Critiques of Gates Foundation agricultural interventions in Africa

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent nearly $6 billion on agricultural development, with a key focus on transforming African agriculture by transitioning farmers to patented seeds and fossil-fuel based fertilizers to grow staple crops for the global market. Leading experts in food security and hundreds of groups in Africa and around the world say the foundation’s market-based agricultural development strategies are aiding multinational corporations more than small farmers and communities in Africa, even as hunger and inequality worsen. This fact sheet links to reports, critiques and news articles describing these concerns. We will update it regularly.

Table of contents (drop links) 
Most recent Gates Foundation food-related news
Opposition from African groups
UN Food Systems Summit controversy
Gates Foundation funding for agricultural development
Critiques of the Green Revolution for Africa
GMOs in the Global South
Gates Foundation’s media influence
More Gates Foundation food news
U.S. Right to Know reporting 

Overview of critiques 

The Gates Foundation’s core strategy to reduce hunger in Africa is to expand industrial agricultural practices in ways that increase production of commodity crops for the global market. The foundation says its goal is to “boost the yields and incomes of millions of small farmers in Africa… so they can lift themselves and their families out of hunger and poverty.” 

The strategy is modeled on the “green revolution” that boosted production of staple crops in India. But critics say the strategy in India has left a legacy of inequity that has fueled farmer protests there. Several recent reports provide evidence that the Gates-led “green revolution” for Africa has failed to deliver on its promises. Despite billions of dollars in aid and government subsidies, hunger and malnutrition have worsened across sub-Saharan Africa. More than 40 million people in the region are at risk of increased hunger and poverty as countries grapple with multiple shocks from the pandemic and climate change.

Against this backdrop, agribusinesses interests and private donors, including the Gates Foundation, are staging what critics describe as power plays to further solidify control over global agriculture policies at the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit. These include proposals to implement a new framework for food systems governance and centralize control over agricultural research centers. The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems described the situation as “a high-stakes battle over different visions of what constitutes legitimate science and relevant knowledge for food systems” and “part of a broader battle over what food systems should look like and who should govern them.”

Hundreds of groups are planning protests and boycotts of the food summit because of the influence being wielded by financiers and corporations pushing to expand high-input industrial agriculture, especially in Africa. These groups and leading experts on food security and nutrition say there is an urgent need to change course, and support diverse agroecological farming systems that promote biodiversity instead of monocultures and include political and economic reforms that address inequity and social divisions.

Source: U.S. RIGHT TO KNOW