Ups, I didn't know that there is a new link: zenodo.org/records/1438...

It's already version 1.1, we are basically flying :D! (irony off)
Unfortunately, we discovered some major flaws in the first version that needed to be fixed.

Please spread the word about this great database. It was a lot of work :).

In addition to the crop codes, we also collected farm identifiers, which we are allowed to share for 6 countries, and organic vs. conventional management information, which we can share for 4 countries.

We collected, with the help of all our project partners, as many as possible available IACS/GSA data. Building on the work of the EuroCrops project (eurocrops.tum.de/), we harmonized the land-use information, i.e., the crop codes, as well as the data structure.

Wir zeigen auf, dass es einer differenzierten Betrachtung von Eigentums- und Nutzungsstrukturen bedarf, und plädieren für eine ehröhte Transparenz des Bodenmarkts um politische Entscheidungen besser zu fundieren und die Ausgangsbedingungen für alle Marktteilnehmer zu verbessern. lnkd.in/eQ8_My-i

6) On the local market, the ownership concentration rarely exceeds common thresholds of market concentration that indicate potential market power (Figure 2 below). When these thresholds are exceeded, public institutions are often the largest owners.

5)
We find examples of non-agricultural investors owning larger areas, but identifying them was difficult. Also, successor companies to the agriculture productive companies own larger areas. These companies constitute an entry point for investors to quickly take control of large areas.

4)
The largest owners are diverse. We identified public institutions, agricultural company networks, and non-profit organizations among the largest individual owners.

3)
Land ownership is fragmented, more than the actual land use. There are much more landowners (~185,000) than farmers (5,000), and parcels are much smaller than the fields.

More than half of the land is owned by private persons who are not active in agriculture but only own a few ha.

2) We used all available cadastral data on agricultural land in 2020 and combined it with information on company networks.
We categorized all landowners and researched the largest 15 owners in detail.
We calculated concentration measures for the local market to investigate potential market power.

Africa's population centers are relatively regional and dense, and will likely continue to be so. Whatever infrastructure issues they will have in the future will almost certainly be the same ones they have had for decades, only more so. (Map shows projected population centers in 2050.)

It's a great collaborative effort with great colleagues (e.g. @danielmu11er.bsky.social and others not yet here on bsky).

Btw, Maximillian Wesemeyer and I share the main authorship, my name only appears first alphabetically.