Green economy' is a broad concept open to different interpretations, definitions and practices ranging from the greening of current neoliberal economies to radical transformations of these economies. In Africa, one emerging and powerful idea in the implementation of the green economy seems to be to use a green agenda to further strengthen development as modernization through capital-intensive land investments. This has again reinvigorated old debates about large-scale versus smallholder agriculture.Influential actors justify large-scale 'green' investments by the urgency for economic development as well as to offset carbon emissions and other environmental impacts. In this article, we discuss the case of the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) to give examples of how the green economy may materialize in Africa. SAGCOT is presented by the Tanzanian government as well as investors and donors as a leading African example of an 'investment blueprint' and as a laboratory to test green growth combining profitable farming with the safeguard of ecosystem services. In particular, we discuss three Scandinavian investments within SAGCOT, their social implications and their discursive representations through the public debates that these investments have generated in Scandinavia.

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Since the Rio+20 conference, 'greening' economies and growth has been key in international politics. Leading policy actors and businesses frame the emerging green economy as an opportunity to realize a triple-bottom line – people, planet and profit – and support sustainable development. In practice, two key trends stand out: in the global North, the main component of the green shift seems to imply technological and market-based solutions in the renewable energy sector. While this is also important in the global South, here green economy implementation is often interpreted as environmental protection along with modernization of, and shifts in access to and control over, natural resources ('green sectors'). In the case of the latter, combined with persisting high rates of poverty, we claim that the post-Rio+20 context has revitalized a 'green' version of modernization to become the leading discourse and approach within international development; namely green modernization. A wide range of development initiatives across the global South – with significant support from international businesses amidst a general private turn of aid – are framed in this light. We use the new, Green Revolution in Africa to illustrate how modernization discourses are reasserted under the green economy. What is new at the current conjuncture is the way in which powerful actors adopt and promote green narratives around long-standing modernization ideas. They recast the modernization trope as 'green.' In particular, we focus our discussion on three linked components; technology and 'productivism', the role of capital and 'underutilized' resources, and, lastly, mobility of land and people.Keywords: green economy; green modernization; the new Green Revolution in Africa; agri-business; climate smart agriculture; development discourse

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