November 07, 2009

Profits before people: The great African liquidation sale

"The fervour with which foreign commercial interests are forcing their agricultural 'solutions' on the African continent represents nothing more than an established endeavour to protect profits and access to resources, writes Joan Baxter. For all that they are dressed up as 'help' and 'knowledge', these ostensible solutions are about one thing: Money. So long as powerful initiatives like the Green Revolution and agribusinesses are able to trample on the continent's sovereignty, Baxter argues, Africa's land, traditional knowledge, biodiversity, seeds and crop varieties will remain in liquidation."

"Back in the early 1990s when I was reporting from northern Ghana, an elderly woman farmer decided I would benefit from a bit of enlightenment. In a rather long lecture, she detailed for me the devastating effects that the Green Revolution – the first one that outside experts and donors launched in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s – had had on farmers’ crops, soils, trees and their lives. She said that the imported seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and tractors, the instructions to plant row after row of imported hybrid maize and cut down precious trees that protected the soils and nourished the people – even the invaluable sheanut trees – had ruined the diverse and productive farming systems that had always sustained her people. When she finished, she cocked an eye at me and asked, with a cagey grin, 'Why do you bring your mistakes here?' By 'you' she meant all the people, foreigners and Africans in their employ, who tramp all over the continent implementing their big plans to develop it. These great schemes are generally concocted even higher up the decision-making chain in distant world financial capitals, often by free-market ideologues and international bankers who wouldn’t know a sheanut from a peanut.

"At the time, I had no answer to her question. But now, two decades later, I think I do. It’s taken a lot of years of schooling at the knees of African farmers and intellectuals from Zambia to The Gambia. And most recently, it was all summed up clearly for me by members of COPAGEN, a coalition of African farmer associations, scientists, civil society groups and activists who work to protect Africa’s genetic heritage, farmer rights, and their sovereignty over their land, seeds and food. All these knowledgeable people have shown me that the answer is quite straightforward: many of those imported mistakes, disguised as solutions for Africa, are very, very profitable. At least for those who design and make them.

"Not, however, for the average African farming family or even the average African whose interests, we are led to believe, are being served by the big plans made by big planners for progress and development."...
Read full article here.

This well-documented article was distributed by PAMBAZUKA NEWS, on 5 November 2009.

* Joan Baxter is a Canadian journalist who has lived and worked in Africa for 25 years, reporting for the BBC and other international media and doing research on sustainable natural resource management, agriculture, mining and extractive industries. She is an award-winning author and her latest book, 'Dust From Our Eyes – An Unblinkered Look at Africa' was shortlisted for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.