WEEKLY WATCH number 131 (7/7/2005) | |
from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor 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] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- AFRICA AND THE G8 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- + AFRICANS NEED SAFE FOOD AND CLEAN WATER - NOT GMOs + GM CROPS HAVE "MAJOR ROLE" TO PLAY IN AFRICA - WAMBUGU 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" + WAMBUGU'S 'AFRICA HARVEST' GETS $16.9 MILLION 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! 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" + AFRICA NEEDS NON-GM 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. + WILL THE G8 PLEASE 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. + G8: BEHIND THIS NEW INTEREST IN AFRICA |