Friday, September 26, 2014

Public-Private Partnerships - Who Has The Upper hand?


A seat at the table? Ensuring smallholder farmers are heard in Public-private partnerships

(Note from the editors: The report contains land grab allegations in the Malawi section, involving African Development Bank and EU funding)

Governments and NGOs are increasingly partnering with the private sector to tackle global hunger and poverty. A seat at the table? Ensuring Smallholder farmers are heard in Public-private partnerships, a study of agricultural PPPs in Ghana, Malawi and Kenya, identifies examples of PPPs failing to engage effectively with smallholder farmers.  This can lead to partnerships that miss or ignore smallholder farmers’ priorities or in the worst case scenario, actually aggravate local social and economic disparities and exacerbate poverty

The report asks governments, donors and companies to go further to ensure that smallholder farmers are given the opportunity, space and information to play an active role in the design and development of agricultural PPPs – should they wish to participate in them.

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