Foreigners farm for themselves in a hungry Africa

Over generations, foreign empires and companies stripped the continent of its gold and diamonds, then its oil. Rubber and ivory were plundered from Congo. Even Africa's people were exploited: captured and sold into slavery abroad.

Now foreigners are enjoined in a new scramble in Africa. The latest craze? Food. Amid a global crisis that for a time this year doubled prices for wheat, corn, rice and other staples, some of the world's richest nations are coming to Africa to farm, hoping to turn the global epicenter of malnutrition into a breadbasket for themselves.

Lured by fertile land, cheap labor and untapped potential, oil-rich Persian Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, where deserts hinder food production, are snapping up farmland in underdeveloped African nations to grow crops for consumption back home.

"It's a perfect partnership," said Idriss Ashmaig, manager of the Sudan office for Hadco, a large Saudi agricultural company that made its first foreign foray with a $95-million deal to lease about 25,000 acres near the Nile River north of Khartoum. "Here there is water, land and climate. All they need is the capital."

By next spring, Hadco hopes to be exporting wheat, vegetables and animal feed to Saudi Arabia.

The Emirates government recently signed a similar deal in Sudan for up to 70,000 acres south of Khartoum, the capital. Investors from Qatar are fattening sheep and chickens not far away. Now Egypt and Ethiopia are also touting their agricultural potential, hoping to draw foreign interest.

(And it's not just Africa. Kuwaitis are exploring opportunities in South Asia. The Emirates is eyeing a $500-million investment in Pakistan. Libya is checking out Ukraine.)

The deals are bound to raise eyebrows because countries targeted by the investors are often struggling to feed their own populations. Though Sudan has thriving exports of cotton and gum arabic, it imports more than 1 million tons of wheat annually and has suffered recent deficits in another staple, sorghum. Regions in the south and west, including Darfur, are heavily reliant on international food aid, provided mostly by the United States.

"It's not as easy as siphoning oil out of a country," said Joachim von Braun, director of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute.