Development Africa

In this way Africa in this century provides a greater potential for strife and conflict as an important mode of resolution of contentious issues. Kenya is definitely neither the worst nor the last case for the basket. That is why we should worry.

In any case, NGO aid is clustered, and NGOs are deepening the divide between so-called donor darlings and aid orphans.

Without his intervention we would literally never have achieved our democracy. But now that we did Biko’s name has often been used to  to buttress all kinds of essentialist, nativist discourses – to attack and besmirch opponents and shut down debates. The Platform for Public Deliberation has asked  Achille Mbembe, one of the world’s leading thinkers on the postcolonial condition in Africa, to deliver a public lecture on Black Intellectual Traditions and Democratic Thought, from Fanon To Biko.

AGRA with its super scientists is missing the point. Hunger in Africa is mostly a political and economic disparity problem. To end hunger, political stability, proper distribution of food and land within nations, and less emphasis on cash-crop farming and more on food- crop farming will be more effective, friendlier to the environment and less costly than the super-seeds that will require tons of pesticides - and eventually, cost a lot of money.

Also take the example of US farm subsidies that result in African farmers losing millions of dollars each year. Oxfam reports that in 2001 Malian cotton farmers lost $ 43 million dollars while US foreign aid was 37.7 million that same year. Why not lobby for fair competition and equal international trade rather than throw more aid and pesticides at the Malian farmers?

The conclusion here is one that might seem like a paradox of a beggar having choice - AGRA will do more harm than good. Understanding this, the participants committed themselves to, amongst other things, demanding "transparency, and accountability from all Green Revolution institutions and seed, chemical and fertilizer companies."