Global corporations are increasingly
influencing development policy, resulting in partnership agreements
like the New Alliance for Food and Nutrition Security that grow
corporate profits while endangering the livelihoods of small-scale
farmers.
This report explores the ways in which global corporations are
influencing development agendas in Africa, and the faulty rhetoric
that underpins their vision of development. Small farmers produce 80%
of the food consumed in Africa today, and farmers’ own investments
make up 90% of all investment in agriculture globally. Yet, when it
comes to the design of large-scale aid and development programs,
corporate capital is increasingly in the drivers seat, shaping
policies that support international investors while endangering and
impoverishing small-scale farmers.
The New Alliance for Food Security
and Nutrition, a new “co-operation framework” launched at the
2012 G8 Summit in the US and boosted at the 2013 Summit in the UK
exemplifies this trend. The partnership now covers 10 African
countries and brings well over 100 companies to the table as donors,
in addition to the G8 governments and the European Union. The stated
aim of this initiative is “to accelerate responsible investment in
African agriculture and lift 50 million people out of poverty by
2022”.
Partnership agreements with individual countries promise
“refinements” to policy “to improve investment opportunities”.
In practice these changes punish small farmers and reward
corporations by privatizing the collective resources on which rural
peoples’ livelihoods depend and revising seed laws to promote
corporations’ products and limit farmers’ rights to use their own
seeds.
This report investigates in depth the process which has given
rise to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition and reveals
the complex ways in which global corporations have influenced this
process as private corporations and through philanthrocapitalist
foundations, corporate private sector forums, and bilateral and
multilateral aid programmes. It explores the ways in which
corporations have used forums to lend the appearance of impartiality
and legitimacy to their recommendations, and reveals the lack of
truly democratic consultation about the New Alliance with national
stakeholders and, especially, with the small farmers who make up the
majority of the population in the African countries involved.
This
push towards corporate-led development has been underpinned by a set
of problematic and widely disputed assumptions. Corporate actors have
promoted a vision of development that emphasizes “modernization,”
implicitly viewing traditional agricultural practices as ‘backwards’
and viewing the maximization of production as a key goal of
development. At the same time it has promoted value chain approaches,
the development of ‘agricultural growth corridors,’ and increased
public private partnerships, all of which have the capacity to
further entrench social inequality by disproportionately benefiting
rich investors while further marginalising small-scale farmers.
Thus,
the New Alliance seems poised to endanger the livelihoods of African
small-scale producers while increasing the profits of major
international corporations. However, activists and civil society
organisations are resisting at all levels, developing and advocating
for viable alternatives.
This paper ends by documenting the counter
movements underway within Africa and internationally through bodies
like the reformed global Committee on World Food Security, suggesting
that another way forward is possible. Nora McKeon, author of the
report says: “The Alliance that could really vanquish hunger would
be one between African governments and their own small-scale
producers. A combination of pressure from above – as in the
reformed CFS – and political pressure from below – from organized
and articulate citizens – may well be the best way to get there.”
Olivier De Schutter, who is just
stepping down after six years of strenuously defending the right to
food in his role as UN Special Rapporteur, notes that “the
smallholder-led, country-led approach, is the type of aid that has
the greatest multiplier effects for the poorest, and presents the
lowest risks of dependency... It remains to be seen whether private
firms, in partnership with public donors, will be willing to support
approaches that look more like this, and less like the rest of their
investment portfolios".
Olivier De Schutter, who is just stepping down after six years of
strenuously defending the right to food in his role as UN Special
Rapporteur, notes that “the smallholder-led, country-led approach, is
the type of aid that has the greatest multiplier effects for the
poorest, and presents the lowest risks of dependency... It remains to be
seen whether private firms, in partnership with public donors, will be
willing to support approaches that look more like this, and less like
the rest of their investment portfolios". - See more at:
http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23582#sthash.VzM9jGKP.dpuf
Olivier De Schutter, who is just stepping down after six years of
strenuously defending the right to food in his role as UN Special
Rapporteur, notes that “the smallholder-led, country-led approach, is
the type of aid that has the greatest multiplier effects for the
poorest, and presents the lowest risks of dependency... It remains to be
seen whether private firms, in partnership with public donors, will be
willing to support approaches that look more like this, and less like
the rest of their investment portfolios". - See more at:
http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23582#sthash.VzM9jGKP.dpuf
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