Food sovereignty within several African countries is on the verge of a complete neo-colonial take-over, critics of a recent agricultural initiative being developed by a new G8 alliance warn.
According to a Guardian report published Tuesday, the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition initiative, supported by the Obama administration, has connected African leaders with major agribusiness corporations in an effort to map out a plan for agricultural development on the African continent in the coming years, which will loosen export and tax laws, award “huge chunks of land” for private investment and change seed laws to benefit international corporations and their GMO products.
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In the “New Alliance” talks, agricultural giants such as Syngenta and Cargill have been granted “unprecedented access to decision-makers over the past two years,” the Guardian reports, while small scale farmers are increasingly shut out of the process.
In a press release late last year, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), a Pan-African platform of networks and farmer organizations, warned against such policies, which are becoming increasingly common on the continent:
“It will be like colonialism,” Zitto Kabwe, the chairman of the Tanzanian parliament’s public accounts committee told the Guardian. “Farmers will not be able to farm until they import, linking farmers to [the] vulnerability of international prices. Big companies will benefit. We should not allow that.”
The initiative will change seed, land and tax laws in at least 10 different African countries with over 200 policy commitments coming from African leaders.
Governments are committing to investors “completely behind the screen” with “no long-term view about the future of smallholder farmers,” Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, told the Guardian. “There’s a struggle for land, for investment, for seed systems, and first and foremost there’s a struggle for political influence.”
“It will be like colonialism. Farmers will not be able to farm until they import, linking farmers to [the] vulnerability of international prices. Big companies will benefit. We should not allow that.” – Zitto Kabwe, chairman of the Tanzanian parliament’s public accounts committee
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