abc burkina | 13 July 2009
While the leaders of the 8 richest nations in the world gathered in Italy, we were more than 600 to take part in the Peoples' Forum in Bandiagara, Mali. We had come to strongly declare that the G8 had had no mandate to work out development plans on behalf of Africa.
"At a time when the G8 takes place in bourgeois style in Italy, we hold our summit of the poor in Bandiagara, on the Dogon plateau" (the north of Mali) Mrs Barry Aminata Touré was quoted as stating by the French news agency AFP. "No subject will be taboo, we will talk about everything ... the challenge of the international financial crisis for the population, social movements and African governments" she said, adding "we want to give the rich countries a bad conscience. Our message is clear: it is not up to the G8 to set development strategies and programmes for Africa."
The rich nations announced, at the end of the G8 summit, that they will invest $20 billion in world food security. You must not believe that this is good news. The announcement is in line with the logic of the concerns of G8 leaders. Since the 2008 food crisis they have only one thing in mind: to invest in poor countries, in Africa in particular, for their own food security or with the hope of making some really juicy profits.
A study by the FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD, was published in May this year, under the title "Appropriation of Land or and Opportunity for Development?" It calls for consultation with the threatened rural populations and for paying more attention to their interests in land transactions". (LES ECHOS, Malian weekly, of June 12, 2009, from which we have taken several items featuring here).
The report confirms the rising number of large scale land transactions. In 5 years investors have rushed to take hold of 2.5 million hectares of land in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Madagascar and Sudan. And this trend will become even stronger, because the profits are real and plentiful.
The phenomenon of appropriation of farm land is bound to grow. "Carbon trading" will increase this trend, since it allows the countries in the North to continue to pollute, by producing biofuel on land in the South (we will come back to this more extensively in a subsequent newsletter).
"As is often the case in Africa, the land is the property of the State and farmers merely have the right to use it" the study denounces. Contracts signed by investors remain very vague and the part of harvests allocated to exports or to local consumption is entirely left in the dark.
What we saw in the Niger River Basin does not run counter to the statements in the study. In fact, on leaving Bandiagara, we went to Kolongo, where we visited a property of 100 000 hectares of land in the Niger River valley that the Government of Mali has offered to Libya. We were able to see that the construction work, entrusted to a Chinese company, was well under way, both as regards the irrigation ditches and the construction of 40 km of road that will cut across the 2-3 km wide estate.
We inquired among people who are generally well informed in the valley, but nobody could tell us if the rice that will be cultivated by the Malibya Agriculture company is intended for the population of Libya, Mali, Africa or for the world market !"
At the People's Forum in Bandiagara, it was therefore quite appropriate to emphasise yet again the need to promote food sovereignty. Food security in West Africa does not need the investment of industrialised countries for their own profit in African soil, but requires the implementation of an agricultural policy that provides shelter from world market fluctuations.
Bamako, July 13th 2009
Maurice Oudet
Director, SEDELAN
