The global food crisis and the Gulf’s quest for Africa’s agricultural potential 1

Gulf countries have been major land investors in the wake of the global food crisis of 2008, alongside Asian states and Western financial investors. With 70% of all announced projects Africa has been in the focus of this global investment trend (Deininger et al. 2011). The Green Revolution has not taken place on the continent and it is regarded by many as ‘agriculture’s final frontier’ (Thurow 2010). Development orthodoxy hopes that improved seeds and a belated expansion of irrigation and fertiliser applications could enhance productivity, whose growth rate has all but declined in developed agricultural regions since the 1990s (World Bank 2007; Paarlberg 2008).