Published on Portside (https://portside.org)
The Gates Foundation and the Plunder of African Agriculture
Colin Todhunter
Thursday, January 21, 2016
East by Northwest
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is dangerously and
unaccountably distorting the direction of international development, according
to a new report by the campaign group Global Justice Now. With assets of $43.5
billion, the BMGF is the largest charitable foundation in the world. It
actually distributes more aid for global health than any government. As a
result, it has a major influence on issues of global health and agriculture.
‘Gated Development - Is the Gates Foundation always a force
for good?’ [1] argues that what BMGF is
doing could end up exacerbating global inequality and entrenching corporate
power globally. Global Justice Now’s analysis of the BMGF’s programmes shows
that the foundation’s senior staff are overwhelmingly drawn from corporate
America. As a result, the question is: whose interests are being promoted –
those of corporate America or those of ordinary people who seek social and
economic justice rather than charity?
According to the report, the foundation’s strategy is intended to
deepen the role of multinational companies in global health and agriculture
especially, even though these corporations are responsible for much of the
poverty and injustice that already plagues the global south. The report
concludes that the foundation’s programmes have a specific ideological strategy
that promotes neo-liberal economic policies, corporate globalisation, the
technology this brings (such as Genetically Modified Organisms-GMOs) and an
outdated view of the centrality of aid in ‘helping’ the poor.
The report raises a series criticisms including:
1) The relationship between the foundation and Microsoft’s tax
practices. A 2012 report from the US Senate found that Microsoft’s use of
offshore subsidiaries enabled it to avoid taxes of $4.5 billion, a sum greater
than the BMGF’s annual grant making ($3.6 billion in 2014).
2) The close relationship that BMGF has with many corporations
whose role and policies contribute to ongoing poverty. Not only is BMGF
profiting from numerous investments in a series of controversial companies
which contribute to economic and social injustice, it is also actively
supporting a series of those companies, including Monsanto, Dupont and Bayer
through a variety of pro-corporate initiatives around the world.
3) The foundation’s promotion of industrial agriculture across
Africa, pushing for the adoption of GM, patented seed systems and chemical
fertilisers, all of which undermine existing sustainable, small-scale farming
that is providing the vast majority of food security across the continent.
4) The foundation’s promotion of projects around the world pushing
private healthcare and education. Numerous agencies have raised concerns that
such projects exacerbate inequality and undermine the universal provision of
such basic human necessities.
5) BMGF’s funding of a series of vaccine programmes that have
reportedly lead to illnesses or even deaths with little official or media
scrutiny.
Polly Jones the head of campaigns and policy at Global Justice Now
says:
“The Gates Foundation has rapidly become the most influential
actor in the world of global health and agricultural policies, but there’s no
oversight or accountability in how that influence is managed. This
concentration of power and influence is even more problematic when you consider
that the philanthropic vision of the Gates Foundation seems to be largely based
on the values of corporate America. The foundation is relentlessly promoting
big business-based initiatives such as industrial agriculture, private health
care and education. But these are all potentially exacerbating the problems of
poverty and lack of access to basic resources that the foundation is supposed
to be alleviating.”
The report states that that Bill Gates has regular access to world
leaders and is in effect personally bankrolling hundreds of universities,
international organisations, NGOs and media outlets. As the single most
influential voice in international development, the foundation’s strategy is a
major challenge to progressive development actors and activists around the
world who want to see the influence of multinational corporations in global
markets reduced or eliminated.
The foundation not only funds projects in which agricultural and
pharmaceutical corporations are among the leading beneficiaries, but it often
invests in the same companies as it is funding, meaning the foundation has an
interest in the ongoing profitability of these corporations. According to the
report, this is “a corporate merry-go-round where the BMGF consistently acts in
the interests of corporations.”
Uprooting indigenous agriculture for the benefit of global
agribusiness
The report notes that the BMGF’s close relationship with seed and
chemical giant Monsanto is well known. It previously owned shares in the
company and continues to promote several projects in which Monsanto is a
beneficiary, not least the wholly inappropriate and fraudulent GMO project
which promotes a technical quick-fix ahead of tackling the structural issues [2] that
create hunger, poverty and food insecurity But, as the report
notes, the BMGF partners with many other multinational agribusiness
corporations.
Many examples where this is the case are highlighted by the
report. For instance, the foundation is working with US trader Cargill in an $8
million project to “develop the soya value chain” in southern Africa. Cargill
is the biggest global player in the production of and trade in soya with heavy
investments in South America where GM soya mono-crops have displaced rural
populations and caused great environmental damage. According to Global Justice
Now, the BMGF-funded project will likely enable Cargill to capture a hitherto
untapped African soya market and eventually introduce GM soya onto the
continent. The end markets for this soya are companies with relationships with
the fast food outlet, KFC, whose expansion in Africa is being aided by the
project.
Specific examples are given which highlight how BMGF is also
supporting projects involving other chemicals and seed corporations, including
DuPont Pioneer, Syngenta and Bayer.
According to the report, the BMGF is promoting a model of
industrial agriculture, the increasing use of chemical fertilisers and
expensive, patented seeds, the privatisation of extension services and a very
large focus on genetically modified seeds. The foundation bankrolls the
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in pushing industrial
agriculture.
A key area for AGRA is seed policy. The report notes that
currently over 80 per cent of Africa’s seed supply comes from millions of small-scale
farmers recycling and exchanging seed from year to year. But AGRA is promoting
the commercial production of seed and is thus supporting the introduction of
commercial seed systems, which risk enabling a few large companies to control
seed research and development, production and distribution.
In order for commercial seed companies to invest in research and
development, they first want to protect their ‘intellectual property’.
According to the report, this requires a fundamental restructuring of seed laws
to allow for certification systems that not only protect certified varieties
and royalties derived from them, but which actually criminalise all
non-certified seed.
The report notes that over the past two decades a long and slow
process of national seed law reviews, sponsored by USAID and the G8 along with
the BMGF and others, has opened the door to multinational corporations’
involvement in seed production, including the acquisition of every sizeable
seed enterprise on the African continent.
At the same time, AGRA is working to promote costly inputs,
notably fertiliser, despite evidence to suggest chemical fertilisers have
significant health risks for farm workers, increase soil erosion and can trap
small-scale farmers in unsustainable debt. The BMGF, through AGRA, is one of
the world’s largest promoters of chemical fertiliser.
Some grants given by the BMGF to AGRA have been specifically
intended to “help AGRA build the fertiliser supply chain” in Africa. The report
describes how one of the largest of AGRA’s grants, worth $25 million, was used
to help establish the African Fertiliser Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) in
2012, whose very goal is to “at least double total fertiliser use” in
Africa. The AFAP project is being pursued in partnership with the
International Fertiliser Development Centre, a body which represents the
fertiliser industry.
Another of AGRA’s key programmes since its inception has been
support to agro-dealer networks – small, private stockists of transnational
companies' chemicals and seeds who sell these to farmers in several African
countries. This is increasing the reliance of farmers on chemical inputs and
marginalising sustainable agriculture alternatives, thereby undermining any
notion that farmers are exercising their 'free choice' (as the neo-liberal
evangelists are keen to tell everyone) when it comes to adopting certain
agricultural practices.
The report concludes that AGRA’s agenda is the biggest direct
threat to the growing movement in support of food sovereignty and
agroecological farming methods in Africa. This movement opposes reliance on
chemicals, expensive seeds and GM and instead promotes an approach which allows
communities control over the way food is produced, traded and consumed. It is
seeking to create a food system that is designed to help people and the
environment rather than make profits for multinational corporations. Priority
is given to promoting healthy farming and healthy food by protecting soil,
water and climate, and promoting biodiversity.
Recent evidence from Greenpeace [3] and
the Oakland Institute [4] shows
that in Africa agroecological farming can increase yields significantly (often
greater than industrial agriculture), and that it is more profitable for small
farmers. In 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (Olivier de
Schutter) called on countries to reorient their agriculture policies [5] to
promote sustainable systems - not least agroecology - that realize the right to
food. Moreover, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science
and Technology for Development [6] (IAASTD)
was the work of over 400 scientists and took four years to complete. It was
twice peer reviewed and states we must look to smallholder, traditional farming
to deliver food security in third world countries through agri-ecological
systems which are sustainable.
In a January 2015 piece in The Guardian [7], the
director of Global Justice Now said that ‘development’ was once regarded as a
process of breaking with colonial exploitation and transferring power over
resources from the ‘first’ to the ‘third world’, involving a revolutionary
struggle over the world’s resources. However, the current paradigm is based on
the assumption that developing countries need to adopt neo-liberal policies and
that public money in the guise of aid should facilitate this.
If this new report shows anything, it is that the notion of
‘development’ has become hijacked by rich corporations and a super-rich
‘philanthrocapitalist’ (whose own corporate practices have been questionable to
say the least, as highlighted by the report). In effect, the model of
'development' being facilitated is married to the ideology and structurally embedded power relations of an exploitative
global capitalism [8].
The BMGF is spearheading the ambitions of corporate America and
the scramble for Africa by global agribusiness.
Colin Todhunter is an extensively published independent writer
and former social policy researcher, based in the United Kingdom and India. He
publishes East by Northwest [9] and
you can support his work here. [10]
The report: 'Gated Development - Is the Gates Foundation always a force
for good?' [1] is by Global Justice Now.
Links:
[1] http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/resources/gated-development-gates-foundation-always-force-good
[2] http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2986738/claiming_to_represent_science_the_global_gmo_industry_is_built_on_fear_fraud_and_corruption.html
[3] http://www.greenpeace.org/africa/Global/africa/graphics/FoodForLife/Fostering%20Economic%20Resilience.pdf
[4] http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2986355/the_tremendous_success_of_agroecology_in_africa.html
[5] http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20110308_a-hrc-16-49_agroecology_en.pdf
[6] http://www.unep.org/dewa/agassessment/reports/IAASTD/EN/Agriculture%20at%20a%20Crossroads_Global%20Report%20(English).pdf
[7] http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/jan/22/development-toxic-term
[8] http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/depth-articles/global-economy/globalisation-part-3-imf-world-bank-and-structural-adjustmen
[9] http://www.colintodhunter.com
[10] http://www.colintodhunter.com/p/about_7.html
[2] http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2986738/claiming_to_represent_science_the_global_gmo_industry_is_built_on_fear_fraud_and_corruption.html
[3] http://www.greenpeace.org/africa/Global/africa/graphics/FoodForLife/Fostering%20Economic%20Resilience.pdf
[4] http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2986355/the_tremendous_success_of_agroecology_in_africa.html
[5] http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20110308_a-hrc-16-49_agroecology_en.pdf
[6] http://www.unep.org/dewa/agassessment/reports/IAASTD/EN/Agriculture%20at%20a%20Crossroads_Global%20Report%20(English).pdf
[7] http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/jan/22/development-toxic-term
[8] http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/depth-articles/global-economy/globalisation-part-3-imf-world-bank-and-structural-adjustmen
[9] http://www.colintodhunter.com
[10] http://www.colintodhunter.com/p/about_7.html
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