African faith leaders have issued an open letter to the Gates Foundation demanding reparations for causing extensive damage to Africa’s food systems.
The leaders point the finger at what they call the aggressive Gates Foundation push for industrialised agriculture, much of it under the banner of AGRA (formerly the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa).
The letter, endorsed by hundreds of civil society and farmer groups, came ahead of the African Food Systems Summit, which took place at the start of September in Kigali, Rwanda. Here, the faith leaders said, AGRA and its allies used the platform to further entrench agricultural models that do not align with the needs and realities of African farmers.
WATCH our interview with Bishop Takalani Mufamadi here
Gabriel Manyangadze, from the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI), said, “The Green Revolution has not only failed to increase food security in Africa, but has also inflicted deep ecological and social wounds. As faith leaders, we have a responsibility as custodians of the Earth to call out this injustice.”
AGRA’s initiatives, despite receiving more than one billion dollars in funding, have only worsened the plight of smallholder farmers by increasing dependence on costly inputs, eroding local seed varieties, undermining soil fertility, and weakening farmers’ resilience to climate shocks such as drought.
In a news release, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa noted that a recent report by The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) demonstrated how the ‘collapse’ of Zambia’s food system was partly due to adopting such Green Revolution policies.
They say that AGRA’s operations in Zambia are an example of its broader strategy across Africa, where it exerts undue influence on agricultural and food system policies. This influence is characterised by undemocratic practices such as hijacking policy processes, infiltrating institutions, undermining sustainable agriculture initiatives like agroecology, and side-lining food sovereignty organisations from critical discussions.
AGRA’s involvement in agriculture across Africa, including Zambia, has led to deteriorating conditions in its target countries. In its 13 focus countries, AGRA’s promotion of seeds and fertilisers has failed to deliver the promised productivity revolution, resulting in increased deprivation. The collapse of Zambia’s food system, highlighted in a recent report by the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), is, they say, a direct result of this harmful interference.
An AFSA spokesperson said, “Despite a proven track record of failures (highlighted in AGRA’s own donor-commissioned report), AGRA and its lead funders, namely the Gates Foundation and USAID, continue to push industrial agriculture using their outsized resources and power.
“Civil society and farmers on the ground have witnessed AGRA’s widespread influence through lobbying and exerting undue pressure on policymakers. AGRA’s political manipulation threatens to derail efforts to transition to more sustainable and locally-driven agroecological practices.”
Bishop Takalani Isaac Mufamadi, from SAFCEI, said, “AGRA and the Gates Foundation, as well as seed and agrochemical companies – they are false prophets of food security. They claim to be messiahs for the hungry but have failed to deliver. Their industrial approach degrades soils, destroys biodiversity, and places corporate profits over people. It is immoral. Gates and big agribusiness are playing God,” said
The letter calls on the Gates Foundation and other funders to immediately cease funding AGRA, and to provide reparations by resourcing agroecology initiatives and community-led efforts, namely: scaling up the organic input supply chain, participatory farmer-led research, and community seed banking. Faith leaders concluded the letter, “It’s time for international funders to transition towards agroecology through respecting and supporting locally defined holistic approaches in Africa, by Africa.”
Spotlight on Gates Foundation impact
The negative impact of Gates Foundation work was recently described by Stacy Malkan on the US Right To Know website.
Malkan wrote, “The Gates Foundation is a major influencer and funder of agricultural development in Africa, yet there are no avenues to hold the foundation accountable to the communities it influences.
“The Gates Foundation’s flagship agricultural program, AGRA, works to transition farmers away from traditional seeds and crops to patented seeds, fossil-fuel based fertilisers and other inputs to grow commodity crops for the global market. The foundation says its goal is to ‘boost the yields and incomes of millions of small farmers in Africa… so they can lift themselves and their families out of hunger and poverty.’ The strategy is modelled on the Indian ‘green revolution’ that boosted production of staple crops but also left a legacy of structural inequity and escalating debt for farmers that contributed to massive mobilisations of peasant farmers in India.
Malkan continued, “Evidence suggests that the green revolution has failed to improve health or reduce poverty and has created many problems. These include hooking farmers in a debt cycle with expensive inputs, growing pesticide use, environmental degradation, worsening soil quality, reduced diversity of food crops, and increased corporate control over food systems.
“Several recent research reports provide evidence that Gates-led agricultural interventions in Africa have failed to help small farmers. Critics say the programs may be worsening hunger and malnutrition in Southern Africa.
Food sovereignty and civil society groups, faith leaders, food system researchers, and farmer, labour and environmental organisations across Africa have raised concerns for many years about Gates Foundation’s agricultural development strategies for Africa, and the foundation’s sway over public spending and government policies.
Million Belay, from the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa said, “[The Gates Foundation] talk about transforming African agriculture but what they are doing is creating a market for themselves.”
Malkan concluded, “Gates Foundation’s support for the expansion of intensive industrial scale agriculture is deepening the humanitarian crisis.”
View the African faith leaders’ open letter
Read Stacy Malkan’s full article, with a multitude of refence documents to explore