Carving up Africa - aid donors plot the great agribusiness takeover - The Ecologist
▻http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2805343/carving_up_africa_aid_donors_and_agribusiness_plot_the_great_seed_priv
A secretive conference, co-organised by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), one of the world’s largest donors, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) took place in London on Monday this week.
The meeting bears the ludicrously long sobriquet ’Multiple Pathways for Promoting the Commercial and Sustainable Production and Delivery of Early Generation Seed of Food Crops in Sub-Saharan Africa.’
To give it a more succinct description, this was a meeting for free market obsessed ’aid’ donors and corporations to discuss how to increase their control of the global seed sector. The list of invited participants reads like a roll call for some of the most renowned actors in the agribusiness world.
The invite list is entirely made up of corporations, development agencies and aid donors. Not a single farmer organisation was invited. But then, why invite a farmer organisation when your aim is helping companies sell new seed varieties? Why invite civil society representatives when your aim is to impose a pre-determined profit-driven agenda?