March 2014, World Development Movement(WDM) campaigners(above, below) dressed as business people from Monsanto, Diageo, SABMiller and Unilever delivered a cake to the Department For International Development to “thank” the UK government for its support in allowing them to carve up Africa.
In early June the EU Parliament voted to accept a report put out by it’s development committee, in which The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, an initiative of the Obama administration and the G-8, including the Gates Foundation, was heavily criticized for being ineffective as a means for improving world development.
In their article, EU parliament slams aid scheme that uses big agribusiness to ‘feed Africa’, Global Justice Now applauded the decision, as does AGRA Watch, agreeing that the New Alliance is an initiative meant to benefit big agribusiness instead of helping small-scale farmers, and vulnerable communities. It’s past time that world governments are held responsible for the funding of such initiatives that serve their own business interests over those of farmers and local communities.
The EU has spent over one billion dollars implementing the New Alliance, and the UK Department for International Development(DFID) is responsible for sending $600 million to date.
The report detailed many negative consequences of the initiative, and even called some of them “unintended”, although it suggested that the New Alliance served as “little more than a means of promotion for the companies involved and a chance to increase their influence in policy debates.”
