Over a hundred years ago, European countries carved up the continent of Africa. By 1914, only Liberia and Ethiopia remained independent. This blatant grab for land and control was masked by claims of philanthropy. The colonialists said that the people of Africa needed civilising and that they would bring their modernising ways to the African people. They claimed that the land was empty and so they were justified in taking it. But no amount of rhetoric could hide the brutal reality that the true beneficiaries of colonialism were the European powers. Meanwhile the people of Africa were robbed of their land, lost control of their resources and millions died from forced labour.
If we fast forward to the present, a new scheme supported by the richest countries in the world, looks set to replicate the grab for resources and land. The G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (‘New Alliance’) claims to address poverty in Africa. However, in spite of its benevolent-sounding name, the New Alliance looks more like a blueprint for transferring control of Africa’s seeds, land and resources into the hands of multi-national companies. In exchange for promises of investment from multinational companies and some aid money, countries signed up to the new Alliance have to make policy changes that will transfer the control of land, seeds and resources away from Africa’s small-scale farmers and into the hands of multinational companies.
This week, we are launching the first in a series of infographics which highlights some of the parallels between the original scramble for Africa and the modern-day scramble for control of Africa’s food in the form of the New Alliance. Agrochemical and seed companies like Monsanto, Yara and Syngenta are involved in the New Alliance. Collectively they dominate global trade in seeds and chemicals but that’s not enough. Africa represents a vastly untapped market to these companies.
The African countries in the New Alliance have to make changes in their seed laws which would effectively criminalise the saving and swapping of seeds, an age-old practice which incorporates the expertise and knowledge of farmers to identify the best seeds for different conditions. Seed law changes would prevent farmers trading their own seeds, allowing only the ones produced by big seed corporations to be traded. The laws would also stop others reproducing these seeds even if they are based on centuries of breeding by African farmers. Without the freedom to save and swap farmers’ own seed varieties, small-scale farmers are forced to purchase seed year after year, becoming dependent on seed corporations. These restrictions over seeds hand tremendous control to corporations, effectively denying small-scale farmers one the most essential inputs for growing food.
— source wdm.org.uk