AGRA: helping agribusiness conquer African agriculture?

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/agra-agribusiness-africa-agriculture/blog/46511/

Blogpost by Iza Kruszewska and Glen Tyler - September 6, 2013

Finally, we have confirmation of what we have long suspected: AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, has been created to facilitate the corporate takeover of African agriculture, not support African smallholder farmers with real solutions.

AGRA’s African Agriculture Status Report 2013 released two days ago confirms the organisation’s Green Revolution agenda, despite the legacy of soil degradation and water depletion left by the Green Revolution in Asia.

AGRA, founded by the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations in 2006, claims that it is spurring a “uniquely African Green Revolution”, but there’s little original thinking here. Instead, it seems to be more of the same agenda that locks farmers into a spiral of corporate control, making them dependent on seeds and fertilisers from transnational corporations which dictate price and product delivery times.