By Dzodzi Tsikata and Joseph Yaro

Introduction: Large Scale commercial land transactions involving land in developing countries and transnational corporations and governments of the global north are justifiably generating a lot of interest in the land tenure research and policy communities. Particularly in the context of the on-going global food crisis, there is concern that these transactions could further deepen food insecurity in developing countries. While it is the more recent transactions that are triggering concerns, it is important to note that large scale land acquisitions and the dispossession of local populations is not new and has historical antecedents in the colonial period. The land tenure literature of sub-Saharan Africa for example has a tradition of distinguishing settler colonialist Africa from Africa of small-holder agriculture (Amanor-Wilks, 2009). At the heart of distinction is the extent of land concentration in the former, when compared with the latter.