posted
Critics say the World Bank is helping multi-national corporations and global investors access cheap land in Africa and other developing countries at the expense of local economies.
A case in point, in the British daily The Guardian, shows foreign investors purchasing nearly one-fifth of the West African country of Sierra Leone’s arable land.
The spokesperson for the Malen Land Owners Association, Eddy Amara traveling to the assembly in the West African country’s southern Pujehun district, “where a controversial palm oil investment has become a symbol of rising tensions over large-scale agribusiness investments in the country,” according to The Guardian.
Amara traveled to the district to show his opposition to the securing of a 50-year lease for 6,500 hectares (each hectare equals 2,471 acres) of farmland for a paltry annual rent of $5 per hectare. The purchase was made by Socfin SL, a subsidiary of the Belgian investment company Societe Financiere des Caoutchouces. Socfin is one of the world’s largest plantation investors. Amara, not only claims the project has failed to bring promised jobs and income to local communities, but, in addition, he has been pushed off of his land and now struggles to feed his family.
The land grab is continent wide, according to a subsequent story reported in The Guardian.
“The World Bank is helping corporations and international investors snap up cheap land in Africa and developing countries worldwide at the expense of local communities,” environment and farm groups charged in a recent statement. The groups included Friends of the Earth International and international peasants’ group La Via Campesina. The groups have for years charged the World Bank has pushed African and other governments to privatize land “and focus on industrial farming.”
In addition, they voiced concern over the bank playing a major role in a global rush for farmland by providing capital and guarantees to big multinational investors.
Posts: 4693 | From: Saturn | Registered: Apr 2012
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posted
The only positive thing here is that the land grabbers cannot make off with the land. When the people are sufficiently alert they will just seize the land back.
But very disgraceful.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Keep it honest, it is when the people see that the land has been sufficiently cultivated by whites that they will seize it back. We have Zimbabwe as our model for this. Left to themselves, these Africans are fucking incompetent. Otherwise there would not be so much swaths of arable land to be exploited by foreign companies.
quote:Originally posted by lamin: The only positive thing here is that the land grabbers cannot make off with the land. When the people are sufficiently alert they will just seize the land back.
posted
^ If you want to "keep it honest", then you will have to consider the leading cause of instability in Sierra Leone over the last couple hundred years; Albino Anti-African Insanity (AAI) & Constant Albino Interference (CAI), and the Brain Dead Negroes who love them.
Charles Taylor 'worked' for CIA in Liberia
US authorities say former Liberian leader Charles Taylor worked for its intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the Boston Globe reports.
The revelation comes in response to a Freedom of Information request by the newspaper.
A Globe reporter told the BBC this is the first official confirmation of long-held reports of a relationship between US intelligence and Mr Taylor.
Mr Taylor is awaiting a verdict on his trial for alleged war crimes.
Rumours of CIA ties were fuelled in July 2009 when Mr Taylor himself told his trial, at the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in the Hague, that US agents had helped him escape from a maximum security prison in Boston in 1985.
The CIA at the time denied such claims as "completely absurd".
But now the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's spy arm, has disclosed that its agents - and those of the CIA - did later use Mr Taylor as an informant, the Globe reports.
The international dimension of Liberia’s civil war is rarely given the attention it deserves. The fact that Charles Taylor stands on trial for war crimes in Sierra Leone points to it partially, but often not realized are the roles that countries like Libya, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria played in initiating a truly multinational war. Recent revelations by the CIA — which have always been suspected — put the United States’ role in the war at center stage, adding fuel to claims of outside intervention in Liberian politics, since its founding as a Western style nation-state, up until today.
In 2009, during his trial for war crimes in Sierra Leone, Charles Taylor claimed that the CIA had arranged for his “release” from a Massachusetts prison. This release was made to look like an escape, after which he was allowed to travel freely across international borders, build up a small fighting force in Libya, depose of the sitting president Samuel Doe, and eventually set up a rogue state government in the capital Monrovia. The CIA denied this, but a recently answered Freedom of Information Act claim, filed by The Boston Globe six years ago, has the CIA admitting to aiding Taylor‘s escape from prison during the 1980′s.
posted
@facts 'Left to themselves, these Africans are fucking incompetent'
Really? My MA from SOAS tells me that when left to their own devices, Africa's rural populations are generally expert in agricultural cultivation. Maybe you know better?
Over to you.
Posts: 838 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2011
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posted
^ Africa's present state has absolutely nothing to do with the skill set of it's residents. Rather, it is the strategic plan of the west to promote wide spread anarchy and instability BWO/Albino military instigation, Albino Predatory lending, and simple greed on the part of African elites.
-------------------- Selenium gives real life and true reality Posts: 4693 | From: Saturn | Registered: Apr 2012
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posted
@facts Are you going to respond or are you here to post stupid fvcking comments and run?
Posts: 838 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2011
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posted
What more is there to say? I gave you an existing example, Zimbabwe.
quote:Originally posted by claus3600: @facts 'Left to themselves, these Africans are fucking incompetent'
Really? My MA from SOAS tells me that when left to their own devices, Africa's rural populations are generally expert in agricultural cultivation. Maybe you know better?
posted
Facts, African farmers are tops in the world for producing coffee, cocoa, fonio, yams, couscous, tea, onions, carrots, manioc--etc.--all produced on African-owned farms and agricultural units.
Just visit any African market and you can get any agricultural product.
Zimbabwe was a clear case of a colonial land grab after killing those on the land then moving the survivors to barren lands. The war in Zimbabwe was mainly to retrieve those lands from the thieves. It's normal history to know that.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
The West and its various organizations has never stopped plotting to take over all the land and resources of Africa for their own use. In the past they did it overtly with colonialism. Now they do it via subterfuge, using NGOs and other globalist agencies with good sounding PR as fronts to do it. Last year it was called the "Green Revolution" in Africa. This year it is called "Grow Africa", but other than having Africa in the name, none of it has anything to do with feeding Africans. And when you go and read the websites of these organizations and agencies, they all use the same keywords, which never ever say we are planning on growing more food for Africans to eat or we want Africans to own their land versus being sharecroppers. Nope. They always say things like "global agriculture, value added supply chain, sustainable agriculture, public private partnerships and boosting income" which mean absolutely nothing other than giving more land to foreigners for them to grow and export.
From recent events:
quote:Washington, DC — Over forty-five companies have committed to invest over US$ 3 billion in Africa's agricultural sector as part of the G8's New Alliance for Food and Nutrition Security initiative, US President Barack Obama announced today.
The commitments were developed in collaboration with Grow Africa, an innovative partnership led by the World Economic Forum, the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
"Today, I can announce a new global effort, bringing together all global players for a shared effort - African governments and donor countries, which agreed to align their donations, and private sector players, international as well as non-governmental organizations," said President Obama, speaking at the Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security in Washington DC, an event hosted by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. "We will stay focused on clear goals, boosting farmers' income and helping 50 million people lift themselves out of poverty. We can unleash the change that reduces hunger and malnutrition. This is the new commitment we are making today."
But what really happens is that these organizations are simply surveying Africa, finding all the sources of ground water and all the best soils for planting and then using that data to determine what land is most desirable so they can buy it up and the Africans are left helpless. This is because the government owns the land as a custodian, following the pattern put in place by the colonists and African puppet stooges are simply maintaining the colonial agenda of African land being used exclusively for foreign plantations.
quote: What do three heads of state, 10 ministers, 116 companies and a group of farmer leaders have in common?
They all want to see growth in Africa’s agriculture sector.
So do we – which is why we found ourselves at the Grow Africa Investment Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last Wednesday, in a room packed with nearly 300 people at the closing session. The atmosphere in the room was slightly electric, suspenseful.
.....
Global companies, experts and others joined with local stakeholders to work intensively on an investment blueprint for the corridor, then established a SAGCOT Centre to facilitate partnership and sustainable investment. Numerous investments have been generated and expanded, attracting local, regional and global companies. One year later, when President Kikwete reported his progress at our next World Economic Forum on Africa, six other African governments said they would like to make a similar effort.
By that time we had linked with the African Union and NEPAD, who have an interest in accelerating sustainable agricultural growth throughout Africa. NEPAD has a Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), which assists governments to develop agriculture sector investment plans. Until now these had focused on public-sector investment, which is insufficient for the projected needs. Could we build on these plans to prioritize and attract private-sector investment as well? We decided to work together to find out.
In this way, the Grow Africa partnership was formed just one year ago by the African Union, NEPAD and the World Economic Forum, with the goal of accelerating investment in African agriculture, in alignment with national priorities defined through CAADP. Countries would set the prioritiesand Grow Africa partners would help to engage investors. Seven countries volunteered to participate in the partnership’s initial year: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda and Tanzania.
Keep in mind that global companies have absolutely no interest in growing more food for Africans to eat. They only thing they want is to grow more food to export and profit on the global market. They have absolutely no interest or desire to promote African longevity and well being through proper nutrition, diet or economic development.
posted
Such things can happen only with the complicity of Africa's greedy, neocolonial, comprador statist castes. They are ignorant, cowardly, meretricous, mercenary, short-sighted, ignorant of African history, and wicked. A whole page of such deserved epithets can be applied to them. Fanon in that prescient chapter "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness" of his Wretched of the Earth explains this kind of behaviour.
The way to solve this problem is through education by which civic-minded cadres could be trained. One reason why British and French colonialism worked for their countries is that their servants of empire were trained either in Oxford and Cambridge, or the French Grandes Ecoles d'Administration. In Africa there are no such specialised schools to educate cadres within a Pan-African context.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Maybe blacks in the diaspora who want to help protect Africa should invest in their motherland if they can afford it.
Posts: 2508 | From: . | Registered: Nov 2011
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posted
Can't remember the name of the programme I heard it on, but I from memory I think $800bn has left Africa over the last 40 years through corruption.Don't know how true it is. Any one else heard this?
Can we also refrain from describing Africans as 'dumb' or 'stupid'. Not only does it smack of internalised racism, but its also ugly, divisive and alienating.
Posts: 838 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2011
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posted
Another wave of decolonisation is sorely needed. Recent reports of the extremely outrageously corrupt behaviour of the son, Teodorin, of U.S coddled dictator, Obiang, of Equatorial Guinea is just a single case in point. Jailed Nigerian governor of Delta State, James Ibori, was notoriously corrupt and wicked.
It's just very bad anti-African behaviour: those who cannot sell petroleum and minerals on the cheap are now busy selling land to maintain their ignorant and corrupt behaviour.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Most of these leaders in Africa are either educated in the West and/or former members of the world bank or other such institutions. They know exactly what they are doing.
Their job is precisely to promote ignorance and the idea that Africans are stupid, dumb and helpless without outsiders intervening, taking over and treating them like children, while at the same time making sure that foreign companies are pampered and given all the land and resources they want to exploit for almost pennies on the dollar.
Not to mention that globalist organizations like the WTO, World Bank and WFO are constantly trying to spin the domination of African agriculture by global Agribusiness as "good" for Africa when global Agribusiness cares nothing about feeding Africans and only about profits. And because of this they need to snap up as much land as possible in Africa so they can control what gets grown where in order to guarantee the biggest profit for their crops. Africans growing food locally to feed Africans is not a priority and does not make them profits. Whereas plantations in Africa growing commodities for export and then importing what is needed is a desired outcome because this produces the most profit and more importantly keeps Africans (and everyone else) dependent on the global system of Agribusiness for their food. Which is what these people want and is why they want to own all the large scale arable land that can produce crops around the world.
For example:
quote: At the World Economic Forum on Africa 2012 in Addis Ababa, Africa's potential to become a major food exporter was frequently cited, with some delegates predicting this could happen within a decade."I am convinced Africa will become a net food exporter," Mr Lamy says. "First, Africa was a net food exporter 30 years ago. There are reasons why it has changed, including rapid growth of the population - because intake per head is what matters". Today, changing dynamics in the global economy are working in Africa's favour. "We know that for twenty years to come we have this structural imbalance between supply and demand. Demand is growing more rapidly than supply, mainly because of nutritional transition. Protein intake grows with your level of revenue and inevitably this creates more demand on protein output. And there are a number of reasons why supply only adjusts very very slowly. There is not much land available elsewhere as in Africa. So I am convinced it will happen". Mr Lamy adds that Africa's domestic agricultural market is huge, and will probably provide the fastest growth.
Structural change in the global economy may also necessitate new tools for measuring trade flows, argues Lamy. The rise of "multi-localisation" - where a given export contains more and more inputs from other locales - means bilateral trade flows are now a misleading indicator of trade intensity. "The way we measure trade in gross volumes is becoming more and more detached from reality because to produce the same thing today you have three times more trade than in the past, just because production is multi-localised. Each time something crosses the border the full value of the product is attributed to the country." Statistically, this makes it look as though a country has a higher trade intensity than is the case. "They are trading a lot, but what matters is not how much they trade, but how much value addition they create through participation in global value chains, because that is what jobs are about".
Bilateral measures of trade flows can lead to a view of imports as bad, and exports as good "which is economically nonsense" be argues. A new measure would posit the more interesting question: "how much do I need to import in order to leverage my comparative advantage on the global market?" To provide the data, the WTO is partnering with universities, other international organisations and statistical institutes, and the task is long and technically complicated. But it is vital, says Mr Lamy. "I think it is an important potential contribution to a proper public debate about trade which, when it is focused on bilateral balances, has absolutely no meaning. The US-China trade imbalance is divided by two if you measure it in value added.
posted
This is a silly question. Mugabe was covered re the land question in Zimbabwe many times on this forum. To clue you in: people who murder and steal should not get away with such. No statute of limitations for them. Does that answer your question?
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Most of these leaders in Africa are either educated in the West and/or former members of the world bank or other such institutions. They know exactly what they are doing.
Check the CVs of African presidents: the vast majority are conmen with little real education. Take the case of South Africa, Africa's most important country. It is a BRIC member. It's president is Jacob Zuma, a man with an embarassingly thin education CV. Nigeria, a potentially important country is run by a man who is obviously the victim of a very poor education. The man knows next to nothing except to genuflect and bow down like a slave before the U.S. and Britain.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Still at the apologist profession, I see, lamin. SMH. The African can do no wrong. Some outside force is the reason for African failure. Keep it up, dude. Meanwhile, the world outside Africa continues to make advances into the future. SMDH.
quote:Originally posted by lamin: This is a silly question. Mugabe was covered re the land question in Zimbabwe many times on this forum. To clue you in: people who murder and steal should not get away with such. No statute of limitations for them. Does that answer your question?
quote:Originally posted by lamin: This is a silly question. Mugabe was covered re the land question in Zimbabwe many times on this forum. To clue you in: people who murder and steal should not get away with such. No statute of limitations for them. Does that answer your question?
I do not understand anything. Do you think mugabe is against the system or is a puppet Or doing harm to the population?
Posts: 2922 | From: World Empire of the Black People | Registered: Jul 2011
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LOL. I should take your moniker. I am all about facts, the whole facts, and nothing but the facts--so help me whoever. FYI I don't need help. LOL.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Maybe you should answer my question on whether you thought the state of agriculture in Zimbabwe was characteristic of the situation in Africa generally.
Posts: 838 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2011
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quote:Originally posted by Doug M: The West and its various organizations has never stopped plotting to take over all the land and resources of Africa for their own use. In the past they did it overtly with colonialism. Now they do it via subterfuge, using NGOs and other globalist agencies with good sounding PR as fronts to do it. Last year it was called the "Green Revolution" in Africa. This year it is called "Grow Africa", but other than having Africa in the name, none of it has anything to do with feeding Africans. And when you go and read the websites of these organizations and agencies, they all use the same keywords, which never ever say we are planning on growing more food for Africans to eat or we want Africans to own their land versus being sharecroppers. Nope. They always say things like "global agriculture, value added supply chain, sustainable agriculture, public private partnerships and boosting income" which mean absolutely nothing other than giving more land to foreigners for them to grow and export.
From recent events:
quote:Washington, DC — Over forty-five companies have committed to invest over US$ 3 billion in Africa's agricultural sector as part of the G8's New Alliance for Food and Nutrition Security initiative, US President Barack Obama announced today.
The commitments were developed in collaboration with Grow Africa, an innovative partnership led by the World Economic Forum, the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
"Today, I can announce a new global effort, bringing together all global players for a shared effort - African governments and donor countries, which agreed to align their donations, and private sector players, international as well as non-governmental organizations," said President Obama, speaking at the Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security in Washington DC, an event hosted by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. "We will stay focused on clear goals, boosting farmers' income and helping 50 million people lift themselves out of poverty. We can unleash the change that reduces hunger and malnutrition. This is the new commitment we are making today."
But what really happens is that these organizations are simply surveying Africa, finding all the sources of ground water and all the best soils for planting and then using that data to determine what land is most desirable so they can buy it up and the Africans are left helpless. This is because the government owns the land as a custodian, following the pattern put in place by the colonists and African puppet stooges are simply maintaining the colonial agenda of African land being used exclusively for foreign plantations.
quote: What do three heads of state, 10 ministers, 116 companies and a group of farmer leaders have in common?
They all want to see growth in Africa’s agriculture sector.
So do we – which is why we found ourselves at the Grow Africa Investment Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last Wednesday, in a room packed with nearly 300 people at the closing session. The atmosphere in the room was slightly electric, suspenseful.
.....
Global companies, experts and others joined with local stakeholders to work intensively on an investment blueprint for the corridor, then established a SAGCOT Centre to facilitate partnership and sustainable investment. Numerous investments have been generated and expanded, attracting local, regional and global companies. One year later, when President Kikwete reported his progress at our next World Economic Forum on Africa, six other African governments said they would like to make a similar effort.
By that time we had linked with the African Union and NEPAD, who have an interest in accelerating sustainable agricultural growth throughout Africa. NEPAD has a Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), which assists governments to develop agriculture sector investment plans. Until now these had focused on public-sector investment, which is insufficient for the projected needs. Could we build on these plans to prioritize and attract private-sector investment as well? We decided to work together to find out.
In this way, the Grow Africa partnership was formed just one year ago by the African Union, NEPAD and the World Economic Forum, with the goal of accelerating investment in African agriculture, in alignment with national priorities defined through CAADP. Countries would set the prioritiesand Grow Africa partners would help to engage investors. Seven countries volunteered to participate in the partnership’s initial year: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda and Tanzania.
Keep in mind that global companies have absolutely no interest in growing more food for Africans to eat. They only thing they want is to grow more food to export and profit on the global market. They have absolutely no interest or desire to promote African longevity and well being through proper nutrition, diet or economic development.
Go to the 20:00 mark and listen to the president of Tanzania.....
Good points all DOug. One wonders how much of this "investment" will actually benefit the masses on the "street" versus Western consultants, Western financial institutions raking off fees, African collaborators who siphon off cash, etc etc..
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
Of course it won't benefit the masses on the street. The West never went to Africa to put in place an economic system to benefit Africans. They went there to put in place an economic system to benefit themselves and leave Africans excluded. And that is what you still have today, but the difference is that the NGOs and globalists like to put up fronts to make it seem like they are really trying to help when they aren't.
quote: "Whereas WBG's [the World Bank Group's] mandate is to 'reduce poverty and improve living standards through sustainable development and investment in people,' its work largely strays from this mission in that, by promoting investor access to land, it actually tends to threaten rather than improve food security and local livelihoods in developing countries." - The Oakland Institute
There are undoubtedly many forces pushing increased foreign investment in agricultural land in Africa, from the investors themselves to government officials believing in rapid progress for large-scale agriculture and foreign technology to officials as well as private interests in the countries themselves profiting legally or illegally from such deals. Among those fueling the phenomenon, either by direct loans or, more often, by advisory projects pushing "investment-friendly" environments, is the World Bank Group, notably the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).
While some critics say that all such large-scale deals provide little or no benefit for small-scale farmers whose land is appropriated or affected by such deals, even those international agencies promoting "Responsible Agricultural Investment" acknowledge that "weak governance" in many countries allows significant damage to the rights of land owners and other land users, as well as to the environment.
Thus there has been a proliferation of international effects to formulate international standards to curb abuses, and, in the hopes of some, to ensure that such investments not only benefit investors and macroeconomic growth, but also avoid damages to farmers' rights and the environment.
These include "Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment that Respects Rights, Livelihoods and Resources: A discussion note prepared by FAO, IFAD, the UNCTAD Secretariat and the World Bank Group to contribute to an ongoing global dialogue (http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ciicrp3_en.pdf), the International Finance Corporation's "Performance Standard 5: Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement" (http://www.ifc.org/sustainability), and most recently, in March this year, the FAO's "Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security," (http://www.fao.org/nr/tenure/voluntary-guidelines/en/).
While there has been much debate about such guidelines, including strong critique from civil society organizations, what is most noticeable to a non-specialist is that none of the official agencies seem as yet to have incorporated any of these standards into evaluating their own project financing or policy advice to countries. The evidence from critical non-governmental organizations and scholars, however, indicates that the agencies have most often uncritically pushed investment and not insisted on compliance even with their own performance standards. This is surely an issue that incoming World Bank President Jim Yong Kim should put on the agenda on the Bank's own Independent Evaluation Group, which has often published incisive critiques of Bank programs.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from a briefing from The Oakland Institute, examining how World Bank Group advisory programs have helped fuel large-scale land deals in Africa, while neglecting to apply their own performance standards to prevent, monitor, or evaluate abuses.
Another AfricaFocus Bulletin sent out today by e-mail, and available on the web at http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/sl1205.php, has several documents on the case of land deals in Sierra Leone, including the communique from a conference in April of affected land owners and land users.
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