation of land due to weak land tenure regulations or that allocated lands without due process because they wanted to balance their budgets would certainly not benefit fully from the proceeds of investment on the leased or allocated lands [21,61]. This is because once foreign land speculators or investors bribe their way to acquire land, as is currently performed in some African countries, it will be very difficult for these African governments to control and audit investment by these land speculators or grabbers [11]. This is because regulating agencies, at the point of land allocation, abandoned the land tenure laws [11,65]. Moreover, since one of the aims of land speculators or grabbers is to attain access to resources in host communities through collaborative efforts, they may likely benefit more from the proceeds of investment in the landed resources than African countries [21]. Thus, it can be interpreted to mean that while the abandonment of land tenure regulations by some African governments during land allocations has retarded Africa, it has also attracted more foreign land speculators to Africa [66]. Africa is home to uncultivated lands, and this could have informed the conclusion that uncultivated land with the prospect of boosting significant food outcomes attracts foreign investors [67]. Despite the fact that Africa accounts for about 60% of the world’s arable land, most African countries hardly achieve 25% of their potential yield [68]. This may have partly contributed to an increase in China’s investment in the agricultural sector in Africa. Land grabs raise concerns about corruption, large-scale resettlement of populations, and even the recolonization of Africa. It is imperative to note that some developed countries persistently hide under the pretense of climate mitigation action, corporate social responsibility (CSR), technology transfer, collaborative efforts in food security, foreign aid, and financial assistance to unduly exploit and occupy lands in Africa.

The case of Chinese loans and partnerships in agricultural food production in some African countries, where the latter default on loan repayment, often leads to the forfeiture of national assets. This may include the loss of cash crop plantations, where food meant for African host countries is shipped to China. This succinctly explains the problem of land grabbing in Africa [26,69,70]. It is the largest bilateral lender for public sector loans across the African continent [26,71,72]. Despite this large economic footprint, there is often very little information in the public domain on the specifics of its lending and investments [73,74]. Today, through its loan policy in Africa, China has been able to provide business and employment opportunities to Chinese citizens and contractors working in Africa [71]. Similarly, because China, on the one hand, often imposes most of these loans on infrastructural development in Africa, African governments, on the other hand, provide land for the construction of these infrastructure projects [26]. This imposition has benefited China more than host African countries because of her “going-out strategy”, which tends to give more priority to Chinese companies as contractors or investors for any projects, including agricultural projects, financed by Chinese loans [26]. These companies, rather than giving job opportunities to citizens of host African countries, prefer giving job opportunities to Chinese citizens in host African countries. This describes a situation where China gives out money with one hand and collects back all the proceeds of that money with another hand [26,75]. It is similar to a situation where China agreed to assist or partner with some African countries to boost food production through the recruitment of local peasant farmers but went behind the host nation’s back by recruiting Chinese farmers and still transferred the harvest back to China [76]. This does not only undermine stewardship, peasant farmers, and human rights; it also raises the question of whether Africa wants to feed China or itself. This was well captured in the forms of large-scale investments, often involving transnational purchases of land to create jobs and bring new technology to the sector, and small-holder farming that neglects local rights, extracts short-term profits at the cost of long-term sustainability, ignores social standards, and fosters corruption on a large scale [68].

However, on the procurement of land for large investments in the creation of jobs, evidence such as that shows discrepancies between interest in large-scale investment in African agriculture and actual investment [10,68]. China has been criticized for grabbing land cheaply from Africa, using underpaid Africans as laborers, and producing food for its citizens back home at the expense of Africa [26,73,77]. This has implications for hunger as African countries, especially those that are politically sensitive and food insecure, will lose control over their own food supplies when they need them most. It also has severe implications for new colonialism, agrarian colonialism, or eco-colonialism. It is on record that countries such as Ghana, Ethiopia, Mali, Tanzania, Kenya, and Sudan have grossly engaged in the leasing of millions of hectares of their lands for biofuels and agricultural production; this could be similar to “new colonialism or agrarian colonialism” currently spreading to African countries [68,78]. Land acquisition in Africa has been unprecedented, and there is a huge gap between declaring an intention to lease land and the actual cultivation of the land for food production. Investment in African lands for food production that will benefit the population of the investing countries is not new; what is new is the rate of land deals that have been transacted. Land deals in Africa have been enormous, such that local farmers and investors hardly have the opportunity to procure land for food cultivation. This is even worse for women, who are major contributors to food production in Africa [9,37,79,80]. Another unprecedented thing is the issue of what the land is used for and the beneficiary. Africa’s inability to address gaps in the effective management of leased or acquired lands for developmental purposes creates the tendency to have huge deposits of resources that cannot necessarily translate into wealth or freedom from hunger and poverty. This is similar to a resource curse because, despite Africa’s huge land resources and abundance of raw materials, it can hardly boast of fully reaping positive outcomes from the resources or raw materials. This depicts a situation where those who own the resources (land) cheaply sell their land to foreigners or investors and work as laborers on their sold land to earn a livelihood. As foreign countries (US or China) smile to the bank to receive huge dividends from their investment [70,81]. This adequately describes the resource curse situation in Africa.

Similarly, multinational corporations, through CSR, have illegally grabbed lands for the benefit of their home states at the expense of the host countries. These corporations hide under the pretense of bringing socio-economic development to areas of their operations by illegally acquiring lands and assets belonging to host communities in Africa, as their assistance to developing African countries is embedded in an unequal exchange arrangement [10,82,83,84]. It has been argued that negotiation dexterity, diplomatic power, economic preponderance, and socio-cultural upper hands of multinational cooperations or states undermine African nations’ bargaining prowess during negotiations over trade, including land; this has been found to be detrimental to the economic development of the continent [10]. MNCs have also been accused of preventing the free flow of indigenous knowledge among the local people in host countries. They have been accused of hijacking and converting high-income-producing indigenous knowledge to their own through patenting, despite the global geographical recognition of such knowledge belonging to host communities [20,37]. The promise to assist the people of San in processing the hoodia plant without infringing on their right of ownership, where there was a total disregard for the convention on biological diversity (CBD) by the foreign MNCs, aptly explained the domineering nature of the negotiation process by MNCs.

MNCs are opposed to local, vibrant initiatives that could have aided the development of host communities. They disarticulate the sources of economic stability in host communities as local people are forced to produce what they cannot eat and consume what they cannot produce. They are objects of de-capitalization and de-industrialization in Africa [10,27]. The claim that land is grabbed to create jobs in the agricultural sector is absolutely not correct and misleading, as most of these multinational cooperatives only cultivate the land for food production to feed their own populations and not those of Africa. They grabbed lands in host communities under the pretense of utilizing those lands for the improvement of infrastructure (roads, bridges, and schools, among others) and mitigation against climate change. In doing this, members of host communities are displaced and forcefully ejected from their lands, only to realize later that the main motive is to use the land to feed the population of the home countries [77,82].

Despite the endowment of Africa with raw materials and natural resources, it lacks the capacity to process these resources or raw materials into finished products. This has made Africa rely on developed countries for the processing of its resources. This reliance is partly due to a lack of sophisticated technology and technical know-how. However, empirical evidence shows that the refined or processed resources are sold back to Africa at a very high price, thus making it appear as a resource curse to Africa, which originally owned the resources [85]. The need for Africa to have some of its resources processed into finished products overseas makes her accept stringent conditions during loan negotiations with Bretton Woods institutions and other big powers (the IMF and World Bank, China, and the US) [10,26]. The imposition of mono-cropping against an agro-ecological model of sustainable development in food security in Africa is a sign and an indicator that Africa suffers from a resource curse. It literally means that Africa’s resources cannot transform it from its poverty and hunger-striking state to a more desired and sustainable level.

This explains why Africa, despite her arable lands and her description as the world’s capital of raw materials, is still largely poor and faces hunger, malnutrition, and inequalities. How could a continent so endowed with arable, fertile lands with huge raw materials be this poor and affected by hunger? This question confirms the fact that central Africa has the highest extreme poverty rate of 54.8%, followed by Southern Africa at 45.1%. Rates in Western and Eastern Africa are 36.8% and 33.8%, respectively [86]. The answer to this question is not far-fetched, as globalization not only triggered massive attraction to Africa for her unprocessed raw materials and uncultivated lands, but it also led to land grabbing for massive food production for commercial purposes rather than for humanitarian sustainability or purpose. This might have led to the conclusion that the description of Africa as the food basket and raw materials of the world has made many multinational corporations (MNCs) and states scramble for African countries' resources and, more recently, grab African arable lands to produce food for the North and Middle East markets [87]. Relatedly, Amusan (2018) argued that African resources are fast becoming a curse if multinational corporations (MNCs) continue to engage in capital flight and soulless capitalism, where monies realized from food production on the grabbed African land are sold outside African markets.

5. Mapping the Impact of Globalization on Global Partnerships, Hunger-Index, and Resource Curse in Africa

Although globalization often draws praise and recognition, it has also been blamed for its negative side effects across continents, including Africa [88]. Indeed, Africa has benefited and suffered greatly from globalization. While studies have extensively examined how Africa benefited from globalization, findings about Africa’s pains, especially how they contribute to Africa’s hunger index rate, are scarce in the literature. It is a fact that prior to the establishment of the SDGs, hunger already existed in Africa; SDG 2 was only a global response to end hunger in the world, including Africa [89]. To achieve this goal, all countries in the world are expected to take action against hunger [90]. However, while some countries seem to have the capacity in terms of technology, knowledge, and finance for massive food production that can solve their food crisis, others, especially their African counterparts, seem to be highly deficient in modern climate control, food production technologies, and finance to meet their food production needs [89,90]. In the same vein, while Africa has a large scale of arable lands, raw materials, and viable markets for agricultural harvests or products, their counterparts on other continents seem to have limited arable lands, markets, or raw materials required for their food production [11]. These shortfalls and limited capacities across continents form the basis of global partnerships, interdependency, and interconnectedness. With partnerships, countries across continents have been able to have access to agricultural funds, technology transfer, foreign aid, financial assistance, arable lands, raw materials, and markets to enhance their food production capacity [21]. From the foregoing, it is clear that partnerships can only thrive through flows of trade, people, communication, goods and services, ideas, information, and knowledge, which are essential features of globalization. It is expected that as countries engage in global partnerships or collaborative engagements, their capacity to achieve the SDGs, including SDG 2, will be enhanced, all things being equal [10,27]. Thus, Africa is expected to have the capacity to eradicate hunger following her global partnerships and collaborations with developed nations such as China, the US, Britain, and France, among others. In addition, its large scale of arable lands and endowment of raw materials are added advantages that ought to have improved Africa’s capacity to produce food that can feed its populations [11,21]. However, despite her global partnerships, availability of arable lands, and raw materials, Africa still has a high hunger index rate, lacks the capacity to feed her populations and suffers from resource curse syndrome [91,92]. These deplorable conditions have been blamed on the fallout of globalization, which is manifested in the way global powers such as China have transgressed constituted authorities and undermined land allocation regulations in some African states with weak budgetary allocations to agricultural production [93]. It is a fact that the rising global demand for biofuel and food has shifted the focus of some developed nations to Africa, where raw materials are readily available [65]. As they scrambled for African raw materials and lands for food plantations, they tended to undermine the interests of peasant farmers and impugned human rights in Africa (Holmen, 2015). Although land grabbing is legal and commonly practiced across the world, its enforcement in some African countries limits Africa’s food sovereignty initiative [56,94]. China’s developmental drive in Africa indicates that, through globalization, most foreign land speculators or investors grab land in Africa. However, the motive for the acquisition of these lands appears to purportedly promote Africa’s food production capacity, whereas, in reality, it is to provide job opportunities and promote the welfare of their citizens residing in host countries. China’s “Going-out policy” tends to retain Chinese citizens as workers or contractors in any project financed by loans provided by China [26,73]. With this policy, peasant farmers in Africa would be denied the opportunity to grow food because the majority of them have been dispossessed of their lands [10]. Although these lands were allocated on the basis of positive agricultural outcomes such as the training of local farmers on how to operate agricultural technologies, high-yielding seedlings, irrigation, detecting a good and conducive planting season, climate adaptability, marketing, and storage of farm harvests, among others, that can be rewarding and beneficial to African countries food production capacity [11]. It is a fact that Africa is not fully benefiting from its allocated landed resources because the majority of its global partners often do not report all the gains or profits on agricultural investment. In the same vein, evidence indicated massive capital flights (transfers of profits on investment back home) overseas by these global partners [11,26,27]. In some severe cases, raw materials from Africa are transferred overseas by these global partners for the industrialization of their countries. In the colonial era, palm oil from southern Nigeria was used to fuel Britain’s industrial revolution, just as French farmers resettled in the farmlands of local communities without any meaningful compensation in Algeria [11]. Today, Africa’s natural resources, especially arable lands and other raw materials, have attracted global partners that have offered to assist Africa in ending hunger, but their assistance has been shrouded in secrecy and largely skewed to undermine the rights of peasant farmers, take control of resources in host communities, amass wealth at the expense of host communities, and limit food sovereignty in Africa [27,45]. These are the reasons why Africa still has a high hunger index rate, is unable to feed its populations, and suffers from a resource curse. The more peasant farmers are denied the opportunity to grow food, the higher the hunger index rate and the greater the inability to feed the population. This no doubt described Africa’s resource curse situation, especially with the way Africa, despite her endowment of resources (large-scale arable lands and raw materials) and web of global partnerships, is still not fully benefiting from the proceeds of investment in its landed resources. This might have led to the conclusion that governance crises are the bane of underdevelopment in Africa [89]. Land grabbing in Africa has governance issues, such as a lack of information on leased lands and poor monitoring of the activities of land investors or foreign partners. These governance crises could limit the attainment of SDG 2 [10,27]. The practical effects or implications of these findings are that African governments can now understand where they get it wrong in terms of not following due process in land allocation and make swift adjustments against such practices. Similarly, the findings of this article advanced fresh knowledge on how African governments should now manage or handle their collaborative engagements or partnerships with global powers. Another practical effect of this article’s findings is that they provided needed information on how African governments can optimize globalization to achieve positive SDG 2 outcomes. This will be accomplished by ensuring that all information about land grabbing is transparent, people-oriented, or focused, through effective land grab governance, periodic checks or reviews of the activities of foreign land investors or global partners, and by ensuring that Africa fully benefits from its landed resources.

6. Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Technology to Boost Food Security in Africa

Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) are simply the application or use of native intelligence to foster or boost agricultural food production. Prior to globalization, indigenous knowledge systems were in existence and widely used by local farmers in Africa to produce mainly organic foods [95]. However, with the advent of globalization, the focus shifted from indigenous knowledge systems that specialize in mostly organic farming or food production to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) with the use of technology. The widespread nature of globalization, which eventually led to the adoption of technology in agricultural food production across the world, including Africa, is symptomatic of some factors. First, it attests to the expanding importance of technology in everyday human endeavors. Whereas technology can enhance and endanger food security, its gains offset the fallout. Second, it is reflective of an alternative method for addressing low food production that negatively impugns food security.

Although low food production is widespread on some continents, Africa’s situation suffers from below-par and rushed attempts at increasing food production [21,49]. Studies on the use of crude farming equipment for food production in Africa show low food production outcomes [96]. The literature is replete with evidence of undesirable drifts in public perceptions of the capacity of crude technology in food security [97,98,99,100], indicating low food production, which could trigger food insecurity. The consequences of these actions have been stiffening food security challenges [101].

Thus, the advent of globalization, which comes with technology transfer and adoption, embodies opportunities for massive and fruitful food production that can meet the food demand of Africa. Africa’s population is huge, and the indigenous technology systems cannot produce food that can meet the exponential population growth of Africa. Technology transfers and adoption or utilization are predominantly expedient in the context of Africa’s exponential population growth. The ability of highly sophisticated technologies to produce the food requirements of Africa can enhance food availability, accessibility, and utilization and allow the people wider latitude to determine what to eat and produce what they can consume rather than receiving directives and impositions from the developed countries. Africa has, for a long time, been on the receiving end of out-of-use technologies from developed partners. No wonder it was concluded that inappropriate technologies are transferred to Africa, and even when sophisticated technologies are sent to Africa, local employees are hardly allowed to work on those machines [10,27]. It is also a fact that about 5% to 10% of the profit made on technology transfer to Africa is directed toward patenting payments [10]. This shows that technology transfer to Africa, which is purposely intended to boost food security, is meant to drain the pockets of Africa and enrich the MNCs and their states.

Importantly, as it was made clear, those technologies barely drive change without other factors; ‘effectiveness arises from a combination of technology, organizational shifts, and policy reforms [102]’. Technologies need to be aggregated with other factors that are important for development [86]. The aspects of the reforms that could not be handled by technology require human judgment, intuition, and discretion [103]. Therefore, outcomes will be a function of the quality of decision-making resulting from the effective operation of farming technologies such as tractors, irrigation machines, food modification technologies or machines, robots, and agricultural drones, among others. For massive food production through technology to take firm root in Africa, ‘it is vital that the training, mindset, and methods of food production and farming undergo fundamental change [104].’ These underscore the human dimension. Local farmers need to be trained in the act of mechanization and the handling of sophisticated farming machines or technologies to boost food security in Africa.

Much progress in the use of technology platforms (such as tractors, climate detection devices, mobile phones, and drones) to boost food security depends on how farmers, especially women, can adapt them to daily operational workings such as the use of phones to alert customers or buyers of food harvests. In addition to what technology can add to food security, it is imperative that African farmers expand their infrastructure, especially in relation to the use of mobile phones and internet facilities, to showcase their harvests and attract customers. This is against a background of studies highlighting a shortage of basic technology used for food production, such as telephones, computers, and internet facilities, in rural local farming areas [75,82].

This limits the extent to which farmers are familiar with technology in their farming duties. Farmers need to deepen their use of technologies, as this can enable them to know the potency of the best technology platforms in addressing challenges, including seedlings, irrigation, planting season, prices of food, harvesting, and storage of food, and not just as platforms for increasing food production. The ability to institutionalize and strengthen the use of IKS and technology among farmers, especially women, will aid sustained efforts at boosting food security and ending hunger in Africa.

7. Limitations and Future Directions

One of the limitations of this paper was the difficulty in identifying the exact and global meaning of land grabbing. In the literature, while some scholars see it as a forceful dispossession of lands in foreign countries, especially in Africa, others see it as a legal and mutual allocation of land. In the long run, this article believes that land grabbing could be legal or illegal, especially when the due process or land tenure regulations of host African states are not followed in the process of leasing or allocating lands. Another limitation is that it places too much focus on developing countries in Africa. Other developing nations on other continents, where land grabbing is predominant, were excluded from the review. Importantly, the paper also suffers from the limitation of reviewing or examining only SDG 2. Its findings can only be applicable to countries in need of ways to improve their food production capacity to end hunger. Given these limitations, it is expected that more robust research should be conducted to compare land grabs and resource curses, with a specific focus on globalization in Africa and Asia. Similarly, research on this subject should cover more SDGs (specifically, SDGs 1, 13, and 17). Finally, research in this direction should strive to utilize mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative research design. It is hoped that in the future, the findings of the mixed-methods paper will provide a balanced view of how globalization impacts land grabbing and provokes resource curses.

8. Conclusions

This article has established that globalization in itself is not a bad thing. The real problem of globalization in Africa is the inability of some African governments to effectively optimize the potential of globalization for the development of Africa [105]. Land grabbing, if adequately enforced (in terms of following due process and good governance, which ensures that the local communities participate in land allocation decisions and have access to information about the land and transparency), has the potential to contribute to the attainment of SDG 2 [106]. Expectedly, with Africa’s arable lands and lawful land grabs for food security purposes, the issue of hunger and mal-nutrition targeted by SDG 2 will be a thing of the past. The successful achievement of SDG 2 in Africa largely depends on transparent land grabs, sincere global partnerships, and effective monitoring of the activities of international land grabbers [107]. This, if adequately enforced, can improve Africa’s capacity to feed its population and attain SDG 2. However, lands allocated to foreign partners have yielded little or no positive outcomes due to weak land tenure laws in Africa. This partly accounts for the increasing rate of dispossession of local farmers from their farmlands and the relegation of peasant farmers in host communities. The desire to amass wealth and earn foreign currencies from global partners is partly the reason why arable lands are allocated without due process or regulations [10,21,94]. This has implications for the loss of lands by local farmers; it also reduces their capacity to produce food and consequently aggravates Africa’s hunger index rate. From the foregoing, it can be inferred that the more arable lands are unlawfully allocated at the expense of peasant farmers, human rights, and Africa’s developmental motives, the lower the capacity to produce food and the greater the rate of hunger in Africa. It also has implications for Africa’s inability to feed its populations. This is because most African governments fail to optimize and effectively utilize their collaborations with other developed states or global big powers (China, the US, Britain, and others) to advance sustainable development in their key sectors, including agriculture. Evidence shows that in most large-scale land deals, African governments with weak financial or budgetary allocations are usually under pressure to satisfy these big powers at the expense of their local farmers [26,27]. This satisfaction, if not properly checked, could lead these big powers to exert undue influence and control over resources in Africa. China’s undue influence and control over gold mining and big farm lands and its ability to determine who works on these sites and farms succinctly explained why Africa’s overdependency on foreign partners for technology, financial assistance, and foreign aid limits its capacity to feed its populations. It is also the reason why Africa is labeled a resource curse because Africa has yet to fully benefit from its landed resources and partnerships with big global powers.

To address this gap, the findings in this piece indicate the possibilities that IKS and technology provide for the effective cultivation of land and processing of resources. These are sacred to food security. Unfortunately, in Africa, governments have failed to optimize lawful land grabbing and foreign partnerships for the attainment of SDG 2 and, thus, food security. Uncultivated arable lands stimulate the massive attraction of foreign land investors and speculators to Africa, but the inordinate desire of some African governments, which made them allocate land without due process, caused many local peasant farmers to lose their lands, hence their limited capacity to produce food. Other restrictive challenges affecting food security, including the overbearing influence of MNCs, the imposition of food policies and methods, mono-cropping, a lack of technology, the marginalization of women farmers, and other related issues, as well as a lack of funds and the associated problems of GMOs, worsen food security in Africa.

Prospects provided by technology transfer are desirable for addressing some of the issues. It is established that a blend of IKS and technology used by farmers will help boost food production and, by extension, food security in Africa. Technologies and IKS enable deeper interactions, native intelligence, monitoring, and oversight leverage over massive food production. Gaps in food production and security in Africa can be alleviated by IKS, which relies on the low cost of technology to advance indigenous knowledge to boost food security efforts in Africa. Technology allows the joint production of indigenous knowledge, in which local farmers in host communities bring to the fore their native knowledge about problems affecting food production in their localities and support for ideas or efforts of partnering states or organizations, which are the determinants of food security. Continual cultivation of Africa’s arable lands and processing of resources using a blend of IKS and technology will combine to boost food security in Africa.

Universities in Africa can also provide the expected change in the attainment of SDG 2, especially through the giving of assignments and research works to students, which specifically cover issues of global partnerships and food sovereignty in Africa. This can expose students to understanding how their work or assignments impact lives in society. Across continents, universities are thinking tanks that are strategically placed in society to conduct problem-solving research and cross-sectoral execution of the SDGs, providing an invaluable source of expertise in research and education on all sectors of the SDGs [108]. Universities, through the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI), can partner-with governments and communities in food production. This can be achieved by offering agricultural extension or educational services to local peasant farmers, creating awareness on how farmers can adapt and prevent harsh climatic impacts, and liaising with different sub-national governments to train and educate farmers in massive food production [109]. The departments of food technology, agricultural science, and extension services of various universities in Africa, through their community service functions, have rendered research expertise to governments and communities in the growing of cash crops that have yielded positive outcomes in food production [110]. This, if adequately and continually explored, could enhance the quick attainment of SDG 2 [111].

Conclusively, it can be deduced that while globalization stimulates Africa to partner with other nations or big powers to be able to attain SDG 2 (an end to hunger and mal-nutrition), globalization has also been disproportionately exploited to milk Africa of its resources, as Africa has benefited very little from allocating its arable lands to foreign land grabbers, who pretentiously cultivate Africa’s lands to develop their home country and limit Africa’s capacity to attain SDG 2, hence, the high hunger index in Africa.