The issues of the accuracy of land sizes taken by large scale land investors, whether the land taken in particular locations are infringing or not in other locations, how much land area is taken as against the total area of host communities has always been a contentious issue. Therefore, this work is based on spatial attention of concern dealing with concessions of large scale land investments.
A prominent business, SOCFIN Agricultural Company (SAC) Sierra Leone Ltd. in Pujehun District, otherwise SOCFIN for this report, was prioritized for this monitoring exercise. For a number of reasons: the company has been a constant focus for Green Scenery in terms of monitoring, research and other forms of investigations; the company is now very advanced in its operations and has practically concluded planting its palm trees within the concession and issues have arisen from communities about their land areas and individual clan/family lands.
SOCFIN claims to total concession area of 18,481 ha in Malen chiefdom. 1 This monitoring exercise will be used to verify this assumption. Both field data collection and desk research were performed to enhance credibility of this work.
