Author: Ochieng Ogondo
Date: January 30, 2007
Type of article: Business News
Source: The East African Standard http://www.eastandard.net/archives/index.php?mnu=details&id=1143964209&catid=14

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Efforts by western multibillion organisations to introduce new agricultural technologies in Africa are putting the continent under threat.

Seventy Non-Governmental Organisation (NGOs) from 12 African countries said at the just concluded World Social Forum in Nairobi the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundation partnerships were trying to shift African agriculture to a system dependent on expensive, harmful chemicals, hybrid seeds, and ultimately genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

"A new initiative from the Bill Gates/ Rockefeller Foundation partnership, called the Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA) is putting over $150 million (Sh10.5 billion) towards shifting African agriculture to a system dependent on expensive, harmful chemicals, monocultures of hybrid seeds, and ultimately genetically modified organisms (GMOs)," they said.

They said Africa’s wealth of seed diversity and farmer knowledge was under threat from the initiative. Africa, said the NGOs, was the source of much of the world’s agricultural knowledge and biodiversity.

African farming represents a wealth of innovation. For instance, Canada’s main export wheat is derived from a Kenyan variety called "Kenyan farmer", the US and Canada grow barley bred from Ethiopian farmers’ varieties and the Zera Zera sorghum grown in Texas originated in Ethiopia and the Sudan.

The future of agriculture for Africa and the world, they said, will have to build on this biodiversity and farmers’ knowledge, especially in the current context of climate change.

The diversity of seed varieties continually developed by African farmers will be vital to ensure they have the flexibility to respond to changing weather patterns, the activists argued.

With the challenges that climate change will bring, the organisations said, only a wealth of seed diversity maintained by African farmers can offer a response to prevent severe food crises. Another initiative funded by the G8 is pushing biotechnology in agriculture through four new major biosciences research centres in Africa. "GM companies such as Monsanto and Syngenta are entering into public-private- partnership agreements with national agricultural research centres in Africa, in order to direct agricultural research and policy towards GMOs," they said in a press release.

These initiatives under-represent the real achievements in productivity through traditional methods, and will fail to address the real causes of hunger in Africa and are coming at a time when the world is realising the need for organic agriculture.

These initiatives, they insisted, will destroy the bases of biodiversity, knowledge and adaptive capacity at a time when it is needed most.

"This push for the so-called green revolution or gene revolution is being done once again under the guise of solving hunger in Africa."

Chemical-intensive agriculture, they stated, is already known to be outmoded as "fertilisers have killed the soil, creating erosion, vulnerable plants and loss of water from the soil."