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Africa: G8 Detour on Food Security
AfricaFocus Bulletin
May 24, 2012 (120524)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
The Camp David summit of the G-8 countries, held on May
17-18, announced a "New Alliance for Food Security and
Nutrition," pitched as potentially raising 60 billion people
out of poverty over the next 10 years. But the program as
announced, featuring some $3 billion in investment pledges
by 45 private agribusiness companies, was grotesquely out of
sync with international commitments to respecting country-owned
plans and prioritizing broad-based public investment
to benefit smallholder farmers.
Civil society groups, experts, and United Nations reports,
by contrast, agree that the private agribusiness sector can
play a constructive role, but only within the context of
coherent development that empowers farmers themselves,
rather than only providing new inputs. An exclusive or
primary emphasis on large agribusiness, even if it is
justified by the supply of inputs such as seeds and
fertilizers to farmers, ignores the fact that the
agribusiness firms' interest in profits and the farmers'
interest in income and food security may often be in
conflict.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin, available on the web at
http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/ag1205b.php, but not sent
out by e-mail, contains several commentaries relevant to the
G-8 commitment, from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade
Policy, ActionAid USA, and Joseph Hanlon's Mozambique News
Reports & Clippings.
Another AfricaFocus Bulletin, sent out today by e-mail and
available on the web at http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/ag1205a.php, includes
excerpts from the overview of the newly released Africa Human
Development Report 2012, focused on food security.
Additional relevant sources include
Camp David Accountability Report from G8
http://www.g20civil.com/documents/200/522/
ActionAid brief on Camp David Accountability Report
"A step forward for g8 transparency, But shows unfinished
Agenda on hunger," May 2012
http://actionaidusa.org/news/pr/Accountability_Report_Brief.pdf
"G8 Report Offers Worrying Look at Aid Accountability,"
InterPress Service, May 22, 2012
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107884
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on issues related to
agriculture, visit http://www.africafocus.org/agexp.php
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G-8 Punts on Food Security
Sophia Murphy, Timothy A. Wise
May 22, 2012
http://iatp.org/blog/201205/g-8-punts-on-food-security-%E2%80%A6-to-the-private-sector-
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
The G-8 met this past the weekend in the United States.
Three years earlier the group of the most powerful
industrialized nations met in L'Aquila, Italy, just as foodprice
spikes were sending millions into poverty. They
stepped up to the challenge, with a three-year, $22 billion
pledge of aid for agricultural development to address the
food crisis.
Well, three years is done and, apparently, so is the G-8
commitment to address the food crisis. How else to interpret
the sad excuse of an aid program that is 'The New Alliance
for Food Security and Nutrition' (http://www.usaid.gov/g8/NewAllianceFactSheet.pdf).
According to President Barack Obama, who unveiled the
program before the G-8 convened May 18, this is a commitment
to 'raise 50 million people out of poverty' in Africa in the
next ten years. How? Mobilize private sector money. Already
some 45 private companies have been brought in, creating a
partnership with G-8 governments and some African
governments. The initial commitment from the private sector
is worth $3 billion, and the first three recipient
governments are Tanzania, Ethiopia and Ghana. To qualify to
join the alliance, according to the press release, African
governments must, 'refine policies in order to improve
investment opportunities.'
How bad is this idea? Money is money, right? Wrong! The
private sector is not just like government, only a little
different. It is ENTIRELY different. Corporations are
accountable to their shareholders, obliged to make a profit.
They are not charities. They are bound by law, but not by
the public interest. They are not bound by the outcomes of
the Paris and Accra Aid Effectiveness conferences, which
committed donors to allow and encourage national ownership
of development spending and to better coordinate their
efforts. They are not bound by the five Rome Principles,
agreed by over 60 Heads of State at the 2009 World Food
Summit, which reinforced the aid effectiveness outcomes
focused specifically on donor investments in agriculture.
Corporations are not parties to the human rights covenants
that oblige most governments to realize the universal human
right to food.
Already the requirement that African governments 'improve
investment opportunities' sounds hauntingly like the
conditionalities of old (and current, much-criticized,
bilateral investment agreements) and nothing like the
country-led, accountable and transparent aid policies that
donors have pledged themselves to follow in the last several
years.
As ActionAid International's recent report on implementation
of the L'Aquila initiative (http://tinyurl.com/d3fqkva)
shows, the promises were important, coming on the heels of
two decades of declining investment in agriculture and what
proved to be a complacent and misplaced reliance on
international trade to ensure countries' food supply. We
applauded these funding commitments in our review of food
security policy since 2007 (http://tinyurl.com/6tnnurc),
published in January this year. We also warned that the
pledges were not enough, that they were time-limited and
threatened by budget cutbacks, and that they did not put
enough new money into some of the most forward-looking
programs, such as the new Global Agriculture and Food
Security Program (GAFSP).
That program's 'public sector' aid sets many of the right
priorities, focusing on small-scale farmers and women, on
more sustainable agricultural practices, and on providing
aid to 'country-owned' programs, ones that developing
country governments have approved and manage under program
guidelines. These correspond to the Rome Principles. These
are important advances, yet now most rich country donors are
dropping these programs in favor of the private sector
without even making good on their original pledges.
While some new programs were created, including the U.S.
government's Feed the Future initiative, budget support for
this kind of work seems to be drying up. ActionAid's report
shows that only 22 percent of the pledged money was actually
spent in the first two years. And that less than 25 percent
of the donor spending on agriculture after L'Aquila
respected the commitment to work with countries that had
developed nationally-owned agricultural development plans.
Now, the money's drying up and we are asked to believe that
Vodaphone and Monsanto and PepsiCo (three of the firms
signed up to the alliance) are going to turn things around.
Much easier to see how they are eyeing new markets for their
cell phones, genetically engineered crops and fast food
outlets.
This is a tremendous setback for international efforts to
address the food crisis. In our report, we warned that the
heavy focus on public-private partnerships and market-based
mechanisms could undermine the efforts to marshal public
funds for the kind of agricultural and rural development
that the world's least developed countries most need. Now it
has. The United States has reportedly made a new commitment
to GAFSP, but G8 pledges overall are slow in coming. This
leaves the private sector to pick up the slack and call the
shots, with none of the accountability that came with GAFSP
and other donor programs.
The announced alliance did not get a very warm welcome from
civil society. In a letter (http://tinyurl.com/bt2qqh7)
anticipating the G-8 announcement, sent to the President of
the African Union on behalf of ROPPA, the association of
peasant agriculture associations of West Africa, and signed
by 14 other civil society platforms, the donor-foreign
investor axis to determine Africa's food security was firmly
rejected:
"I would simply like to recall that food security and
sovereignty are the basis of our general development, as all
of the African governments underline. It is a strategic
challenge. This is why we must build our food policy on our
own resources as is done in the other regions of the world.
The G8 and the G20 can in no way be considered the
appropriate fora for decisions of this nature."
Pledges, Principles and Progress:
Aid to Agriculture Since L'Aquila
ActionAid USA
Briefing Paper
May 2012
http://actionaidusa.org / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/d3fqkva
Executive Summary
In 2007 and 2008, a global spike in food prices caused riots
in more than 30 countries and increased
the number of hungry people in the world to a historic
high of more than 1 billion. In response, at the 2009
G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, and at the World Food
Summit in Rome later that year, world leaders
pledged to significantly increase aid to agriculture,
invest in smallholder farmers, and channel their
assistance through country-owned plans in a
comprehensive and coordinated way. The L'Aquila
pledge and the Rome Principles signaled a renewed
commitment by donors to agricultural development
which hadn't been seen for decades.
This year, the three year timeframe for G8 L'Aquila
Food Security pledge comes to an end, and leaders
will decide on next steps for agricultural assistance.
ActionAid has prepared this briefing paper to provide
some background and context to policymakers and
advocates at the three year mark. This report examines
trends in overall aid to agriculture by key L'Aquila
donors over the past several years, and provides an
early (if incomplete) assessment of trends in aid to
agriculture since the food crisis emerged.
By analyzing data from the OECD DAC of L'Aquila
donors' investments in aid to agriculture in 2009
and 2010 (the first or first and second years of the
L'Aquila pledge period, depending upon the donor)
as compared to the period from 2006-2008, we found
- Aid to agriculture by L'Aquila donors increased by 60
percent in the first year after the L'Aquila
pledge was made. Countries like Canada, Spain
and the United States made the largest increases
while a few countries actually decreased their
investment.
- Donors who pledged large amounts of new
money at L'Aquila showed the largest increase in
aid, while some donors with smaller pledges of
new money ended up with a net decrease in aid.
- Despite a pledge by donors to back country-owned plans,
such as those developed through
the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development
Program (CAADP), poor countries with national
agricultural development plans received less
than a quarter of aid to agriculture from L'Aquila
donors. The L'Aquila Pledge has yet to have a
significant impact on this trend, meaning that
L'Aquila donors have yet to sufficiently align their
aid behind country-owned plans as they pledged
to in Rome. Canada provides the largest percentage
of its aid to agriculture to poor countries with
national agricultural development plans while the
United States provides the largest amount in real
dollars.
- The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP)
Public Sector Window has
emerged as a best practice in donor financing
for agriculture. However, it remains underfunded
and is at risk of closure without new donor
commitments to the fund. With an innovative and
transparent governance structure this multi-lateral
trust fund is both encouraging donors to commit
new money to aid to agriculture and investing in
country-led strategies. But it is suffering from a
lack of donor support.
Our analysis also finds that donors are not targeting
aid to countries with the highest levels of hunger.
While this was not a specific commitment of the
L'Aquila pledge, a greater focus on the hungriest
countries is critical in order to improve global food
security. We found that:
- Just 17 percent of aid to agriculture is going to
the 25 countries with the highest levels of
hunger, and the L'Aquila pledge had little impact
on this trend thus far. With the three year L'Aquila pledge
period coming
to an end this year and with global food security high
on the agenda of the 2012 G8 summit, ActionAid is
urging the G8 and other donors to:
- Commit to sustain and expand the public
financial pledges made at L'Aquila to help lift at
least 50 million people out of poverty through
public investment in agricultural development
that benefits women smallholder farmers;
- Align their assistance behind country-owned
plans like CAADP and make specific pledges
to deliver increased assistance through the
innovative GAFSP Public Sector Window; and
- Ensure that any new initiative to leverage private
sector support for agricultural development
includes significant opportunities for participation
by farmers and civil society and a clear indication
as to how private sector investment will improve
nutrition and smallholder productivity and
income.
Box 1 the Rome Principles
Principle 1: Invest in country-owned plans, aimed
at channeling resources to well designed and
results-based programs and partnerships.
Principle 2: Foster strategic coordination at national,
regional and global level to improve
governance, promote better allocation of
response gaps.
Principle 3: Strive for a comprehensive twin-track approach
to food security that consists of: 1)
direct action to immediately tackle hunger for the
most vulnerable and 2) medium and long-term
sustainable agricultural, food security, nutrition
and rural development programs to eliminate the
root causes of hunger and poverty, including
through the progressive realization of the right to
adequate food.
Principle 4: Ensure a strong role for the multilateral
system by sustained improvements in efficiency,
responsiveness, coordination and effectiveness of
multilateral institutions.
Principle 5: Ensure sustained and substantial commitment by
all partners to investment in
agriculture and food security and nutrition, with
provision of necessary resources in a timely and
reliable fashion, aimed at multi-year plans and
programs
.
G8 says private investment will end hunger in Mozambique
From Joseph Hanlon (j.hanlon@open.ac.uk), Mozambique News
Reports & Clippings 197, 21 May 2012
Available by e-mail. Archive at:
http://www.open.ac.uk/technology/mozambique/
The G8 has agreed a new programme to try to use private
investment to end hunger in Mozambique and five other
countries. The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition
was proposed by President Barack Obama and USAID and has already
started in three countries - Tanzania, Ghana, and Ethiopia &-
and will be expanded to three others - Mozambique, Cote
d'Ivoire, and Burkina Faso.
President Obama, speaking in Washington on 18 May, said
"we're going to mobilize more private capital. Today, I can
announce that 45 companies - from major international
corporations to African companies and cooperatives - have pledged to invest
more than $3 billion to kick off this effort." Some are well
known multinational seed and agro-chemical companies
including Cargill, Monsanto, DuPont and Diageo. And Obama
warned that African countries must make "tough reforms" to
attract this investment. USAID stresses that African
countries must "improve investment opportunities".
Obama said: "we're going to speed up the development and
delivery of innovation -- better seeds, better storage -
that unleash huge leaps in food production."
The G8 "Camp David Declaration" agreed Saturday says:
"Working with our African and other international partners,
today we commit to launch a New Alliance for Food Security
and Nutrition to accelerate the flow of private capital to
African agriculture, take to scale new technologies and
other innovations that can increase sustainable agricultural
productivity, and reduce the risk borne by vulnerable
economies and communities. This New Alliance will lift 50
million people out of poverty over the next decade, and be
guided by a collective commitment to invest in credible,
comprehensive and country-owned plans, develop new tools to
mobilize private capital, spur and scale innovation, and
manage risk; and engage and leverage the capacity of private
sector partners - from women and smallholder farmers,
entrepreneurs to domestic and international companies."
The New York Times (17 May) noted that G8 leaders at their
meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, in 2009, pledged $22 billion for
food and agriculture projects, of which only $6 billion was
new and the rest had been promised before. And of the $22
bn, only 58% has been disbursed. The G8 on Saturday said "we
commit to fulfill outstanding L'Aquila financial pledges",
in other words promising again to spend money which had
already been promised twice before.
L'Aquila finance is linked to the World Bank Global
Agriculture and Food Security Program, which so far does not
include Mozambique.
Civil society organisations have been hostile to the new
proposal. A final declaration of African civil society
organisations meeting in Brazzaville 22-23 April said that
foreign investments, "as they are now conceived, are not
suitable instruments to support the family farms which are
the very basis of African food security and sovereignty." It
continues, "resources are targeted towards industrial
agriculture" which in inappropriate for family farms.
Oxfam in a statement on 18 May said "the plan's top down
approach does not reflect what many people in poor countries
say they want or need." Oxfam's Lamine Ndiaye adds: "The New
Alliance is neither new nor a true alliance." Oxfam says the
G8 "focuses too heavily on the role of the private sector to
tackle the complex challenges of food insecurity in the
developing world." Oxfam "called instead for G8 leaders to
keep the promises they have already made to help developing
countries invest in sustainable solutions to hunger and
poverty."
Background material:
+ G8 food factsheet:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/05/18/fact-sheet-g-8-action-food-security-and-nutrition
+ USAid factsheet:
http://www.usaid.gov/press/factsheets/2012/fs120518.html
+ Camp David Declaration:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/05/19/camp-david-declaration
+ Remarks by President Obama at Symposium on Global
Agriculture and Food Security, 18 May:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2012/05/18/remarks-president-symposium-global-agriculture-and-food-security
+ Press Briefing by US officials on Food Security, 18 May:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/05/18/press-briefing-senior-administration-officials-food-security
+ World Bank Global Agriculture and Food Security Program:
http://www.gafspfund.org/
+ African civil society declaration:
http://kofic.s3.amazonaws.com/126/2251/African-Civil-Society-Declaration.pdf
+ Oxfam statement:
http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2012-05-18/g8-food-security-alliance-answers-question-hungry-people-have-not-
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