Competition for irrigated land: inequitable land management in the Office du Niger (Mali)

Like other African countries, Mali is affected by the phenomenon of foreign investments and land grabbing. In the irrigated area of the Office du Niger (ON), the government provisionally allocated nearly 600,000 ha to public and private, foreign and domestic, investors. Given the lack of public regulation of these investments, different actors are trying to get privileged access conditions to irrigated land. This article tries to examine land management in the ON irrigation scheme in Mali. This will enable us to analyse its repercussions in terms of inequalities of development, and to determine its linkages with the state governance. This article presents the different land management systems (both formal and informal) and analyses the inequalities they entail. Based on case studies, it shows how the actors' strategies enable them to circumvent the rules and to guarantee their development.