by John Mbaria
It is a grand scheme touted by its sponsors as the locomotive that will kick-start Africa’s green revolution. According to the proponents of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the continent — which missed the first green revolution in the 1960s and 1970s — will not miss the revolution this time around.
But a new body of opinion is now emerging questioning whether a green revolution miracle parachuted into Africa by billionaire foundations is capable of making a significant difference to the fight against poverty in Africa.
With funds coming primarily from the foundations, Agra will bring together thousands of scientists who have been working in Africa for decades and international and national research institutions and task them to spearhead the revolution.
Kofi Annan's involvement in the project brings a high international profile to the initiative. He has demonstrated vigour in pushing for the attainment of AGRA’s goal, raising muted excitement about the feasibility of the project.
During AGRA's June 14 launch in Cape Town, Annan touted it as a project that will lift tens of millions of Africans out of poverty and hunger. It is also expected to lead to acceleration of expertise development, improvement of the health of African soils; development of markets for the small farmer and initiation of water management projects that will help Africa get the “most crop for each drop.”
Listening to Annan, one gets the feeling that the intention of the sponsors of the new initiative is to maintain its character as a home grown initiative — a project by Africa, about Africa and for Africa.
Yet closer scrutiny shows that this is hardly the case. For one, it is bankrolled by outsider bodies — Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation — who have already pumped in $150 million since launch.
Secondly, the design is to make AGRA apply technology developed elsewhere to produce newer seed varieties and chemicals to raise agricultural productivity to an unprecedented scale.
Says Annan, “With respect to seeds, the Alliance is already in the fields, working with African farmers and African agricultural scientists to breed new varieties that will offer better resistance to disease and pests.”
The hype about work by “African agricultural scientists” and projects that are “uniquely African” is misleading. Experience in Africa has shown that research conducted in Africa by local scientists and institutions but funded externally, ends up being skewed to serve external interests.
It has been noted in Kenya, for instance, that much of the work going on in institutions such as the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) is funded externally under arrangements where the paymasters are the ones who set the terms of reference for the research.
KARI’s ongoing experimentation on genetically modified seeds of sweet potatoes, maize, cotton and sorghum comes to mind. Funded by foundations associated with global biotechnology giants, Syngenta and Monsanto, much of the work being done hardly qualifies to be described as “uniquely African.”
Since the push for AGRA is largely external, one is bound to ask why Annan and his team believe they will achieve what other decades-old agricultural schemes could not.
Another example is the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) that brings together national research organisations, big money and talent-charged international research institutions.
Established in 1971, CGIAR is supported by the World Bank and donors and for the past 25 years invested as much as $100 million per year in Africa to promote green revolution-type projects. Its network of 15 centres work on food security and poverty reduction in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. The centres pride themselves for having played a key role in the first green revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.
In Africa, CGIAR counts on new rice varieties for Africa (Nerica), which it says have been transforming agriculture in West Africa. It says that in 2003, Africa put 23,000 hectares to the cultivation of such rice species; 6,000 hectares were planted in Uganda alone. CGIAR also says that it has progressively enabled African farmers to access the international pigeon peas market, besides enabling Kenyan dairy farmers to plant fodder shrubs from which they have raised annual incomes by $166.
But though CGIAR is quick to recognise the immense difficulties in reducing poverty and hunger in the continent, one can safely say that the biggest proportion of its work in Africa has revolved around token projects. Such projects are initiated at the whims of its scientists and bureaucrats, and funded on the basis of goals that have little to do with a genuine desire to fight poverty or improve food security.
For instance, in many parts of Western Kenya, Malawi and other African countries, many of CGIAR’s projects are experimental in nature and have budgets that have only gone as far as the pilot phases. Once the pilot phase is ended, the projects are passed on to low-budget government departments that do not have the capacity to implement them fully.
Another characteristic of such externally-pushed projects is that once the initial project is on course, other offshoot micro projects are initiated, principally to give academics and students from donor countries an opportunity to study in Africa. Indeed by the time a project has run through its entire lifespan, it is normally not easy to know what challenges CGIAR staff went out to address and their level of competence or success.
Of course, the way such projects are designed is that governments and other players are expected to take them up (and “scale up”), but this is hardly done, especially in situations where African governments have to decide between feeding their people and using money on experiments.
The history of humankind vindicates those who are now skeptical about AGRA. They say that unlike Africa, societies in the West and elsewhere in the developed world were fortunate enough to develop on own-initiatives, and without passive or aggressive assistance from others.
For instance, about 500 representatives of fisher-folk, peasant farmers, indigenous peoples, landless people, rural workers migrants and consumers from more than 80 countries met in Selingue, Mali in early March to reiterate their commitment to “food sovereignty.” The group resolved to fight against “technologies and practices that undercut their future food producing capacities, damage the environment and put their health at risk.”
Others are not so skeptical. They argue that the Rockefeller Foundation gave the first green revolution a much-needed shot in the arm. They are also optimistic that Agra will not only be banking on Rockefeller’s benevolence, but also on Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation’s experience in fighting life-threatening malaria and HIV and Aids pandemic.
The East African
