Intensification and conservation

Processes of agricultural intensification include, inter alia, the establishment of large irrigation schemes for the production of rice, maize, and other cereals primarily for domestic purposes, aiming to improve national food sufficiency. Putting an end to hunger and improving the nutritional basis of a growing number of people are political goals that are given high priority in the national development plans of many African countries. Other irrigated farms produce vegetables, cut flowers, and biofuel for export, thus contributing to national incomes. The agro-industrial cluster in Naivasha, Kenya, is an example of highly specialized production for the European market, associated with massive changes in the local social-ecological system (see edited volume by Kuiper et al. 2024). Agricultural intensifications are instigated by massive capital flows, both from foreign and domestic sources. The investments were initially aimed at export-oriented production, often guided by international agreements and global value-chain development (see Revilla Diez et al. this volume). They are closely connected to global change, but they also respond to transformative processes at national and regional scales, e.g. ambitious national infrastructure and development plans, rapid growth of urban centres, the rise of new middle classes with new patterns of consumption, the introduction of modern technologies, and the increasing interest of urban elites in land investments. Spaces of intensification are mostly concentrated in high-potential areas with favourable resource bases and good infrastructural connections to airports and/or harbours, resulting in the establishment of capital-intensive agro-hubs and growth or development corridors, and the emergence of new urban agglomerations. These processes have far-reaching consequences for local livelihoods, whether through violent evictions, development-induced displacements, labour migration, or other forms of voluntary or forced movements of people. Due to their social consequences, these processes are often controversially debated in African societies, as the two philosophical contributions to this volume by Martin Ajei and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni indicate.

Conservation, the second type of change, seems to take the opposite direction, because agricultural and pastoral forms of land use are marginalized or even excluded from the conservation areas. Over the past years, parks and protection zones have been expanded, primarily in southern and eastern Africa. Many large national and transnational parks, game reserves, and nature-conservation areas are implemented under the guidance of international organizations and programs. In addition, private landowners and local communities throughout these regions are establishing smaller community-managed conservancies (Bollig and Menestrey Schwieger 2014, Bollig et al. 2023) and commercial game farms.1 The big business of South Africa’s game farms | Africanews, www.africanews.com/2019/06/19/the-big-business-of-south-africa-s-game-farms/# Zones of conservation are not only seen as attractions for tourists, but are also presented as carbon sinks and a response to climate change or biodiversity loss (Nzabarinda et al. 2025).

As noted above, at a first glance it may seem as if these two avenues of land-use change have been heading in opposite directions, i.e. intensification versus conservation, or commodification of nature into marketable goods versus preservation of nature for the sake of the protection of biodiversity and natural heritage. However, on closer examination it becomes questionable whether the two processes are really so different in their intrinsic logics and consequences. Obviously, they both respond to global regulatory regimes and incentive structures, leading to a transformation of nature and social ecologies. As a consequence, both avenues of land-use change converge in massive transformations of local livelihoods, including the marginalization, dispossession, and even eviction of local populations, with an impact on land ownership, labour, food security, health, and social structure. What makes these processes problematic for many people is not so much change as such, but its unpredictability.