Noah Echa Attah is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of History and International Studies, Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Nigeria. He holds a PhD and an MA in History from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, as well as a BA in History from Lagos State University, Ojo, Nigeria. He is also a 2012 African Humanities Programme of the American Council of Learned Society Postdoctoral Fellow. His research focus is on agrarian studies, environmental studies, and conflicts over land. He has published extensively, including co-editing Critical Perspectives on Peace, Conflict and Warfare in Africa and editing Philosophy, Islamic Culture and Society in Nigeria, as well as authoring chapters in several books and over twenty journal articles.
Award Information
While there are several studies on large-scale land acquisitions, little attention has been paid to their attendant conflicts and the needed 'peacebuilding' processes. At best, conflicts over community land disputes and the unending farmers-herdsmen conflicts are the dominant discourses in scholarly works in Nigeria (Obiorah, 2008; Mustapha, 2011). Indeed, while conflicts have largely been neglected or ignored in land grab discourses, the centrality of land to rural peoples' lives and their violent responses to the massive dispossession and the imperatives of peace-building is the interest of this study, with particular focus on the activities of Shonga Farms, Dominion Farms and Wilmar International. These agribusiness groups have been selected for study due to how much their activities have triggered violent conflicts.
