A recently released ‘Money Flows’ report shows that only a fraction of agricultural research funding in Africa is being used to transform food and farming systems. For instance, only 3 percent of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation projects in Africa support sustainable, regenerative approaches – or ‘agro-ecology’.
As many as 85 percent of projects funded by the Gates Foundation, the world’s biggest philanthropic investor in agri-development, are limited to developing industrial agriculture, or increasing its efficiency.
Furthermore, 13 percent of projects by Kenyan research institutes are agroecological. Another 13 percent focus on replacing synthetic inputs with organic alternatives; whereas more than 51 percent of Swiss-funded projects have agroecological components, but only a handful are truly systemic.
According to the report by Biovision, IPES-Food and the UK-based Institute of Development Studies, money flows in agricultural development are still reinforcing damaging industrial models in Africa.
The report looks at investments in subSaharan Africa with a focus on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest philanthropic investor in agri-development, Switzerland, a major bilateral donor, and Kenya, one of Africa’s leading recipients and implementers of agricultural research for development or AgR4D.
In this regard, Kenya ranks third in subSaharan Africa in spending on agricultural research after Nigeria and South Africa. Biovision President Hans Herren said: “Most governments, both in developing and developed countries, still favor ‘green revolution’ approaches, with the belief that chemical-intensive, large-scale industrial agriculture is the only way to produce sufficient food.”
“But these approaches have failed,” warns Herren, winner of the 1995 World Food Prize and 2013 Right Livelihood Award. “They have failed ecosystems, farming communities, and an entire continent.”
Herren added: “With the compound challenges of climate change, pressure on land and water, food-induced health problems and pandemics such as COVID, we need change now. And this starts with money flowing into agro-ecology.”
Approximately 30 percent of farms around the world are estimated to have redesigned their production systems around agroecological principles, the report says.
The report finds that support for agroecology is now growing across the agri-development community, particularly in light of climate change, but this has not yet translated into a meaningful shift in funding flows.
Olivia Yambi, co-chair of IPES-Food, said: “We need to change funding flows and unequal power relations. It’s clear that in Africa as elsewhere, vested interests are propping up agricultural practices based on an obsession with technological fixes that is damaging soils and livelihoods, and creating a dependency on the world’s biggest agribusinesses. Agro-ecology offers a way out of that vicious cycle.”
To accelerate this shift to agro-ecology, the report calls on donors to shift towards long-term, pooled funding models; require projects to be co-designed with farmers and communities; increase the share of funding going to African organizations; and increase transparency in how their projects are funded, monitored and measured for impact.
The Ethiopian herald June 13,2020
BY ZELALEM GIRMA
