Commercial Colonisation of Africa
Graham Peebles
<
http://www.nationofchange.org/commercial-colonisation-africa-1372434364>
NationofChange / News Analysis
Published: Sunday 14 July 2013
Driven overwhelmingly by self-interest and profit, the current crop of
“investors” differ little from their colonial ancestors.
The New Wild West
Dancing to the tune of their corporate benefactors, governments of the
ruling G8 countries are enacting complex agriculture agreements delivering
large tracts of prime cut African soil into the portfolios of their
multinational bedmates.
Desperate for foreign investment, countries throughout Africa are at the
mercy of their new colonial masters – national and international
agrochemical corporations, fighting for land, water and control of the
world’s food supplies. Driven overwhelmingly by self-interest and profit,
the current crop of ‘investors’ differ little from their colonial ancestors.
The means may have changed, but the aim – to rape and pillage, no matter the
sincere sounding rhetoric, remains more or less the same.
Regarded by her northern guides as agriculturally underperforming,
Sub-Saharan Africa is seen
<
http://www.acbio.org.za/activist/index.php?m=u&f=dsp&petitionID=3> The
African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) relate, as a “new frontier”, a place to
“make profits, with an eye on land, food and biofuels in particular".
Africa, then, is the new Wild West; smallholder farmers and indigenous
people are the natives Indians, the multi nationals and their democratically
elected representatives – or salesmen - the settlers.
Various initiatives offering what is, indisputably, much needed ‘support and
investment’ flowing north to south. Key amongst these is The New Alliance
for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa (NAFSNA), designed by the
governments of the eight richest economies, for some of the poorest
countries in the world. The New Alliance was born out of the G8 summit in
May 2012 at Camp David and, according to,
<
http://www.waronwant.org/overseas-work/food-sovereignty/g8/17893-stop-uks-m
ultimillion-giveaway-to-multinationals> War on Want (WoW), “has been
modelled on the ‘new vision’ of private investment in agriculture developed
by management consultants McKinsey in conjunction with the ABCD group of
leading grain traders (ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus) and other
multinational agribusiness companies.” (Ibid) It has been written in
honourable terms to sit comfortably within the Africa Union’s Comprehensive
African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), bestowing an aura of
international credibility.
The New Alliance… in land and seed appropriation
At first glance, The New Alliance, with its altruistically-gilded aims,
appears to be a worthy development. Who amongst us could argue with the
intention as reported by the
<
http://iif.un.org/content/new-alliance-food-security-and-nutrition> United
Nations (UN), to “achieve sustained and inclusive agricultural growth and
raise 50 million people out of poverty over the next 10 years”. The means to
achieving this noble quest however, are skewed, ignoring the rights and
needs of small-holder farmers and the wishes of local people – who are not
consulted during the heady negotiations with government officials local and
national, and the multi zillion $ corporations who are swarming to buy their
ancestral land. Alliance contracts and deals-done favour wealthy investors,
revealing the underlying, unjust G8 initiatives objective, to “open up
African agriculture to multinational agribusiness companies by means of
national ‘cooperation frameworks’ between African governments, donors and
private sector investors”, WoW report.
Poverty reduction (the principle stated aim of the Alliance), will be
achieved we are told, not by rational methods of sharing and
re-distribution, but
<
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/05/18/fact-sheet-g-8-action
-food-security-and-nutrition> USAID 05/18/2012 reveal, by “aligning the
commitments of Africa’s leadership to drive effective country plans and
policies for food security”. ‘Plans and policies’, drafted no doubt in the
hallowed meeting rooms of those driving the ‘New Alliance’: the G8
governments and their cohorts including The World Bank and, pulling the
policy strings, the agriculture companies sitting behind them, nestling
alongside the pharmaceutical giants and the arms industry magnates. With
African governments anxious to eat at the head table, or at least be invited
into the cocktail chamber they have little choice but to sign up to such
unbalanced ‘plans and policies’.
To date, nine African countries (from a continent of 54 nation states), have
committed to The New Alliance. First to sign up were, Tanzania, Ghana and
the West’s favoured ally in the region Ethiopia – where wide ranging human
rights violations, including forced displacement and rapes have reportedly
accompanied land sales, and where over 250,000 people in Gambella have been
forced into the Orwellian sounding ‘Villagization Programmes’. Then came
Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Cote d’Ivoire, followed by Benin, Malawi, and
Nigeria. It is an agreement dripping with strings that promise to entangle
the innocent and uninformed. After “wide-ranging consultations on land and
farming”, with officials from potential partner countries, the results of
which were “ignored in the agreements with the G8”, deals “between African
governments and private companies were facilitated by the World Economic
Forum”, behind, The Guardian report, firmly closed doors.
Conditional to investment promised by The New Alliance, African leaders,
USAID tell us are ‘committed’ – forced may be a better word - “to refine
[government] policies in order to improve investment opportunities”. In
plain English, African countries are required to, change their trade and
agriculture laws to include ending the free distribution of seeds, relax the
tax system and national export controls and open the doors for profit
repatriation (allowing the money as well as the crops to be exported). In
Mozambique, as elsewhere across the continent, local farmers have been
evicted from their land under land sales agreements, and The Guardian
<
http://http/www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/10/african-hunger-hel
p-g8-grab> 06/10/2013 report, “is now obliged to write new laws promoting
what its agreement calls "partnerships" of this kind”. A polluted term,
disguising the real relationship between African governments and the
multi-national ‘investors’, which is closer to master and maid than equal
collaborators.
The Alliance offers a combination of public and private money to African
countries willing to take the G8 plunge into international
political-economic duplicity, with, ACB relate “the large multinational
seed, fertiliser and agrochemical companies setting the agenda … and
philanthropic institutions (like AGRA and others) establishing the
institutional and infrastructural mechanisms to realise this agenda”.
Britain has pledged £395 million of foreign aid whilst, according to the UN
“over 45 local and multinational companies have expressed their intent to
invest over $3 billion across the agricultural value chain in Grow Africa
countries [a Programme of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development
(NEPAD) established by the African Union in 2003.].” In order to get their
required to “change their seed laws, trade laws and land ownership in order
to prioritise corporate profits over local food needs”, Mozambique e.g. is
contracted, The Guardian tell us to “systematically cease distribution of
free and unimproved seeds", and is drawing up new laws granting intellectual
property rights (IPR) of seeds, that will "promote private sector
investment". In other words, laws are being written that allow foreign
companies – ‘investors’ (a word used to mislead and bestow legitimacy) - to
grab the land of their African ‘partners’, patent their seeds and monopolise
their food markets. In Ghana, Tanzania and Ivory Coast, similar regulations
sit on the table waiting to be rubber-stamped.
The re-writing of seed laws, along with the fact that these unbalanced deals
allow “big multinational seed, fertiliser and agrochemical companies such as
Yara, Monsanto, Syngenta and Cargill to set the agenda”, is a major concern
expressed by environmental NGO’s and campaigners, Reuters
<
http://www.trust.org/item/20130603143133-l3kyh> 06/20/2013 report. These
are concerns that the initiating G8 governments, were they at all troubled
by the impact of their meddling, should share.
The wide ownership, by a small number of huge agro-chemical companies of the
rights to seeds and fertilisers, is creating, the UN in their report on the
<
http://www.srfood.org/index.php/en/areas-of-work/food-production-and-resour
ces/intellectual-property-rights-> Right to Food, state: “monopoly
privileges to plant breeders and patent-holders through the tools of
intellectual property”. This growing trend, facilitated through the support
of the G8 governments is placing more and more control of the worldwide food
supply in their hands, and is causing, “the poorest farmers [to] become
increasingly dependent on expensive inputs, creating the risk of
indebtedness in the face of unstable incomes.” India is a case in question
where farmers strangled by debt are committing suicide at a rate of two per
hour.
Investment Support Sharing
African farmers, and civil society along with 25 British campaign groups
including War on Want, Friends of the Earth, The Gaia Foundation and the
World Development Movement, have declared their objections to the New
Alliance and asked that the government withhold the £395 million so
generously pledged by Prime Minister Cameron. The African civil society are
in no doubt that “opening markets and creating space for multinationals to
secure profits lie at the heart of the G8 intervention”, they “recognise the
New Alliance is a poisoned chalice, and they are right to reject it”,
asserts Kirtana Chandrasekaran of Friends of the Earth (FoE).
Having made a continental mess of their own countries’ economies, not to
mention the environmental mayhem caused by their neo-liberal economic
policies, It is with unabashed colonial arrogance that the G8 governments
deem to tell African countries what to do with their land and how best to do
it. Not only do they have no genuine interest in Africa, save what can be
gained from it, but they have “no legitimacy to intervene in matters of
food, hunger and land tenure in Africa or any other part of the world”, as
WoW make clear. The New Alliance, according to David Cameron, is “a great
combination of promoting good governance and helping Africa to feed its
people”. He and the rest of the G8 sitting comfortably club, are, FoE state,
“pretending to be tackling hunger and land grabbing in Africa while backing
a scheme that will ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of small
farmers”. This new deal is “a pro-corporate assault on African nations”,
providing ‘investment and support‘ opportunities for greedy investors,
looking to further expand their corporate assets with the support of
participating governments obliged to provide a selection box of state
incentives.
The ending of hunger in sub-Saharan Africa, India and elsewhere, will not be
brought about by allowing large tracts of land to be bought up by
corporations whose only interest is in maximizing return on investment. Far
from providing investment and support for the people of Africa, The Alliance
is a mask for exploitation and profiteering: True investment in Africa is
investment in the people of Africa; the smallholder farmers, the women and
children, the communities across the continent. It involves working
collectively, consulting, encouraging participation and crucially sharing.
Sharing of knowledge, experience and technology, sharing the natural
resources – the land, food and water, the minerals and other resources
equitably amongst the people of Africa and indeed the wider world. Such
radical, commonsense ideas would go a long way to creating not only food
security but harmony, trust and social justice which just might bring about
peace.
Received on Sun Jul 14 2013 - 20:17:52 EDT