People displaced by the fighting in Goma flee the city. Credit: WFP/Moses Sawasawa
 
On January 28, addressing the UN Security Council from Goma, Vivian van de Perre, Deputy Head of the UN Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO), provided a detailed briefing, highlighting the dire humanitarian situation and the need for “urgent and coordinated international action" to stop the fighting between Rwanda-backed M23 rebels and Congolese forces – as they battle for control of the city.
 
She reported that the recent clashes have led to massive displacement, with over 178,000 people fleeing Kalehe territory after the M23 took control of Minova. More than 34,000 of those on the run have sought refuge in already overcrowded IDP sites in and around Goma, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis and overwhelming the city's infrastructure.

By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, California, USA, Jan 30 2025 (IPS)

The fresh offensive by the M23 rebels and Rwanda forces in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) coincides with the first anniversary of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between the European Union (EU) and Rwanda to cooperate on the supply of “critical minerals.”

The agreement could not be more appalling given its total disregard of Rwanda’s role in driving the violent conflict raging in Eastern DRC for the last thirty years, either directly through its own forces, or by supporting armed groups to fight on its behalf. The consequence has been deaths of millions, along with massive displacement and immense suffering for the Congolese.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda justifies the war, citing concerns for peace and security for the Tutsi ethnic group, target of the 1994 genocide. It is, however, Rwanda’s illicit extraction of eastern Congo’s highly lucrative minerals including gold and the world’s largest reserves of cobalt (used in batteries) and coltan (used in modern technological devices), that is fueling this devastation.

Rwanda’s support of the rebel group M23 has allowed it to take over much of eastern Congo, capture many mines, and perpetrate massacres and egregious human rights abuses.

Internally displaced persons (IDP) in the camp in Roe, in the territory of Djugu, February 2022. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

While it is wrong and immoral for the EU to strike a deal with a country responsible for so much suffering, the very terms of the February 2024 agreement make it worse as they overlook the role of Rwanda in illicit extraction.

Over the past decade, Rwanda has exported far higher quantities of coltan than its own mines produce. It is estimated that up to 90 percent of Rwanda’s coltan exports are illegally sourced from eastern DRC, through what the NGO Global Witness has dubbed as a massive “laundromat.”

Yet, the European bureaucrats who worded the agreement stated that “[Rwanda] is a major player on the world’s tantalum extraction. It also produces tin, tungsten, gold and niobium, and has potential for lithium and rare earth elements.

In addition, Rwanda with its favorable investment climate and rule of law can become a hub for value addition in the mineral sector. One gold refinery already exists, while a tantalum refinery will soon be operational.”

The EU – like the US – has legislation in place that is supposed to prevent the use of conflict minerals from DRC but the MOU’s more than favorable terms to describe Rwanda and its business climate suggest a deliberate choice not to enforce European laws despite the country’s well documented egregious records.

Losing hope with Western regulators, last month, DRC filed criminal complaints against subsidiaries of Apple in France and Belgium, accusing the tech firm of using conflict minerals in its supply chain. Lawyers for the DRC government claim that Apple is responsible for “covering up war crimes and the laundering of tainted minerals, handling stolen goods, and carrying out deceptive commercial practices to assure consumers supply chains are clean.”

This complaint speaks to the blatant failure of the traceability schemes that have supposedly been put in place to address the issue of “conflict minerals.” Since 2010, the International Tin Supply Chain Initiative is supposed to ensure upstream traceability in the African Great Lakes Region. It operates at over 2,000 mines and has been endorsed by the Responsible Minerals Initiative and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Unfortunately, instead of restricting the entry of conflict minerals into global supply chains, the scheme has been used to illegally launder conflict-minerals from DRC or smuggled into neighboring countries. This has allowed illegally tagged minerals to ultimately end up in the products of brands such as Apple, Intel, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, and Tesla.

The horrors unleashed due to conflict minerals in Eastern DRC are well known to governments, corporations and their shareholders. For years, the United Nations has sounded the alarm over Rwanda’s continued assistance to the M23, documenting the direct involvement of its armed forces in the conflict and the supply of weapons and ammunitions to the rebels.

Yet, Western countries remain long-time supporters. From 2001 to 2022, the US alone provided over US$3.9 billion in economic aid to Rwanda and waited until October 2023 to place Rwanda on a blacklist for military aid for violating the Child Soldiers Prevention Act due to Rwandan support for M23, which recruits child soldiers.

The UK has been hesitant to criticize Rwanda, let alone cut off military aid, as it was negotiating a migrant deportation pact with the country. While France and the EU have publicly denounced Rwanda, neither have cut off military aid, and continue cooperation as demonstrated by the critical minerals deal.

In a March 2023 press conference with President Tshisekedi, when asked if France would pursue sanctions against Rwanda, President Macron’s response blamed the Congolese government for country’s instability.

In addition to the violence, the on-going war and exploitation of DRC’s mineral resources has a dire impact on the country’s economy, draining its financial resources and preventing revenue from mineral extraction to reach its coffers. Poverty and hunger are widespread whereas access to basic services such as health and education are greatly underfunded.

The situation of countries not benefiting economically from their own natural resources has been labelled as a “resource curse.” However, looking at the forces driving and profiteering from the exploitation and violence, it is not the curse but rather the greed and cynical attitude of governments and corporate actors that is responsible.

On January 25, 2025, the EU said that “Rwanda must cease its support for the M23 and withdraw,” and warned that it “will consider all the tools at its disposal in order to hold accountable those responsible for sustaining armed conflict, instability and insecurity in the DRC.” Sanctions on Rwanda are obviously long overdue.

An easy first step for European countries will be to end the agreement that should have never been signed in the first place. The next step must be enforcement of conflict minerals regulations and laws they have conveniently failed to apply so far.

Frederic Mousseau is Policy Director, The Oakland Institute

IPS UN Bureau

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Market in New Delhi. Credit: The Oakland Institute

By Frederic Mousseau
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, May 30 2022 (IPS)

India is being asked by the US government and the IMF to reconsider its decision to suspend wheat exports. Their cited concern is that export restrictions will exacerbate food shortages amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the argument does not stand ground technically or morally.

There is no food shortage. According to a May 6, 2022 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world enjoys “a relatively comfortable supply level” of cereals. This is confirmed by the World Bank, which noted that global stocks of cereals are at historically high levels and that about three-quarters of Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports had already been delivered before the war started.

These numbers are consistent with data from the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture that reported on May 19 that the country exported 46.51 million tons of cereals in the 2021/22 season, versus 40.85 million the previous year.

In a repeat of 2007-2008 food crisis, it is speculation which is the key factor behind the current rise in food prices in international markets. As reported by the Lighthouse Reports, “speculators have flooded commodity markets in attempts to make a profit out of escalating prices.” A striking example are two top commodity-linked “exchange traded funds” (ETFs) which have received US$1.2 billion of investments – compared to just US$197 million for the whole of 2021 – a 600 percent increase.

According to the New York Times, “in April, speculators were responsible for 72 percent of the buying activity on the Paris wheat market, up from 25 percent before the pandemic.” Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, has rightly observed that “speculative activity by powerful institutional investors who are generally unconcerned with agricultural market fundamentals are indeed betting on hunger, and exacerbating it.”

Maize harvest, Gambella, Ethiopia. Credit: The Oakland Institute

The US produces roughly 400 million tons of corn, but over 40 percent of this amount – 160 million tons – goes to ethanol production, while another 40 percent goes to animal feed, and only 10 percent is used as food whereas another 10 percent is exported. India was not expected to export more than 10 million tons of wheat in 2022-2023, which is insignificant in comparison to the US numbers.

The increasing amount of food diverted to the production of agro-fuels – again as in the 2007-2008 crisis – is another major factor fueling tension in the global cereal markets. As noted in a 2009 analysis, “although biofuels still account for only 1.5 percent of the global liquid fuels supply, they accounted for almost half the increase in the consumption of major food crops in 2006–07, mostly because of corn-based ethanol produced in the United States.”

In the US, ethanol production increased from 3.6 million barrels in 2001 to over 102 million in 2019. Despite the fact that ethanol is at least 24 percent more carbon-intensive than gasoline, under pressure from the Congress and the industry, the Biden administration has just taken steps to encourage further ethanol production while continuing to heavily subsidize it.

The US call against trade restrictions has been echoed by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Food Programme, and the World Trade Organization, who are urging “all countries to keep trade open and avoid restrictive measures such as export bans on food or fertilizer that further exacerbate the suffering of the most vulnerable people.”

But if governments and international institutions are serious about eliminating human suffering caused by high food prices, they should abstain from pressuring countries who are trying to maintain food supply at a level which will allow national food security. It is essential that they recognize and respect food sovereignty of all nations.

Immediate key measures that countries should be taking to relieve pressure on world markets are to reduce the amount of food used as fuel, curb speculation on food products – specifically restricting the so-called future commodity markets where speculators bet on future prices.

Both the US and the European Union have instruments and mechanisms in place that allow them to act, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). What is missing is the political will to act.

What is not missing is hypocrisy. The US government-funded ethanol industry uses the equivalent of 35 percent of the global world trade of cereals of 473 million tons. The Indian export ban set to prevent hunger will affect less than 2 percent of this amount.

Meanwhile, previous research on the 2007-2008 food crisis brings evidence that India and other countries were successful in preventing price transmission to domestic markets through trade regulation measures. For example, the price of rice actually decreased in Indonesia in 2008 while it was escalating in neighboring countries.

Public interventions to prevent this transmission were a mix of trade facilitation policies (for instance, cutting import tariffs or negotiating with importers) and trade restrictions or regulations (such as export bans, use of public stocks, price control, and anti-speculation measures).

The success of measures taken to limit domestic inflation depended primarily on governments’ ability to control domestic availability and regulate markets, often based on pre-existing public systems. Export restrictions possibly contributed to increased inflation in global food markets but they constituted a fast and effective way to protect consumers by mitigating the effect of global markets on domestic prices.

But regardless of the trade measures that some countries may adopt, even in the absence of a global food shortage, the food crisis is real. Droughts, conflicts, and now high food prices, are threatening to starve hundreds of millions of people.

Unfortunately, the massive human suffering and hunger that was affecting many countries even prior to the war in Ukraine was barely met with adequate response from rich nations. UN humanitarian appeals for acute crises are chronically underfunded. In 2021, only 45 percent of the UN appeal for Yemen and the Horn of Africa was fulfilled, only 29 percent for Syria.

The US Congress just approved an aid of US$40 billion for Ukraine, including over US$26 billion of military aid. This is US$12 billion more than the US$28 billion that the US will spend globally in 2022 on international assistance through USAID.

Amidst the war on Ukraine, given the chronic shortfalls of funding to international assistance, it is critical that all countries ensure their solidarity and adequate support is provided to all victims. But beyond aid, the only reasonable decision would be for them to act decisively on the broader causes of the high food prices and curb speculation on food commodities and diversion of food for the production of fuel.

Unfortunately, given measures were not taken following the 2007-2008 food crisis, how likely is it to happen now. High income countries and international institutions may rather repeat their motto of “keep trade open” and continue business as usual. It is therefore up to governments in the Global South, in particular food deficit countries, to recognize this harsh reality and act to reduce their dependency on food imports by supporting their own farmers and proactively regulating their food and agricultural markets.

The Oakland Institute is an independent policy think tank that conducts research and advocacy on issues such as international development, environment, land, food, and agriculture.

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

Many children under 15 in Zimbabwe discover their HIV status only when they fall critically ill later in life. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/ IPS

By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, Oct 27 2017 (IPS)

On October 22, 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it had removed Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador following outrage and concerns raised by his appointment just two days before.

A Guardian article cited WHO member states and activists “who noted that Zimbabwe’s health care system, like many of its public services, has collapsed under Mugabe’s regime.” Another article explained “Mugabe, 93, is blamed in the West for destroying Zimbabwe’s economy and numerous human rights abuses during his 37 years leading the country as either president or prime minister.”

Regardless of Robert Mugabe’s fitness for the position, these commentaries do call for a clarification around who and what exactly destroyed the Zimbabwean economy and its health system.

Zimbabwe’s economic collapse started after the land reform initiated in 2000. The reform intended to remedy the skewed land repartition that was inherited from the British colonial era, during which 5,000 white farmers took possession of around half of the country’s land, leaving several million black Zimbabweans on overcrowded, less fertile land.

For many observers, it became clear in the 1990s that giving land back to black farmers was necessary to fight hunger and poverty in Zimbabwe. As stated by the World Bank “land redistribution was critical for poverty alleviation, essential for political sustainability, and imperative for increasing economic efficiency.” However, rich countries rejected the government’s requests for support for a smooth reform.

In a letter to the Zimbabwean government in November 1997, U.K. Secretary of State for International Development, Ms Claire Short bluntly stated: “I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not colonisers.”

It is largely this flat rejection that resulted in the radical and violent implementation of the land reform in 2000 through which the white farms were confiscated and transferred to black farmers. Lacking resources, technical skills, and adequate support, the black farmers who resettled in these farms were initially often not able to restore the previous levels of production.

The drop in production and export earnings contributed to the economic crisis faced by the country in the early 2000s. However, ten years later, development experts recognized the reform as a success, having transferred the land occupied by some 4,000 white farmers to over one million black Zimbabweans who had restored agricultural production and improved their livelihoods.

The reform was met with anger by several Western governments, who took punitive measures including economic sanctions and cutting down development aid to the country. In the years following the reform, aid from the UK and the US went through a major shift that prioritized emergency food aid distributed by Western NGOs over public funding to health and agriculture assistance.

In the following years, despite a prevalence of HIV/Aids exceeding 20% – one of the highest in the world- Zimbabwe was excluded from the Global Fund against HIV/Aids and Tuberculosis. The disease claimed 3,000 lives every week – 170,000 per year by the mid-2000s. The number of orphans reached over 910,000 in 2005 – 20 percent of the country’s children.

Life expectancy dropped to 34 years in 2005 compared to 61 in the 1990s. The anti-retroviral drugs remained inaccessible to the majority of HIV/Aids infected people – out of 295,000 persons needing treatment, only 9,000 received it in 2004.

In May 2005, a grant of USD 10 million was provided through the Global Funds against a request for help of more than USD 300 million made by the government. Even with this grant, Zimbabwe remained the least assisted country with just over USD 1 per capita provided by the Global Fund.

A comparison with other countries in the region shows the extent of the punishment: South Africa received five times more per capita funding; Namibia, 58 times; and Swaziland, 112 times. Furthermore, Zimbabwe was also excluded from other aid packages such as the US President Initiative on HIV/Aids and the PEPFAR program.

In March 2005, the Director of UNICEF warned that “despite the world’s fourth highest rate of HIV infection and the greatest rise in child mortality in any nation, Zimbabweans receive just a fraction of donor funding compared to other countries in the region” and appealed to donors “to look beyond politics and to differentiate between the politics and the people of Zimbabwe.”

The extent of Western outrage created by the nomination of Robert Mugabe as WHO Ambassador is an indication that the so-called donors still don’t look beyond politics. They have never been able to digest the land reform –the threatening precedent that Zimbabwe created in the region, where land and agriculture are still much dominated by white farmers and agribusiness corporations (in South Africa, 80 percent of the agricultural land is still controlled by white farmers today).

It is quite ironic that the WHO’s Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, comes from Ethiopia, a close ally of the US and the UK. Both countries largely subsidize Ethiopia’s economy and don’t miss an occasion to praise its economic policy despite the government-led land grabbing and forced evictions of local farmers and pastoralists for the establishment of large-scale plantations.

Interesting food for thought for the new generation of African leaders.

* Frédéric Mousseau has conduccted numerous reviews and studies for international development agencies, including several research missions to investigate the crisis in Zimbabwe in the 2000s.

Excerpt:

By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, Apr 20 2016 (IPS)

James Sze Yuan Lau and Ivan Su Chiu Lu must be extremely busy men. Together, they are listed as directors of some 30 companies involved in various activities and services related to logging or agribusiness in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The former is the managing director of Rimbunan Hijau (RH) PNG and son-in-law of RH’s founder Tiong Hiew King; the latter is executive director of RH PNG Ltd.. All but two of these 30 companies have the same registered address at 479 Kennedy Road, in the national capital, Port Moresby–the headquarter of the RH group in the country.

Frederic Mousseau

Their ability to magically fit into a relatively small office space on Kennedy Road is not the only puzzling fact about the subsidiaries of the Malaysian group, Rimbunan Hijau. Out of the 30 above mentioned companies, 16 subsidiaries that are directly involved in logging or agribusiness have one other thing in common. According to their financial records , they don’t make a profit. Most of them have been working at a loss for over a decade. During the 12 years for which financial records were available to the Oakland Institute’s researchers, all together, the subsidiaries declared an average loss of about US$ 9 million every year.

How the group – the largest logging operator in PNG – manages to operate at a loss for so many years, and yet still remains in business? If it were unprofitable to log and export timber from PNG, why would these companies continue their operations? These are some of the critical questions raised in a report released in February 2016, The Great Timber Heist: The Logging Industry in Papua New Guinea, by the Oakland Institute. The report exposed massive tax evasion and financial misreporting by foreign logging companies, allegedly resulting in non-payment of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.

Recovering tax revenue would be certainly welcomed by PNG given the acute budget crisis the country has been facing in recent months. Yet, it is unclear whether the government of PNG will decide to take action following these revelations. After all, despite the promises made by the Prime Minister, still no action has been taken two and a half years after the damning report on recent land leases, produced by the Commission of Inquiry (CoI), which identified all sorts of malpractices and irregularities and concluded that most leases were illegal.

A first step for any government would be to start monitoring the declared sale prices of exported timber. PNG prices are much lower than those of other exporters of tropical timber (nearly 50% cheaper in 2014), which suggests that logging companies undervalue their exports and therefore their profits. But the recent statements by the Forest Minister in denial of the findings of the report, and given the well-documented deficiencies of the PNG Forest Authority, there is little hope of decisive action by this agency.

Another level of action is the enforcement of tax compliance by the Internal Revenue Commission (IRC), the government agency in charge of tax collection. However, although many RH companies are conveniently located at the same address, it may prove difficult for tax auditors to ascertain the extent of their wrongdoings. The Group has been built as a complex and opaque financial structure: almost all RH holding companies–the parent companies of those operating in PNG–are located in tax havens, primarily the British Virgin Islands, known for facilitating illicit financial flows.

Moreover, the use of multiple subsidiaries in logging operations makes auditing even more complex to conduct. For instance, in one single project in West Pomio, Gilford Ltd.’s records indicate financial transactions with 16 other RH subsidiary companies. This interrelation facilitates transfer pricing as companies of the same group can charge each other an artificially high price for goods, equipment, and services, thereby increasing the sister company’s operational expenses, and artificially reducing their profits. This interrelation would require investigators to not just focus on individual logging companies but to extend their audits to the larger RH Group. But who would they go after?

RH is controlled by Tiong Hiew King, one of Malaysia’s richest men. Although logging is the core business of the group – ‘Rimbunan Hijau’ ironically means ‘forever green’ in Malay, his empire covers a multitude of sectors, and all continents from fisheries in New Zealand, timber in Siberia, to Chinese speaking newspapers in California. RH’s grip over PNG goes far beyond the forests, as it is present across all sectors of the economy. The company’s most recent investment in the capital Port Moresby is a project known as Vision City, which contains the largest shopping mall in the Pacific Islands region and is expected to be expanded to include an office tower block, service apartments, a hotel and convention centre. It also owns the National, the largest of the two daily newspapers in PNG, an airline, Tropicair, as well as shipping and logistics companies.

Whereas the group appears as PNG’s superpower, citizens are left powerless. As documented in 2013 Oakland Institute’s report and film, logging in PNG hides a multilayered tragedy of daylight robbery, whereby local communities are being deprived of their resources and their rights, with the complicity of their own government. RH has often been accused in the past of connections within the political elite in the country and of involvement in corruption and violence in relation to its logging operations. In a number of occasions, local police forces have been used to intimidate and arrest local landowners opposed to logging and land grabbing by RH subsidiaries.

A single corporate group, RH, thus materializes the betrayal of the unique constitutional protections that PNG citizens are supposed to enjoy. The 1975 Constitution guaranteed people’s land rights and upheld national sovereignty, self-reliance, and the preservation of natural resources as key principles for the country. It called on the State “to control major enterprises engaged in the exploitation of natural resources.” Ironically, today a major enterprise has turned the statement around and appears to be controlling the state and the country’s natural resources. Will Papua New Guineans eventually decide to put the things back in place?

(End)

Excerpt:

By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, California, Jan 11 2016 (IPS)

Millions of African farmers don’t need to adapt to climate change. They have done that already.

Frederic Mousseau

Like many others across the continent, indigenous communities in Ethiopia’s Gamo Highlands are well prepared against climate variations. The high biodiversity, which forms the basis of their traditional enset-based agricultural systems, allows them to easily adjust their farming practices, including the crops they grow, to climate variations.

People in Gamo are also used to managing their environment and natural resources in sound and sustainable ways, rooted in ancestral knowledge and customs, which makes them resilient to floods or droughts. Although African indigenous systems are often perceived as backward by central governments, they have a lot of learning to offer to the rest of the world when contemplating the challenges of climate change and food insecurity.

Often building on such indigenous knowledge, farmers all over the African continent have assembled a tremendous mass of successful experiences and innovations in agriculture. These efforts have steadily been developed over the past few decades following the droughts that impacted many countries in the 1970s and 1980s.

In Kenya, the system of biointensive agriculture has been designed over the past thirty years to help smallholders grow the most food on the least land and with the least water. 200,000 Kenyan farmers, feeding over one million people, have now switched to biointensive agriculture, which allows them to use up to 90 per cent less water than in conventional agriculture and 50 to 100 per cent fewer purchased fertilizers, thanks to a set of agroecological practices that provide higher soil organic matter levels, near continuous crop soil coverage, and adequate fertility for root and plant health.

The Sahel region, bordering the Sahara Desert, is renowned for its harsh environment and the threat of desertification. What is less known is the tremendous success of the actions undertaken to curb desert encroachment, restore lands, and farmers’ livelihoods.

Started in the 1980s, the Keita Rural Development Project in Niger took some twenty years to restore ecological balance and drastically improve the agrarian economy of the area. During the period, 18 million trees were planted, the surface under woodlands increased by 300 per cent, whereas shrubby steppes and sand dunes decreased by 30 per cent. In the meantime, agricultural land was expanded by about 80 per cent.

All over the region, a multitude of projects have used agroecological solutions to restore degraded land and spare scarce water resources while at the same time increasing food production, and improving farmers’ livelihoods and resilience. In Timbuktu, Mali, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has reached impressive results, with yields of 9 tons of rice per hectare, more than double of conventional methods, while saving water and other inputs. In Burkina Faso, soil and water conservation techniques, including a modernized version of traditional planting pits­zai­ have been highly successful to rehabilitate degraded soils and boost food production and incomes.

Southern African countries have been struggling with recurrent droughts resulting in major failures in corn crops, the main staple cereal in the region. Over the years, farmers and governments have developed a wide variety of agroecological solutions to prevent food crises and foster their resilience to climatic shocks. The common approach in all these responses has been to depart from the conventional monocropping of corn, which is highly vulnerable to climate shocks while it is also very costly and demanding in purchased inputs such as hybrid seeds and fertilizers. Successful sustainable and affordable solutions include managing and harvesting rain water, expanding conservation and regenerative farming, promoting the production and consumption of cassava and other tuber crops, diversifying production, and integrating crops with fertilizer trees and nitrogen fixating leguminous plants.

The enumeration could go on. The few examples cited above all come from a series of 33 case studies released recently by the Oakland Institute. The series sheds light on the tremendous success of agroecological agriculture across the African continent in the face of climate change, hunger, and poverty.

These success stories are just a sample of what Africans are already doing to adapt to climate variations while preserving their natural resources, improving their livelihoods and their food supply. One thing they have in common is that they have farmers, including many women farmers, in the driver’s seat of their own development. Millions of farmers who practice agroecology across the continent are local innovators who experiment to find the best solutions in relation to water availability, soil characteristics, landscapes, cultures, food habits, and biodiversity.

Another common feature is that they depart from the reliance on external agricultural inputs such as commercial seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and chemical pesticides, on which is based the so-called conventional agriculture. The main inputs required for agroecology are people’s own energy and common sense, shared knowledge, and of course respect for and a sound use of natural resources.

Why are these success stories mostly untold, is a fair question to ask. They are largely buried under the rhetoric of a development discourse based on a destructive cocktail of ignorance, greed, and neocolonialism. Since the 2008 food price crisis, we have been told over and over that Africa needs foreign investors in agriculture to ‘develop’ the continent; that Africa needs a Green Revolution, more synthetic fertilizers, and genetically modified crops in order to meet the challenges of hunger and poverty. The agroecology case studies debunk these myths.

Evidence is there, with irrefutable facts and figures, that millions of Africans have already designed their own solutions, for their own benefits. They have successfully adapted to both the unsustainable agricultural systems inherited from the colonial times, and to the present challenges of climate change and environmental degradation. Unfortunately, a majority of African governments, with encouragement from donor countries, focus most of their efforts and resources to subsidize and encourage a model of agriculture, largely reliant on the expensive commercial agricultural inputs, in particular synthetic fertilizers mainly sold by a handful of Western corporations.

The good news is that an agroecological transition is affordable for African governments. They spend billions of dollars every year to subsidize fertilizers and pesticides for their farmers. In Malawi, the government’s subsidies to agricultural inputs, mostly fertilizers, amount to close to 10 percent of the national budget every year. The evidence that exists, based on the experience of millions of farmers, should prompt African governments to make the only reasonable choice: to give the continent a leading role in the way out of world hunger and corporate exploitation and move to a sustainable and climate-friendly way to produce food or all.

(End)

Excerpt:

By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, United States, Jan 27 2015 (IPS)

At the same time as the United States, Canada and the European Union announced a set of new sanctions against Russia in mid-December last year, Ukraine received 350 million dollars in U.S. military aid, coming on top of a one billion dollar aid package approved by the U.S. Congress in March 2014. 

Western governments’ further involvement in the Ukraine conflict signals their confidence in the cabinet appointed by the new government earlier in December 2014. This new government is unique given that three of its most important ministries were granted to foreign-born individuals who received Ukrainian citizenship just hours before their appointment.

Frédéric Mousseau

The Ministry of Finance went to Natalie Jaresko, a U.S.-born and educated businesswoman who has been working in Ukraine since the mid-1990s, overseeing a private equity fund established by the U.S. government to invest in the country. Jaresko is also the CEO of Horizon Capital, an investment firm that administers various Western investments in the country.

As unusual as it may seem, this appointment is consistent with what looks more like a takeover of the Ukrainian economy by Western interests. In two reports – The Corporate Takeover of Ukrainian Agriculture and Walking on the West Side: The World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict – the Oakland Institute has documented this takeover, particularly in the agricultural sector.

A major factor in the crisis that led to deadly protests and eventually to president Viktor Yanukovych’s removal from office in February 2014 was his rejection of a European Union (EU) Association agreement aimed at expanding trade and integrating Ukraine with the
EU – an agreement that was tied to a 17 billion dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

After the president’s departure and the installation of a pro-Western government, the IMF initiated a reform programme that was a condition of its loan with the goal of increasing private investment in the country.“The manoeuvring for control over the country’s [Ukraine’s] agricultural system is a pivotal factor in the struggle that has been taking place over the last year in the greatest East-West confrontation since the Cold War”

The package of measures includes reforming the public provision of water and energy, and, more important, attempts to address what the World Bank identified as the “structural roots” of the current economic crisis in Ukraine, notably the high cost of doing business in the country.

The Ukrainian agricultural sector has been a prime target for foreign private investment and is logically seen by the IMF and World Bank as a priority sector for reform. Both institutions praise the new government’s readiness to follow their advice.

For example, the foreign-driven agricultural reform roadmap provided to Ukraine includes facilitating the acquisition of agricultural land, cutting food and plant regulations and controls, and reducing corporate taxes and custom duties.

The stakes around Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector – the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat – could not be higher. Ukraine is known for its ample fields of rich black soil, and the country boasts more than 32 million hectares of fertile, arable land – the equivalent of one-third of the entire arable land in the European Union.

The manoeuvring for control over the country’s agricultural system is a pivotal factor in the struggle that has been taking place over the last year in the greatest East-West confrontation since the Cold War.

The presence of foreign corporations in Ukrainian agriculture is growing quickly, with more than 1.6 million hectares signed over to foreign companies for agricultural purposes in recent years. While Monsanto, Cargill, and DuPont have been in Ukraine for quite some time, their investments in the country have grown significantly over the past few years.

Cargill is involved in the sale of pesticides, seeds and fertilisers and has recently expanded its agricultural investments to include grain storage, animal nutrition and a stake in UkrLandFarming, the largest agribusiness in the country.

Similarly, Monsanto has been in Ukraine for years but has doubled the size of its team over the last three years. In March 2014, just weeks after Yanukovych was deposed, the company invested 140 million dollars in building a new seed plant in Ukraine.

DuPont has also expanded its investments and announced in June 2013 that it too would be investing in a new seed plant in the country.

Western corporations have not just taken control of certain profitable agribusinesses and agricultural activities, they have now initiated a vertical integration of the agricultural sector and extended their grip on infrastructure and shipping.

For instance, Cargill now owns at least four grain elevators and two sunflower seed processing plants used for the production of sunflower oil. In December 2013, the company bought a “25% +1 share” in a grain terminal at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk with a capacity of 3.5 million tons of grain per year. 

All aspects of Ukraine’s agricultural supply chain – from the production of seeds and other agricultural inputs to the actual shipment of commodities out of the country – are thus increasingly controlled by Western firms.

European institutions and the U.S. government have actively promoted this expansion. It started with the push for a change of government at a time when president Yanukovych was seen as pro-Russian interests. This was further pushed, starting in February 2014, through the promotion of a “pro-business” reform agenda, as described by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker when she met with Prime Minister Arsenly Yatsenyuk in October 2014.

The European Union and the United States are working hand in hand in the takeover of Ukrainian agriculture. Although Ukraine does not allow the production of genetically modified (GM) crops, the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, which ignited the conflict that ousted Yanukovych, includes a clause (Article 404) that commits both parties to cooperate to “extend the use of biotechnologies” within the country.

This clause is surprising given that most European consumers reject GM crops. However, it creates an opening to bring GM products into Europe, an opportunity sought after by large agro-seed companies such as Monsanto.

Opening up Ukraine to the cultivation of GM crops would go against the will of European citizens, and it is unclear how the change would benefit Ukrainians.

It is similarly unclear how Ukrainians will benefit from this wave of foreign investment in their agriculture, and what impact these investments will have on the seven million local farmers.

Once they eventually look away from the conflict in the Eastern “pro-Russian” part of the country, Ukrainians may wonder what remains of their country’s ability to control its food supply and manage the economy to their own benefit.

As for U.S. and European citizens, will they eventually awaken from the headlines and grand rhetoric about Russian aggression and human rights abuses and question their governments’ involvement in the Ukraine conflict? (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

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Typical agricultural landscape of Ukraine, Kherson Oblast. Credit: Dobrych (Flickr)/CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, United States, Aug 12 2014 (IPS)

Mostly unreported as the Ukraine conflict captures headlines, international financing has played a significant role in the current conflict in Ukraine.

In late 2013, conflict between pro-European Union (EU) and pro-Russian Ukrainians escalated to violent levels, leading to the departure of President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 and prompting the greatest East-West confrontation since the Cold War.

Frédéric Mousseau

A major factor in the crisis that led to deadly protests and eventually Yanukovych’s removal from office was his rejection of an EU association agreement that would have further opened trade and integrated Ukraine with the European Union. The agreement was tied to a 17 billion dollars loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Instead, Yanukovych chose a Russian aid package worth 15 billion dollars plus a 33 percent discount on Russian natural gas.

The relationship with international financial institutions changed swiftly under the pro-EU government put in place at the end of February 2014 which went for the multi-million dollar IMF package in May 2014.

Announcing a 3.5 billion dollars aid programme on May 22, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim lauded the Ukrainian authorities for developing a comprehensive programme of reforms, and their commitment to carry it out with support from the World Bank Group. He failed to mention the neo-liberal conditions imposed by the Bank to lend money, including that the government limit its own power by removing restrictions that hinder competition and limiting the role of state control in economic activities. “The stakes around Ukraine's vast agricultural sector, the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat, constitute a critical factor that has been overlooked. With ample fields of fertile black soil that allow for high production volumes of grains, Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe”

The rush to provide new aid packages to the country with the new government aligned with the neo-liberal agenda was a reward from both institutions.

The East-West competition over Ukraine, however, is about the control of natural resources, including uranium and other minerals, as well as geopolitical issues such as Ukraine’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The stakes around Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector, the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat, constitute a critical factor that has been overlooked. With ample fields of fertile black soil that allow for high production volumes of grains, Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe.

In the last decade, the agricultural sector has been characterised by a growing concentration of production within very large agricultural holdings that use large-scale intensive farming systems. Not surprisingly, the presence of foreign corporations in the agricultural sector and the size of agro-holdings are both growing quickly, with more than 1.6 million hectares signed over to foreign companies for agricultural purposes in recent years.

Now the goal is to set policies that will benefit Western corporations. Whereas Ukraine does not allow the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture, Article 404 of the EU agreement, which relates to agriculture, includes a clause that has generally gone unnoticed: both parties will cooperate to extend the use of biotechnologies.

Given the struggle for resources in Ukraine and the influx of foreign investors in the agriculture sector, an important question is whether the results of the programme will benefit Ukraine and its farmers by securing their property rights or pave the way for corporations to more easily access property and land.

By encouraging reforms such as the deregulation of seed and fertiliser markets, the country’s agricultural sector is being forced open to foreign corporations such as Dupont and Monsanto.

The Bank’s activities and its loan and reform programmes in Ukraine seem to be working toward the expansion of large industrial holdings in Ukrainian agriculture owned by foreign entities.

Amid the current turmoil, the World Bank and the IMF are now pushing for more reforms to improve the business climate and increase private investment. In March 2014, the former prime minister ad interim, Arsenij Yatsenyuk, welcomed strict and painful structural reforms as part of the 17 billion dollars IMF loan package, dismissing the need to negotiate any terms.

The IMF austerity reforms will affect monetary and exchange rate policies, the financial sector, fiscal policies, the energy sector, governance, and the business climate.

The loan is also a precondition for the release of further financial support from the European Union and the United States. If fully adopted, the reforms may lead to significant price increases of essential consumer goods, a 47 to 66 percent increase in personal income tax rates, and a 50 percent increase in gas bills. These measures, it is feared, will have a devastating social impact, resulting in a collapse of the standard of living and dramatic increases in poverty.

Although Ukraine started implementing pro-business reforms under president Yanukovych through the Ukraine Investment Climate Advisory Services Project and by streamlining trade and property transfer procedures, his ambition to mould the country to the World Bank and IMFs standards was not reflected in other realms of policy and his allegiance to Russia eventually led to his removal from office.

Following the installation of a pro-West government, there has been an acceleration of structural adjustment led by the international institutions along with an increase in foreign investment, aimed at further expansion of large-scale acquisitions of agricultural land by foreign companies and further corporatisation of agriculture in the country.

The experience of structural adjustment programmes around the developing world foretells that it will increase foreign control of the Ukrainian economy as well as increase poverty and inequality. As Western powers get ready to impose sanctions on Russia for its transgressions in Ukraine, it remains unclear how programmes and conditionalities imposed by the World Bank will improve the lives of Ukrainians and build a sustainable economic future.

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The Bunong tribe of Cambodia, the Bagyeli people of Cameroon, and the villagers of Malen Chiefdom in Sierra Leone share a common struggle.

They are all challenging industrial plantations of oil palms and rubber by the subsidiaries of Socfin (Societe Financiere des Caoutchoucs), a company whose main shareholder is the Bolloré Group, owned by the French businessman Vincent Bolloré.

Since 2008, resistance has been growing in each of these communities to the loss of farmland, the questionable conditions under which the land concessions are awarded, and the environmental impact of the activities carried out by the various subsidiaries of the group.

This is a struggle of David vs. Goliath: poor disfranchised communities vs. the giant Bolloré Group, which is present in 92 countries (including 43 in Africa) and controls not only plantations but also key strategic sectors including petroleum, transportation, logistics, and 13 African ports.

An April 2012 report from the Oakland Institute provided a worrisome overview of the growing opposition to Socfin plantations in several countries. The report also shared the details of opposition to the deal the company signed in March 2011 -Socfin Sierra Leone (Socfin SL)-which will establish oil palm plantations on 6,500 hectares in southern Sierra Leone, with a planned extension of an additional 5,000 hectares.

The project enjoys high-level government support but on the ground faces tough resistance from the local population. In October 2011, 40 demonstrators were arrested following an attempted blockade of the plantation. They were protesting the lack of transparency, inadequate consultation with local people, and the lack of information on resettlement plans. They also complained of appalling work conditions and low pay in the plantation, corruption of local elites, and pressure on landowners and village leaders to sign agreements.

In a response published online on April 11, 2012, Socfin refuted the Oakland Institute’s research and findings, insisting that the project ensures sustainable development. Interestingly, Socfin’s response fails to mention the blockade of the plantation and the arrests of dozens of opponents in October 2011. While accusing the Oakland Institute of “Western intellectual paternalism”, the company does not say that the report echoes the list of grievances that were formally presented to the local authorities by the villagers impacted by the land deal in October 2011.

While making claims of being committed to sustainable development, Socfin clearly violates the principle of free, prior, and informed consent, an internationally-recognised guiding principle for such investments. Its monocultures of oil palm and rubber tree plantations in Asia and Africa are destroying biodiversity and resulting in increased use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides ­ this in the face of well-recognised studies, which show unambiguously that the path to sustainable development must go through agricultural diversification and the use of ecological and biological methods of fertilisation and production.

To justify its low wages for plantation workers (250,000 leones or 50 dollars per month, 6 days a week, 8 hours a day), which the villagers complain about, Socfin offers a convenient rationale: it does not want “to create an imbalance on the macro-scale of the country”. Basically the company will not increase salaries because salaries are low in the country, which is obviously one of the main elements that make investments in Sierra Leone attractive and highly profitable for such investors.

In its response Socfin also emphasised the 75,000-dollar social development fund it has offered to the local people. This amount might seem significant given the dire level of poverty in the country. However, with its 158,800 hectares of plantations in Asia and Africa, the Bolloré Group recorded a 250-million-dollar profit in 2011, an increase of 163 million dollars (187 percent) since 2009. These figures represent an average annual profit of 1,500 dollars per hectare of plantation, or 10 million per year for a plantation of 6,500 hectares. In comparison, 75,000 dollars is a pittance.

While Socfin’s response attempts to divert attention from issues at hand, its land deal in Sierra Leone must be urgently reviewed and the trial against the people from Sanh village in Pujehun dropped. Transparency, adequate documentation, and proper consultation are essential for local people to have a say in the future of the land and natural resources on which their livelihoods depend. People need certain basic information, whether to negotiate the conditions and terms of an agreement or to be able to reject it. This is what free, prior, and informed consent looks like. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Frederic Mousseau is policy director of The Oakland Institute.

By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, Sep 15 2010

Two years after the peak of 2007-2008, international food prices are on the rise again. With poor crops in Eastern Europe, international wheat prices have jumped more than 50 percent this summer -a harsh reminder that international food markets remain highly volatile, subject to a variety of factors, like unfavourable climate conditions, decisions over food stocks or exports by governments or private actors, fluctuations of oil prices (determining the level of food being used as fuel) or financial speculation.

Food riots that took a toll on a number of developing countries in 2008, now appear to be repeating, with thirteen people killed in Mozambique in the wake of rising bread prices in early September. One must thus ask whether the world is better prepared today to deal with high international food prices and to prevent their adverse impact on the poor.

According to a review of the responses to the 2007-2008 crisis, conducted jointly by the Oakland Institute and the U.K. Hunger Alliance, the answer is both yes and no.

We have learnt a lot from what happened three years ago. Starting with identification of the factors that influence global food markets, it is now recognized that volatility is here to stay. We also know a great deal about the effectiveness of different responses put forward to respond to high food prices.

Research shows for instance that the 2008 global food crisis was less “global” than generally thought. A number of countries were successful in preventing price transmission to domestic markets. For example, the price of rice actually decreased in Indonesia in 2008 while it was escalating in neighbouring countries. Public interventions to prevent this transmission were a mix of trade facilitation policies and trade restrictions or regulations (such as export bans, use of public stocks, price control, and anti-speculation measures).

With uneven success, a number of governments have tried to protect their poor citizens through large-scale safety net systems. Countries such as Bangladesh, India, Brazil, or Indonesia have found important synergies between social protection for the poor and support provided to food production -generally tied to the management of public stocks. Cash transfers, generally considered as an effective alternative to imported food aid, have been increasingly used as safety nets. However, high food prices undermined the value of the transfers and ultimately the effectiveness and relevance of the instrument. Thus some national programmes could not be adequately adjusted to high prices, which resulted in a dramatic drop in beneficiariesÂ’ purchasing power. This was the case for the Ethiopian safety net, the largest in Africa, where the value of cash transfers only increased by 33 percent, far from matching the 300 percent increase in the price of the food basket. This mismatch required the set up of a massive humanitarian operation in parallel.

Overall, responses have failed to prevent the dramatic increase in the number of people identified as being chronically malnourished, which jumped from 850 million in 2007 to over a billion in 2008 as a result of high food prices. This represents very worrying backwards progress on the first Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015.

The food crisis marked a time of substantial increase in the number of malnourished children treated worldwide ­ from an estimated 260,000 in 2004 to some 1.8 million in 2008. However, this represents at most 9 percent of the 19 million severely malnourished children in need of specific treatment worldwide, a gap due to the cost of treatment, people’s limited access to adequate health services in developing countries, as well as restrictions imposed by several governments on international humanitarian agencies. Furthermore, the fight against child malnutrition tends to focus primarily on treatment and feeding with little attention given to some essential questions like the role of agricultural practices and policies to ensure a durable reduction of malnutrition.

The above is well illustrated by the nature of the reinvestment in food production that high food prices triggered in the developing world. The most used response was the provision of agricultural inputs, especially chemical fertilizers, often for the benefit of better-off farmers. Relatively little investment was made in favour of sustainable agriculture, diversification of production, local seed production, and preservation of natural resources, all considered long-term solutions to hunger, climate change, and environmental degradation.

Structural problems like inequitable land distribution were ignored overall by the responses. They were actually aggravated by the rush to lease or purchase land in developing countries by wealthier nations and private investors. According to the World Bank, 45 million hectares worth of large-scale farmland deals were announced in 2009, compared with annual average expansion of agricultural land of less than 4m hectares before 2008. This constitutes a serious concern for future food security in many countries already affected by hunger – like Ethiopia and Mali.

The review of the responses shows that the defence against high food prices was easier for countries with resources, institutions, and public mechanisms in place to support food production and manage domestic availability of food. It also demonstrates that providing aid to the poor was important but far from sufficient to prevent hunger in countries unable to limit domestic inflation. High food prices have thus shaken the Washington Consensus, which has advocated cuts in public support for agriculture and promoted the withdrawal of state regulation of the food economy.

But is the world better prepared today? Certainly not, given that free trade is still upheld by the world leaders, as strongly stated at their last G20 meeting in Canada. Certainly not, because many governments and international institutions have focused their efforts on a short-term supply response, ignoring the fact that supply was less the problem than access (2008 was a record year for global food production) and that durable solutions were needed to address structural causes. And lastly, certainly not, because the massive rush of foreign investment in the land of the poorest countries is now aggravating the main cause of hunger and poverty – the inequitable access to land and natural resources which still prevails in the world. At the end of the day, beyond affordable prices of bread, justice and equity are the real demands of the food rioters. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Frederic Mousseau, a Senior Fellow at the Oakland Institute, is an internationally renowned food security consultant who has worked for almost 20 years with international relief agencies such as Action Against Hunger, Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam International.

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