From 2009 to 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) spent $478,302,627 on African agricultural development. Adding in the value of grants since then, the Foundation’s outlay, directly and indirectly, to influence African agriculture so far may have reached around $2 billion.
Bill Gates is not an African, not a scholar of Africa, not a farmer and not a development expert.While successful in his chosen field, Bill Gates has no expertise in the farm field. But he is a very rich man, and he knows how he wants to remake the world. Bill Gates has a worldview coloured by his own personal experiences - that high tech, top-down decision making, provides the preferred, if not the only, solutions to social problems. However, his technocratic ideology runs counter to the best-informed science. Gates implored countries to bring “agricultural science and technology to poor farmers”, for which “the real expertise lies with private sector companies”. This was a reference to genetic engineering and biotechnology. The Gates Foundation has become the world’s leading funder of research into the genetic modification of crops. Simultaneously, the Foundation and its grantees fund civil society organisations in Africa as front groups that support this high-tech vision, a tactic that makes it seem as if there is great demand for these technologies on the ground.
The Foundation’s support for agricultural development favours industrial, high-tech, capitalist market approaches. In particular, its support for genetically engineered crops as a solution for world hunger is of concern to those of us - in Africa and the US - involved in promoting sustainable, equitable agricultural policies. Studies by the World Bank and the United Nations have repeatedly concluded that high-tech agriculture will not be the way to ’feed the world’. The World Bank and the UN funded 400 scientists over three years to compile the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). Its conclusions in 2009 were diametrically opposed, at both philosophical and practical levels, to those espoused by Gates. It recommended research that ’would focus on local priorities identified through participatory and transparent processes, and favour multifunctional solutions to local problems’, and it concluded that biotechnology alone will not solve the food needs of Africa.
TheIAASTD suggests that ’agroecological’ methods, not industrial farming models, provide the most viable, proven and reliable means to enhance global food security, especially in light of climate change. These include implementing practical scientific research based on traditional ecological approaches, so farmers avoid disrupting the natural carbon, nitrogen and water cycles as conventional agriculture has done.
Olivier De Schutter, formerly the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, too concluded that agroecological farming has far greater potential for fighting hunger, particularly during economic and climatically uncertain times, reinforcing the IAASTD research. Agroecological practices have consistently proven capable of sustainably increasing productivity. Using the guidelines that the agroecologist Miguel Altieri has proposed, agroecology consists of ’broad performance criteria which [include] properties of ecological sustainability, food security, economic viability, resource conservation and social equity, as well as increased production...To attain this understanding agriculture must be conceived of as an ecological system as well as a human-dominated socio-economic system.
Conversely, the present genetically modified (GM) crops, based on industrial agriculture, generally have not increased yields over the long run, despite their increased input costs. The Union of Concerned Scientists detailed GM crops’ underperformance in their 2009 report, ’Failure to Yield’
The Foundation particularly believes that it should be the private sector which guides projects. Bill and Melinda Gates specifically praised their partnering with Monsanto in this regard. In fact, an examination indicates that frequently the charitable activities of the Foundation have been designed with a goal of promoting capitalist profits, although it cultivates an image of merely pursuing good works. This is very true in the Foundation’s agricultural development programme in Africa. The Foundation is involved in the privatisation of seed production by leaning on African nations to pass new intellectual property laws restricting the saving, trading, exchange and sale of seed and to join strict international intellectual property systems. Thus, these ancient practices of farmers will be criminalised, turning seeds wholly into private commodities to be bought and sold, mainly benefitting US and European agribusiness.
The activities of the Gates Foundation are a major example of what has come to be called ’philanthrocapitalism’. This term summarises attempts by philanthropies to use market processes to do good, although this strategy is actually problematic, as markets are ill-suited to produce socially constructive ends. Its advocates often expect financial returns or secondary benefits over the long term from their investments in social programmes. Philanthropy becomes another part of the engine of profit and corporate control. By and large, the Foundation’s grants do not support locally defined priorities, do not fit within the holistic approach urged by many development experts
’It is ... likely that Bill Gates, who has regular access to world leaders and is in effect personally bankrolling hundreds of universities, international organisations, NGOs and media outlets, has become the single most influential voice in international development. Closer examination of the BMGF is critical given that its influence is vast, indeed greater than most donor governments. The BMGF provides more aid to global health than any country donor and is the fifth largest donor to agriculture in developing countries. In 2013, only 11 countries spent more on aid than the BMGF, making it the world’s 12th largest donor. The Gates Foundation has become a bigger donor than countries such as Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, and Italy.’ a report from Global Justice Now explained in 2016.
It went on to say, ’The trend to involve business in addressing poverty and inequality is central to the priorities and funding of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We argue that this is far from a neutral charitable strategy but instead an ideological commitment to promote neoliberal economic policies and corporate globalisation. Big business is directly benefitting, in particular in the fields of agriculture and health, as a result of the foundation’s activities, despite evidence to show that business solutions are not the most effective.’
Global Justice Now concluded, ’A rich Bill Gates spending money on the poor in a high-profile, technology-fixated way reinforces the notion that development is about charity and “delivering solutions” to the poor. Charity can certainly help promote development, but when this approach becomes the development model, as it will tend to when “donors” have so much influence over policies, the “poor” become dependent on the “rich”, and the latter are seen as saviours while the poor are simply recipients of favours. In this sense, philanthropy is the enemy of justice.’
The Foundation has become a stalking horse for corporate proponents promoting industrial agricultural paradigms which view African hunger simply as a business opportunity. It has targeted the world’s poor as presenting ’a fast-growing consumer market’. Referring to these people as ’BOP’ (bottom of the pyramid), Gates has insisted that they are subsumed into a global capitalist system (one which has done so well to enrich him). The Foundation has referred to the inevitable displacement of smallholder farmers as promoting ’urban mobility’. Such class impacts of its policies are further proof that the BMGF is engaged in philanthrocapitalism.
Despite the impression that Bill Gates is “giving away” his fortune to charity, his estimated net worth is constantly increasing. According to Forbes, Gates’ personal wealth has risen from $56 billion in 2011 to $78.9 billion in 2015 - an increase of $23 billion in four years, roughly the same amount of money that the BMGF has disbursed since its inception. In January 2014, the Guardian reported that a 40 per cent increase in Microsoft shares boosted Bill Gates’ fortune by $15.8 billion in 2013. That same year, the BMGF gave out grants worth $3.6 billion.
Abridged and adapted from here
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