Contributes to the research gap on host country governance dynamics by synthesizing results and lessons from 38 case studies conducted in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Zambia. It shows how and why large-scale farmland investments are often synonymous with displacement, dispossession, and environmental degradation and, thereby, highlights 7 outcome determinants that merit more explicit treatment in academic and policy discourse. They are: deficiencies in the law; elite capture; co-optation and conflicts of interests; capacity constraints and cross-accountability; high modernist ideologies; lack of collective action and contestation; and incompatibility of production systems.