Reclaiming the Sovereignty of the Small Producer on Land: A Possible Political Agenda

This article was the Keynote Address to the International Conference on Land, Life and Society organized by the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University Western Cape, in Cape Town on October 7–9, 2025. Based on the notion of “accumulation by extraction,” the article surveys three waves of land grabs since the colonial period in Africa, including the current one under neoliberalism. This, in particular, has been driven by agribusiness, in alliance with a local bureaucratic bourgeoisie, and has even introduced new methods of land alienation via carbon offset agreements. The author proposes, as an intellectual project, five major paradigmatic shifts to underpin a new politics of resistance and development today.