Between Hegemony and Colonialism

China and some Middle Eastern countries have discovered that simply buying prime land in Africa to raise crops and then export them back to the mother country is way better than simply controlling an entire poor country, with all the problems of governing and controlling the people which that method requires:

Rich countries grabbing farmland in Africa to feed their growing populations can leave rural populations there without land or jobs and make the continent’s hunger problem more severe, an environmental think tank said on Tuesday.

The trend is accelerating as wealthier countries in the Middle East and Asia, particularly China, seek new land to plant crops, lacking enough fertile ground to meet their own food needs, the Worldwatch Institute said.

I have no particular expertise to judge whether this is more of a problem than an opportunity for Aftican countries (they earn money and get access to modern crop methods, no?), but I do know that if a European country or America was doing it, it would automatically be condemned widely as evil.