Farmland acquisition by national elites in Cote d'Ivoire: first insights

In Africa, the issue of land grabbing currently dominates debates about land management, but the role of national elites in this process is rarely empirically addressed. This text aims at offering a first analysis of land market acquisitions by the national elite ("cadres") in Cote d'Ivoire. It shows that land purchase for rubber planting predominates, and that the areas concerned by the acquisitions remain relatively modest. As in the case of transactions among villagers (mostly between natives and migrants), those involving cadres are socially embedded. Those first results question the specificity of land transfers benefitting cadres, compared to transfers involving villagers.