Corporate Onslaught = Killer Profits = Neocolonialism

Stop the corporate onslaught in Africa!

Nowhere is the threat posed by the onslaught of profit-driven private investment

in agriculture more obvious than across Africa, where under the guise of feeding

Africa and increasing investment, a host of initiatives are underway to destroy

smallholders and hand over African resources to corporations.

They come under many names – the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa

(AGRA), African Agricultural Growth Corridors, the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and

Nutrition, Feed the Future, the Gates Foundation – but the underlying strategy is the

same. They are designed to convert millions of hectares of smallholder-based

farming to industrial plantations, with land, seeds, water, forests and food

production controlled by corporations and geared towards maximum profits

rather than food sovereignty.

In its latest report AGRA openly dismisses concerns from African social movements

about genetically modified crops as a ”farce” and ”fear of the unknown” and pushes

for new seed regimes that stop exchanges of seeds by farmers. Multi-million dollar

investments from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (a major AGRA donor) into

Monsanto, and revolving doors between donors and these corporations skew the

agenda of AGRA in favour of corporate-led farming.

The Growth Corridors aim to establish infrastructure specifically for commercial ag-

riculture and are designed by dozens of the world’s largest pesticide, GMO, fertiliser

and processed food companies, all of whom stand to make killer profits from new Af-

rican markets2

The G8 New Alliance forces African governments to change national

polices to access funding, for example by “systematically ceasing to distribute free

and unimproved [non-commercial] seeds to farmers, except in emergencies”, and

“refining land law, if necessary, to encourage long-term land leasing”.

Donor countries such as the US, UK and G8 countries are pushing these schemes

to African leaders at the highest levels and attempting to undermine African-led

democratic initiatives to tackle hunger, such as the Maputo declaration to increase

public spending on agriculture and regional agriculture policies in West Africa.

But social movements are mobilising to hold their governments to account and calling

for a clean break with the defective policies of the past. The Alliance for Food

Sovereignty in Africa, which includes environmental groups, farmers’ movements, global

justice groups, development groups, faith-based groups, women’s groups and youth

groups from 50 African countries, convened a meeting to identify the threats and draw

up an action plan to achieve food sovereignty in Africa.

In a statement this year African movements identified these schemes as a

”new wave of colonialism” based on accessing resources; flow of royalties out of

Africa and accessing new markets for corporate production. They warn that even the

Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development programme (CAADP) is a

compromised instrument, negotiated under extreme pressure from neoliberal

governments.

A plan to achieve food sovereignty in Africa would prioritise smallholders producing

for local and informal markets using proven low-input, ecologically sustainable

agricultural techniques including intercropping, on-farm compost production,

mixed farming systems (livestock, crops and trees).

Diversity of farming and knowledge should be paramount, with no corporation

able to privatise collective heritage. Investment strategies should be public,

participatory and not based on profit.

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