Timothy A. Wise and Mutinta Nketani, The Elephant (Kenya)
Donors, governments and business leaders had another lackluster African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), this year from September 5-8 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. There was little fanfare, few major announcements and no hint of meaningful input from small-scale farmers, the supposed beneficiaries of the erstwhile Green Revolution for Africa. Tanzanian farmers’ request for a seat at the table, in the form of a more critical side event, was denied.
Some say that if you don’t have a seat at the table you are probably on the menu. That’s the way Zambian farmers are feeling. Zambia is one of several countries targeted for so-called “agro-poles,” 250,000-acre blocks of land often taken from local communities to attract agribusiness investment. On the menu indeed.
“Where are the farmers?” asked Tanzanian farmer leader Juma Shabani at a sharply critical August 30 press conference organized by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA). “They are clearly excluded in the coming 2023 AGRF meeting in Tanzania, a country with more than 70 per cent of its population engaged in agriculture.”
At the August 30 press conference, farm leaders from Kenya, Uganda, Mali, Zimbabwe and Zambia denounced the failures of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (now simply known by its acronym, AGRA, after it withdrew the words “green revolution” from its name). And they decried the undue influence the foreign-funded organization has on African government policies.
“AGRA’s direct intervention and influence over African government policies, particularly in seeds and biosafety, have tilted the scales in favour of commercial seed providers and Green Revolution technologies,” reads the AFSA press release. “This level of interference has squeezed out alternative voices and approaches like agroecology.”
This is the third consecutive year the food sovereignty alliance and its allies have protested Green Revolution proponents’ zealous faith in their seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. The only changes farmers have seen are cosmetic. The words “green revolution” have been removed from the Forum, which is now called the African Food Systems Summit. And AGRA now stands, literally, for nothing. But Green Revolution policies were on full display at the Summit, despite their proven failures.
Hunger has grown to alarming levels across Sub-Saharan Africa. AGRA’s 13 focus countries have seen rising deprivation as the heavily promoted seeds and fertilizers fail to catalyze a productivity revolution. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other AGRA sponsors promised in 2006 to double productivity and incomes while halving food insecurity by 2020. Instead, the number of chronically hungry has risen by 50% in AGRA countries, according to the United Nations.
Summit host Tanzania has seen the number of “undernourished” jump 34% since it joined AGRA. An estimated 59% of Tanzanians suffer moderate or severe levels of food insecurity.
The hungry and food-insecure, many of them small-scale farmers, didn’t get seats at the AGRF table, but they are on the menu as the Green Revolutionaries plan their next corporate-backed effort to displace small-scale farmers with industrialized farms.
The latest assault is being led by the African Development Bank (AfDB) under its “Feed Africa” initiative. It is supported by the Gates Foundation, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and AGRA itself, which under its self-proclaimed “AGRA 3.0” strategy is serving as the catalyst in pressing African governments to make their policies more friendly to agribusiness.
A damning donor evaluation last year acknowledged that AGRA had failed to achieve any of its objectives in improving farmer productivity and welfare. But, noted evaluators, it was often successful at changing policies. So AGRA has intensified its work to influence farm policies.
Zambia, which recently rejoined AGRA, is a particular target, and AGRA 3.0 seems willing to hijack more democratic policy efforts.
Since 2021, Zambia had been developing its second National Agriculture Investment Plan (NAIP II), the basic framework for agricultural development. After much productive public consultation during the evaluation of NAIP I, Zambian advocates and farmers were surprised to be presented with a completely different investment framework written with support from FAO sponsored consultants and the resident AGRA consultant who has been attached to the Ministry of Agriculture since 2020….
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