Accessing funding to address development needs is conditional to meeting standards set by international institutions for whom food security will achieved by foreign large scale investments. To encourage them, countries need to set an environment conducive: incentive policies of tax exemptions, low rents and tools to "secure" investments such as land titles.
In this context, the objective is to compare the Republic of Congo’s and Gabon’s land reforms since colonization and different dynamics of agrarian systems: the favorized agroindustry and the lefted behind family farming. Both countries have facilitated land access to large scale foreign investor and implement a new land reform since the 2000’s.
We show consequences of that on two agrarian system. Despite these reforms and major works, large scale land investors in agricultural suffered from the same factors limiting their development as colonial concession companies or state farms after independence: problems of infrastructure, transport, access to networks facilities, inputs, skilled labour and accessible markets to sell products.
In those countries, land reforms have accentuated the decline of peasant agriculture, already burdened by low population, agricultural decline, rural exodus, access to oil revenues and a command economy. This confirms the analysis according to which under population, under-equipment and poor connection between territories hold up agricultural intensification and therefore development.
The idea according which to the implementation of a set of land reforms, in a context of low rural population, high urban concentrations and large agricultural spaces available, could help promote the establishment and success of agro-industrial projects, has proved unsuccessful. Whereas peri-urban farming, even under land pressure linked to urban expansion, still seems dynamic and stays the main source of fresh products supply to urban markets with imports.
Mots clés : land reform|Republic of Congo|Gabon|agrarian system|food security
A104643MF