Investments made by the Chinese, Brazilian and Indian governments in African agriculture is analyzed in this study. This brings together three new case studies of Chinese investment and aims to assess the impacts of investment on Africa’s small-scale farmers. The report assesses how appropriate these investments are for Africa’s small-scale farmers, including how aligned they are to Africa’s own agriculture strategies. Despite much rhetoric, Brazilian, Indian and Chinese investments and aid in African agriculture remain relatively small, especially compared to those of OECD countries and multilateral actors such as the World Bank. In recent years these countries have increased their influence in African agriculture to become important actors, and this influence is likely to grow in the future. The report finds that there are major problems with Chinese, Brazilian and Indian investments in African agriculture. Some investments are indeed associated with land grabs, several projects are having adverse consequences on local farmers, and the kind of technology being promoted in Africa tends to be more suited to Chinese, Brazilian and Indian agribusiness interests than to Africa’s smallholder farmers. Investments and cooperation programmes do not appear to systematically involve African smallholder farmers in project design or implementation, but appear more suited to large-scale farming.
