Africa, with an estimated 700 million hectares of cheap potential new farmland, has been attracting the attention of foreign investors from nations seeking to enhance food security. Foreign companies with funding from the likes of China, the United Arab Emirates and India have been acquiring land across sub-Saharan Africa. Ethiopia alone has reportedly approved more than 800 foreign-funded agro-projects since 2007.

After travelling halfway around the world from Nigeria to the US, Emem Okon, along with 17 other people representing oil-producing communities around the globe, stood today as shareholders ready to attend Chevron’s Annual General Meeting of the Shareholders. Chevron arbitrarily denied Ms Okon and at least 13 others entry to the meeting, despite the fact that other representatives from Chevron-impacted communities were allowed to enter the meeting.

African countries' inability to come to an agreement around the waters of the Nile and imagining the local response to an east African oil spill feature in this week's cartoons by Gado.

Recent environmental standard reforms and initiatives by Chinese corporations have earned international applause but emerging Chinese companies and a leading bank that now support Ethiopia’s Gibe III Hydroelectric Dam are threatening the reputation of Asian dam builders, writes Peter Bosshard. The controversial Gibe III is scheduled for construction despite the destructive threats to surrounding populations and fragile ecosystems. Support for the project from Dongfang Electric Corporation and Chinese commercial bank ICBC is a blow to both the region and the corporate reputation of Asian firms in Africa.

A 15-year river blindness immunization programme in the fertile bread-basket of otherwise-arid Borno State in northeastern Nigeria, now in its 11th year, hangs in the balance for lack of funds. The disease, also known as onchocerciasis, reduced agricultural activities in the past two decades as farmers fled riverine areas, but this flight abated when aid agencies started the immunization programme. Now, two-thirds of the way through, it could flounder.

Since the civil war ended in 2003, the combination of returning refugees, population growth, and ongoing land tenure tensions dating back 25 years has led to at least 250 land dispute deaths in Liberia, according to NGOs. Leading reformists are worried the right mechanisms to address land rights are still not in place. The latest significant clashes over land took place in 2008 on the border between Grand Bassa and Margibi counties in which 15 people were killed. Since then people have continued to be killed in smaller-scale disputes.

During the 2010 Fifa World Cup here in South Africa, all the poor must stand up and show the world that we are not excited about the World Cup because it is not for the poor but for the rich, says Mzonke Poni. "The time to wait for government to identify land for the poor is over. We gave them enough time to do that and they failed but to identify land to build expensive stadiums which will only be used for 1 month and spend lot of billions it was easy for them to do that, and they even evicted many people forcefully just to ensure that they meet Fifa requirements and standards."

A farmer from Inyathi was released from police custody on Thursday, after spending two nights behind bars in what is being described as a deliberate drive to force his farming partner to give up his land. Ernest Nyoni was arrested on Tuesday night and charged with ‘contravening’ the Gazetted Lands (Consequential Provisions) Act by not leaving the farm he co-owns with farmer Glen James. He was only released after his lawyer argued that the farm, Robert Block 14, is not wholly owned by Nyoni, who was being charged in his personal capacity.

Families left homeless by a landslide on the slopes of a volcano which left 54 people missing in the Democratic Republic of Congo will be relocated, the UN says. A UN spokesperson told the BBC that some 250 homes had been destroyed. An overflowing river caused a landslide at the weekend on the slopes of Nyiragongo volcano, near the eastern town of Goma.

Kenya's Water Minister Charity Ngilu said the country had signed the controversial Nile Basin Agreement, allowing it to effectively put the Nile Waters into use for irrigation and other national development priorities. Kenya, with a small share of Lake Victoria, the source of the world's longest river, running some 6,695 kilometres across nine countries with a combined population of 400 million, said it signed the Nile Basin agreement because an earlier one signed in 1929 was obsolete.

Rural people in several parts of Cameroon are protesting a government policy that allows the government to sell or lease vast parcels of arable land to foreign investors. Supporters say the deals could bring much-needed investment to agriculture. But critics warn that the policy could lead to more subsistence farmers losing their lands — their only source of food and income.

Thihako Mukena paddles his mokoro slowly across a soccer field, pointing with a smile towards the goalposts that barely clear the water’s surface. Heavy rains in Angola months earlier have meandered down the Okavango to his doorstep: the river is at its highest point in nearly fifty years. His house is now cut off from the mainland, and 18-year-old Mukena navigates his way to school in the dugout canoe.

‘I think we will continue to suffer such injustices as we suffer in the Niger Delta as long as we (Africans, Nigerians) place more value on money than we place on life', writes Tolulope Ilesanmi, in response to an article by Alex Free.

Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda have signed a controversial deal to regulate and share the waters of River Nile, despite protests from downstream nations Sudan and Egypt. Ethiopia at the same time opened its first major dam on the Nile.

Disaster risk and climate change – two of the greatest challenges currently facing humankind – adversely reinforce each other. In the coming decades, climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of natural disasters such as droughts and floods. Climate change is also likely to increase people’s vulnerability to already existing hazards in developing countries.

Co-organized and hosted by the Future Agricultures Consortium Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, 6-8 April 2011. The Journal of Peasant Studies, in collaboration with the Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI) is organizing an international academic workshop on ‘Global Land Grabbing’ to be held on 6-8 April 2011 at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.

Pensioner Makena Makanga slowly savours a piece of manketti fruit unaware that the tree it came from will soon be chopped down and mulched along with the rest of her forest to make way for a massive agribusiness project.

Preparations are already underway for the next Common Agricultural Policy set to coincide with the EU’s long term budget in 2014. Calls for a greener approach will likely encounter strong support given the 2004 reform of the payment scheme that put strict limits on the amount of harmful fertilisers that can be used in certain areas.

In the wake of the environmental disaster caused by the 20 April explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the oil multinational was immediately pressured into providing adequate compensation by the US government. This is an experience palpably not shared by Nigerian people in the face of another multinational, Shell, in the country's Niger Delta, writes Alex Free.

The human and environmental disruption wreaked by drought in Somaliland, where more than 60 percent of people raise livestock for a living, means the self-declared, but barely recognized, independent state should draw up its own plan for climate change adaptation, according to a new report.