South Sudan needs a moratorium on land leases, says legal expert

South Sudan became independent from the north last July. It's rich in arable land and natural resources, and foreign companies have been flocking to the country in response to an invitation to invest in the agricultural sector to boost the new country's economy. But it seems that some foreign investors are abusing the opportunity.  According to data collected by the South Sudan Law Society, nine percent of South Sudan's land has been leased for large-scale investment without the consent of local communities. DW talked to the Society's Research Director David Deng in Juba.

DW: Isn't large-scale agro business and development in that sector a good thing in terms of increasing food security in South Sudan?

David Deng: Not necessarily. One would need to look very carefully at the kinds of agreements to know whether they would enhance local food security or reduce it.  For instance, if land is taken away from people in order to grow food for export, that would clearly do nothing to improve local food security and would most likely undermine livelihoods. Another important point to note is that the most important systems for improving local food security are local farming practices, smallholder agriculture systems, which are already in place. These are the people who are feeding themselves in South Sudan. Unless one is able to build up their capacity, there's no guarantee that these large-scale industrial models will do anything to improve local food security.

South Sudan was born on 9 July 2011

What would you like to see the government put in place in order to make this a more equitable way of investing?

What we really need now are limits on foreign private investment, particularly in land. Probably the most important thing the government could do now is to put in place a moratorium on large-scale land leases.  Any lease above a certain size would have an all-out ban on it for a certain period of time, the idea being that this would give the government some space in which to establish its regulatory system. 

What would you say are the most important things that need to be implemented in order to have this framework?

Whereas the moratorium is a forward-looking solution, you also need something to handle those investments that are already in place. We've been lobbying the government to conduct a review of the lease agreements that were made during the interim period over the last six years in South Sudan. And we were very happy to see the president announce last September that the government would in fact be conducting a review of land sales during the interim period. 

President Salva Kiir has said there will be a review of land sales

This shows that the issue has garnered the attention of the highest level of government in South Sudan and that's a good step forward. So that's the first thing, to conduct this review and make sure the lease agreements comply with domestic law in South Sudan. Another tremendously important measure that could be introduced very quickly is the issue of transparency. Memorandums of understanding, leases, contracts, impact statements, feasibility studies, all these documents should be made available to local communities, to the public, to civil society. The idea is that this would create the conditions needed for stronger contracting. 

Another thing that's needed across the board in government is to clarify the jurisdictions of all the institutions involved. Clarifying the jurisdiction between the central government and state-level government would make plain who has the right to do what. One thing we recommend for local government is to put in place graduated land ceilings so that, from the county to the state to the central government, each would be able to approve successively larger land areas for lease and then the central government itself would have a ceiling above which it could not transfer land to an individual.

What we're recommending is that the legislative branch should be involved in any land acquisition above a certain size, the idea being that this would add transparency to the process. Also, these state-level assemblies are the closest to the constituencies and it would be a way to bring people into the process and generate discussion prior to leasing land away for long term leases.

Interview: Jared Ferrie in Juba
Editor: Mark Caldwell/mik