The subject of food security and land issues in Africa has become one of increased importance and contention over recent years. In particular, the focus has shifted to the role new global South donors - especially India, China and Brazil - are playing in shaping African agriculture through their increased involvement and investment in the continent.

Approaching the topic through the framework of South-South co-operation, this highly original volume presents a critical analysis of the ways in which Chinese, Indian and Brazilian engagements in African agriculture are structured and implemented. Do these investments have the potential to create new opportunities to improve local living standards, transfer new technology and knowhow to African producers, and reverse the persistent productivity decline in African agriculture? Or will they simply aggravate the problem of food insecurity by accelerating the process of land alienation and displacement of local people from their land?

Topical and comprehensive, Agricultural Development and Food Security in Africa offers fresh insight into a set of relationships that will shape both Africa and the world over the coming decades.

Fantu Cheru received his PhD in political economy from Portland State University. He is a socio-economist who specialises in rural development, small-scale enterprise environmental planning and resource management, urban and regional planning, participatory research methods, and institutional building and training. His latest publications include The Rise of China and India in Africa: Challenges, Opportunities and Critical Interventions (co-edited with Cyril Obi, 2010) and Africa and International Relations in the 21st Century (co-edited with Scarlett Cornelissen and Timothy M. Shaw, 2011).

Renu Modi is a senior lecturer and former director (2008-10) of the Centre for African Studies, University of Mumbai. She is a political scientist who graduated from the Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University. She received her PhD from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Her recent books are Beyond Relocation: The Imperative of Sustainable Resettlement (editor, 2009) and South-South Cooperation: Africa on the Centre Stage (editor, 2011), and she has published on issues relating to India-Africa economic relations from a historical as well as a contemporary perspective in reputed journals. She has also served as the social development consultant with the Inspection Panel of the World Bank.