Large-scale agricultural land investments and local institutions in Africa: The Nigerian case

Africa has become the most targeted continent for large-scale agricultural land investments (LALIs) with over 60% of the global figure. Some efforts have been made to investigate the determinants of LALIs at the global level; however, scare evidence abounds regarding the characteristics of target communities in a given country particularly in Nigeria, one of the top 20 recipients of LALIs globally. This study contributes by showing how community characteristics influence the likelihood of receiving LALIs and the aspects of such community characteristics that matter. Utilising community-level data in Nigeria and estimating with probit model, some findings are made. Unexpectedly, the indicators of local institutions in the communities do not exert significant influence on the likelihood of LALIs occurrence. This supposes that the local institutions are rather overwhelmed by the state. How the local institutions can be integrated for LALIs are suggested.