While Japan advocated investment and private sector-led growth in Africa at the big aid conference this weekend, concern mounted among citizens' groups that an agriculture project in Mozambique that Tokyo is pushing as one of its key projects in Africa, may end up depriving local farmers of their land.
"Small farmers are really concerned about the project," Augusto Mafigo, president of Mozambique's National Peasants' Union, known as UNAC, said.
The program, dubbed ProSavana, which is promoted by the Japanese, Brazilian and Mozambican governments, is about developing a vast area of intact savanna in northern Mozambique, encompassing more than 10 million hectares of land in three provinces.