PRESENTATION OF RESSAC REPORT ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LAND GRABS AND FOREST CONVERSION IN THE CONGO BASIN

National Elites as wolves in sheep clothing

A study carried out by the Research on ecology and social science in support of the sustainable management of central African forest systems (RESSAC) led by Essaga Etame Salomon Ph.D has revealed that besides the notorious land grabs usually known to be carried out by foreign companies engaged in large scale extractive activities, with the complicity of the administration, local national elites are also increasingly involved in this spoliation initiatives.

Dr. Etame and his research team, studying the phenomenon of land grabbing of indigenous peoples and local community (IPLC) territories by local national elites with the accompanying impacts of loss of biodiversity and forest degradation in Cameroon, Congo and Gabon, were able to come out with the following findings:

• Land grabbing of forest lands by national elites in Cameroon, the Republic of Congo and Gabon is steadily increasing and attaining a critical point of concern with Cameroon already involved in grabs of up to thousands of hectares of land affecting entire villages;
• 69 % of documented evidence demonstrates that those highly involved in the process are the politico-administrative elites;
• Land conversion in these three countries and especially in the localities involved is leading to massive loss of biodiversity
• Local communities especially women and children as well as indigenous communities are the primary victims of the land loss and degradation process since they have neither the legal means nor economic resources to counteract.

The results of these findings were presented to the public in Yaounde Monday 30 March 2026 under the coordination of the Centre for International Forestry (CIFOR), and the Green Development Advocates (GDA) in the presence of government officials representing the Ministry of State Property and Land Tenure, Forestry and Wildlife, and Agriculture as well as other partner agencies like the European Union and the University of Yaounde.

It should be very disconcerting to realise that land spoliation at a critical moment of unfavourable environmental hiccups in the Congo Basin as now, should be the handiwork of local elites whose civic responsibility obliges them to protect the fatherland from exploitation and annexation.

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