By Mamadou Goita (07/2010)

The different explanations given for Africa’s current food crisis seem to miss the real causes of the problem. Mamadou Goita does not believe that the crisis is of an economic nature. Rather, it is the endpoint of the dismantling of Africa’s agricultural sector and its linking to the international market and brutal liberalism. Based on an analysis of the political choices that have contributed to the current situation, notably the structural adjustment programmes of the 1980s, Goita proposes solutions and decisions that need to be taken to achieve food sovereignty in Africa.

Richard Jonasse (07/2010)

As evidenced by USAID administrator Rajiv Shah's recent speech to the US Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC), the US and the Green Revolution's 'solutions' for African agriculture remain more of the same, rooted in a corporate-funded, GMO-oriented and market-based system designed entirely in the interests of Western business. While US development aid fasts becomes simply 'an investment subsidised by US taxpayers with high returns for US corporations', African farmers' groups such as COPAGEN, LEISA and PELUM continue to organise in defence of self-determination and genetic biodiversity.

For the political struggles around agriculture the website of the worldwide network of small scale farmers “via campesina” is of course one of the most important references:

via campesina