When Multinational corporations grab indigenous land fights are imminent
International corporations do face a tough challenge when investing in many foreign countries outside their home, they face many difficulties especially when it comes to acquiring land from which they are to erect their premise headquarters, an industrial plant or any of the company’s structures. They often end up in confrontation with the local communities.
Forcing people out of their indigenous territories is a painful scenario to watch, the argument they have is that this is their ancestral homeland, which often proves a problem for many governments to solve, they don’t have legal documents to prove they are the real owners of this property but their evidence as they put it is that they have been here for a thousand generations and some villages still do not acknowledge modern systems of governments which are of European origins.
Long before colonial settlers arrived they ploughed these fields and after they got their independence all land was annexed by the government now completely owned by it including that which belonged to indigenous communities. For one to get a share of it you needed to have paper money which means you go to the big city, labour for many years before you can come back and purchase a piece of land. But Since governments desperately needs foreign currency to run its activities and there are companies willing to pump zillions of money into the economy, they have no choice but to push those few communities out of the land for a greater benefit of the entire country, they become squatters in the city and flock up in unplanned settlements, slums grow larger and larger each year with no sign of reducing or simply stopping. This has continued to remain a great challenge for many countries around the globe, as the question remains for the governments, should they let the people who have no viable economic use for the land keep it as this would deny investors a chance to benefit the country or should they sell them to foreign companies and try to find a way to soothe the anger of the locals?
