Politics of rural land acquisition in Africa: the evidence from Chinese agricultural investments in Tanzania and Zambia

The contemporary processes of rural land acquisitions have been studied primarily through the lens of land grabbing and dispossession. Recent literature starts to emphasize the important and nuanced role of domestic institutions in shaping foreign land investment. This paper contributes to this scholarship by systematically analysing how subnational land tenure regimes (LTRs) shape the locational choices of Chinese agricultural investments (CAgriIs). The analysis is based on an original case database of CAgriIs in Tanzania and Zambia constructed using fieldwork data. I find that Chinese investors have significantly stronger preference for a private property regime where foreign land access and landholding are supposedly supported by the host state. Additionally, the other types of LTRs that authorities have discretionary power of land allocation over, receive much lower levels of CAgriIs. The findings reveal nuances in land politics in the process of rural land acquisitions in Africa, which put the land grabs and dispossession narrative in question.