from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:

This week the focus is on AFRICA AND THE G8. The affluent countries are about to launch the second great plundering of Africa, all in the name of charity and "development". Naturally, GM crops form an important part of the plan to make African nations dependent upon Western corporations.

Fortunately, some commentators' eyes are open to what's really going on, and we're giving you snippets of their wisdom along with links to more.

Claire [email protected]
www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org

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CONTENTS
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AFRICA AND THE G8
ASIA
THE AMERICAS
AUSTRALASIA
LOBBYWATCH
FOOD SAFETY
IMPORTANT CONFERENCE

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AFRICA AND THE G8 (Edinburgh, 6-8 July)
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+ AFRICANS NEED SAFE FOOD AND CLEAN WATER - NOT GMOs
Amadou Kanoute, Director of Consumers International Regional Office for Africa, spoke in Edinburgh on 6 July about debt relief and foreign aid, and attended the G8 in Gleneagles (7-8 July). He says: 'Some companies and governments are trying to promote GM as a miracle solution to world hunger. But the long-term effects of GMOs on human health and the environment are unknown. African consumers need basics like access to clean water and safe food - not GMOs.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5462

+ GM CROPS HAVE "MAJOR ROLE" TO PLAY IN AFRICA - WAMBUGU
An article in Nature calls on G8 leaders to listen to Kenya's Dr Florence Wambugu, among other African scientists, so that the G8 can learn the strategies that should shape the future of Africa. So what does this Monsanto-trained scientist whose lobby group is sponsored by CropLife International want to tell the G8? "We cannot develop Africa without biotechnology," says Wambugu, and,"genetically modified crops have a major role to play in Africa".
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5443

But the woman who has become known as "Monsanto's apostle in Africa" has an extraordinary history of false and misleading claims - see: "How to Wambuzle the world"
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5444

+ WAMBUGU'S 'AFRICA HARVEST' GETS $16.9 MILLION
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is to pour $16.9 million into a consortium headed by Africa Harvest, of which Florence Wambugu is the CEO. The consortium includes Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a subsidiary of DuPont.

One African activist commented, "These guys really know how to waste money!" Wambugu previously headed the disastrous Monsanto GM virus-resistant sweet potato project. Three years of field trials showed the project, which has cost over $6 million, to be a total failure, delivering lower yields than conventional crops and no virus resistance!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5443

But that didn't stop Wambugu and Monsanto from extracting enormous PR value from the project before the balloon went up - see: "How to Wambuzle the world"
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5444

+ AFRICA NEEDS NON-GM AGRICULTURE
In a typically incisive article, Dr Colin Tudge, Research Fellow at the London School of Economics, spells out why Africa can only flourish by building on traditional agriculture.

EXCERPTS: Biotech companies such as Syngenta are lauded for providing modern crops in the form of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) - perceived in high places to be both profitable and necessary. Governments such as Zambia's that have turned them down are seen as backward, if not downright wicked. But, in truth, the ignorance is all on the reformers' side.

The notion that [African countries] actually need GMOs to provide sufficient yields is simply a misunderstanding, or a straightforward lie... their introduction suppresses local production and increases the dependency of poor countries on those who supply the new technologies. The argument in favour of GMOs, supported not least by Tony Blair, rests on the assumption that they are necessary. If they are not needed, there is no point in taking any risk at all.

...egged on by governments (beginning in Britain and the US), science is increasingly financed by corporates, for corporates. Hence the illusion grows that without industrialisation and corporatisation there can be no science or modern tech at all: that small farms of traditional structure are bound to be backward. Again, this is just not true.

The task is not to twiddle with World Trade Organisation rules or even to ease up on debt, but to rethink. In the short term, the prime task for the world as a whole, and in Africa in particular, must be to build on traditional agriculture, which alone can maintain landscapes and provide good jobs for the billions who need them: with appropriate-tech, small-scale financial support, and the general ambition not to trash small farms, but to make agrarian life tolerable, and indeed positively agreeable and desirable. Yet most of what seems to be on the agendas even of the best-intentioned seems to be going in different directions altogether.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5466

+ WILL THE G8 PLEASE LEAVE US ALONE?
Another of those speaking in Edinburgh at the protests and events in the run-up to the G8 summit was Indian journalist Devinder Sharma. Devinder's message for the G8 is uncompromising: "LEAVE US ALONE!"

At first sight it might seem extraordinary that anyone from the developing world might extend less than a warm welcome to the prospect of debt relief and increased aid. But like George Monbiot, Devinder sees the G8's plans as little better than an extortion racket.

The G8's help comes on the G8's terms. These include the requirement that recipients of debt relief "boost private sector development" and eliminate "impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign." What this means, as Monbiot points out, is new opportunities for western money via commercialisation, privatisation and the liberalisation of trade and capital flows.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5449

+ G8: BEHIND THIS NEW INTEREST IN AFRICA
"There is talk of the need for action by way of aid, debt cancellation and trade," Devinder Sharma, long-time campaigner for the rights of farmers in the developing world told IPS. "An i