Latest Resources

23 October 2015

Agricultural investment activities in the Beira Corridor, Mozambique: Threats and opportunities f...

Agricultural growth corridors are key tools for the expansion of the Green Revolution onto the African continent. In Southern Africa, the Beira Corridor – joining Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi to the coast of Mozambique – is one such corridor. The ACB has partnered with UNAC (the National Peasants’ Union) and Kaleidoscopio to produce a report […]

17 October 2015

Fact Sheets on fertiliser, seed, seed laws and FISPs

Fact Sheets produced by the ACB for smallholder farmers in Africa in several languages on a range of topics dealing with seed and plant variety protection laws, including on: the value of farmer managed seed systems; UPOV 1991 and farmers’ rights; the Arusha PVP Protocol; women as custodians of seed, what is a seed law, […]

30 August 2015

AFAP in Ghana, Mozambique and Tanzania—for profits or people?

The chemical fertiliser push in Africa and its implications for smallholder farmers is not receiving enough attention in current discourses concerning Green Revolution policies and practises in Africa. Yet chemical fertilisers are big business on the continent, where its adoption is strongly supported by African governments through subsidy schemes and regional organisations such as NEPAD, […]

8 July 2015

ARIPO sells out African Farmers, seals Secret Deal on Plant Variety Protection

Statement issued by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) On 06 July 2015, in Arusha, Tanzania, a Diplomatic Conference held under the auspices of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) adopted a harmonised regional legal framework for the protection of plant breeders’ rights—the Arusha Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of […]

2 July 2015

AFSA calls on African governments at Arusha meeting to shun protocol that undermines sovereignty ...

Nineteen African nations, members of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), began deliberating on the highly contentious draft ARIPO Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Protocol on Monday, 29th June in Arusha Tanzania. Many of these nations are least developed countries, the poorest and most vulnerable countries in the world. If adopted, the Protocol will establish […]

20 May 2015

Laws regulating seeds in South Africa to entrench hunger and inequality

Press Release from the Food Sovereignty Campaign On 15 May South Africa’s Portfolio Committee on Agriculture held public hearings on two Bills that protect and regulate the commercial seed industry; the Plant Breeders Rights (PBR) Bill and the Plant Improvement Bill. The PBR Bill aims to stimulate innovation in plant breeding by awarding extremely strong […]

12 May 2015

Grabbing Africa’s seeds: USAID, EU and Gates Foundation back agribusiness seed takeover

The latest salvo in the battle over Africa’s seed systems has been fired, writes Stephen Greenberg, with the Gates Foundation and USAID playing puppet-masters to Africa’s governments – now meeting in Addis Ababa – as they drive forward corporation-friendly seed regulations that exclude and marginalize the small farmers whose seeds and labour feed the continent. […]

12 May 2015

CAGJ Media Round-up

CAGJ Media Round-up March 23, 2015 Seattle and London Actions Protesting Seed Privatisation Meeting in London On March 23, 2015 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sponsored a secret meeting in London to promote a recent report they commissioned detailing in clear terms how to […]

17 March 2015

Nuanced rhetoric and the path to poverty: AGRA, small-scale farmers, and seed and soil fertility ...

The report indicates a well-coordinated effort by selected states especially the US and in the EU, philanthropic institutions like AGRA, multilateral institutions like the World Bank, donors and multinational corporations (MNCs) including Yara, Monsanto and Pioneer to construct a Green Revolution that aims to produce a layer of commercial surplus producers. This is an explicit […]

18 November 2014

AGRA’s scandalous subsidisation of big fertiliser, financial and agribusiness corporations ...

In a scandalous move of skulduggery, the African Fertiliser and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP), under the guise of empowering smallholder farmers in Africa, is subsidising multinational fertiliser and financial corporations on African soil. Other beneficiaries of this scheme are the global grain trading and food processing giants. AFAP, established in 2012, with a grant of US […]