Britain should withdraw funding for a
scheme that encourages big businesses to invest in African agriculture, putting
profits ahead of poor farmers' interests, activists
said.
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A woman works in a rice mill in
Aliade community in the Gwer
local government area of the
central state of Benue in Nigeria
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More than 25 UK campaign groups are
urging British Prime Minister David Cameron to withhold 395 million pounds
pledged to the New Alliance
for Food Security and Nutrition over the next three years.
The scheme – announced in May last
year and backed by the G8, the world's eight richest nations – seeks to lift 50
million people out of poverty over the next decade by providing countries with
support to secure private sector investment in food production if they showed a
“real commitment” to transparency and good governance.
Cameron
called the initiative when it was announced “a great combination of promoting
good governance and helping Africa to feed its people.”
However, a coalition of African
farmers' movements and civil society groups has dismissed the initiative as
part of "a new
wave of colonialism", which views Africa as "a possible
new frontier to make profits, with an eye on land, food and biofuels in
particular".
One major concern is a requirement
that African nations change their seed laws, trade laws and land ownership at
the expense of local farmers and local food needs.
Campaigners also fear it will allow
big multinational seed, fertiliser and agrochemical companies such as Yara,
Monsanto, Syngenta and Cargill to set the agenda.
"It is unacceptably cynical of
the G8 to pretend 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," said Kirtana Chandrasekaran, food sovereignty programme
coordinator at Friends of the Earth.
"African civil society groups
recognise the New Alliance is a poisoned chalice, and they are right to reject
it," she said.
Despite an abundance of fertile land,
Africa faces repeated cycles of hunger and food insecurity. Decades of
under-investment in the agricultural sector and unfavourable trade policies
mean hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers struggle to make a living
from their land, let alone a profit.
Anti-poverty campaigner War on Want is
one of the UK groups calling for Cameron to withhold funding for the New
Alliance.
"If you think of the aid budget,
395 million pounds is a really significant sum - much bigger than the amounts
given out to country programmes by DFID," War on Want's chief executive
John Hilary told Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"This is big money thrown over to
the private sector to try to re-engineer agriculture in Africa for the benefit
of private capital, particularly big multinational corporations."
Speaking ahead of a meeting on
nutrition and hunger to be hosted by Britain's Cameron on June 8, Hilary said
an alternative to the G8 plan was to promote food sovereignty in African
countries.
He called for more investment in
small-holder farmers, so they would be in a better position to choose which
varieties of crops they grow and which fertilisers to use.
Six African countries have already
signed up to the alliance, with Benin, Malawi, Nigeria and Senegal expected to
join at the 'hunger
summit' in London this week, the campaigners said
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