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Critiques of Gates Foundation agricultural interventions in Africa

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Originally published by U.S. Right to Know.

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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent nearly $6 billion on agricultural development programs with a key focus on expanding industrial agriculture in Africa. Leading experts in food security, Africa’s leading civil society network, and hundreds of groups around the world say the foundation’s “green revolution” agricultural program for Africa is exacerbating hunger, inequality and climate change. They argue a paradigm shift is needed away from high-input, chemical-dependent, corporate controlled farming models and toward agroecological approaches that can provide more abundant and nutritious foods, protect biodiversity and address the structural inequalities at the heart of the hunger crisis.

This fact sheet links to reports and news articles describing these concerns. We update it regularly.

Table of contents (drop links) 
Top 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 flagship agricultural program, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, works to transition farmers away from traditional seeds and crops to patented seeds, fossil-fuel based fertilizers and other inputs to grow 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 Indian “green revolution” that boosted production of staple crops but also left a legacy of inequity, environmental problems and entrenched corporate control over food systems, leading to a massive mobilization of peasant farmers who are demanding change. Several recent reports provide evidence that the Gates-led agricultural interventions in Africa have also failed to help small farmers and may be worsening the hunger and malnutrition crisis there.

“we write out of grave concern that the Gates Foundation’s support for the expansion of intensive industrial scale agriculture is deepening the humanitarian crisis.”

Letter from African faith leaders

Against this backdrop, agribusinesses interests and private donors, including the Gates Foundation, are staging what critics describe as power plays to 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. This is “a high-stakes battle over different visions of what constitutes legitimate science and relevant knowledge for food systems,” says the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, and “part of a broader battle over what food systems should look like and who should govern them.”

Most recent Gates Foundation food-related news

Recent statements opposing Gates’ interventions in African food systems 

UN Food Systems Summit controversy (read more about Gates Foundation role here)

African groups call for shift in funding, political advocacy 

Food sovereignty and civil society groups, faith leaders, and farmer, labor and environmental organizations across Africa have raised concerns for many years about Gates Foundation’s agricultural development strategies for Africa, and the foundation’s sway over public spending and government policies. 

“They talk about transforming African agriculture but what they are doing is creating a market for themselves.”

Million Belay, AFSA

In dozens of reports since 2007, the South Africa-based African Centre for Biodiversity has documented numerous problems with the Gates-led “green revolution” for Africa. These include subsidy deals, growing corporate control of the seed sector, expanding use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, escalation to more toxic pesticides as pests develop resistance to genetically modified (GMO) seeds, soil degradation, loss of biodiversity and negative impacts on small farmers. The group and many others are calling for a transition to agroecological practices and policies that allow food sovereignty.

African groups have also called out the neocolonial dynamics of Gates Foundation funding for Africa. These critics say the foundation and other private donors, investors, agribusiness corporations and Western governments are pushing a false narrative that Africa’s farmers need to buy patented seeds and agrichemicals developed by Western corporations in order to produce enough food.  They say African farmers and communities should decide how to shape Africa’s food systems. 

Resources and statements from African groups  

Recent reporting and perspectives on African food systems 

UN Food Systems Summit controversy 

The World Economic Forum, the Gates Foundation and other private donors, including the Rockefeller Foundation, are key players influencing the controversial 2021 UN Food Systems Summit. Hundreds of groups are protesting and boycotting the Summit because of the dominant role of corporate agribusiness and agenda many critics say will further entrench a harmful industrial agribusiness model. 

“A misguided technological revolution is about to sweep through food systems, but civil society and social movements can stop it in its tracks.”

Nick Jacobs, IPES-Food, Common Dreams 

The summit is led by Special Envoy Agnes Kalibata, president of the Gates Foundation-funded Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA). Her chief of staff is Adam Gerstenmier, formerly of AGRA and the Gates Foundation. UN insiders have harshly criticized the summit process, saying its leaders have ignored human rights, marginalized civil society and restructured the UN process to shift power away from the UN Committee on World Food Security into the hands of a small set of private sector actors.  

“Few people will dispute that global food systems need transformation, but this UNFSS is instead an effort by a powerful alliance of multinational corporations, philanthropies, and export-oriented countries to subvert multilateral institutions of food governance,” IPES-Food wrote in a June 3 Tweet thread. The expert panel announced June 26 that they will withdraw from the Summit. 

Statements critiquing the food summit 

Reports about food systems governance and transformation   

News coverage and perspectives on food summit 

How the Gates Foundation funds agricultural development

The Gates Foundation has spent nearly $6 billion on agricultural development programs, with a primary focus on transforming African food systems. Several groups have analyzed the foundation’s agricultural development funding. The following themes emerge from that research. 

Funding researchers and groups in the North, not farmers in Africa. A June 2021 analysis of 1,130 Gates Foundation grants for agriculture since 2003 found the grants are “heavily skewed to technologies developed by research centres and corporations in the North for poor farmers in the South, completely ignoring the knowledge, technologies and biodiversity that these farmers already possess,” according to the GRAIN research group. Many of the grants were given to “groups that lobby on behalf of industrial farming and undermine alternatives,” GRAIN wrote. 

Supporting industrial agriculture: As many as 85% of Gates Foundation-funded agricultural research projects for Africa “were limited to supporting industrial agriculture and/or increasing its efficiency via targeted approaches,” according to a 2020 report by IPES-Food. The foundation “looks for quick, tangible returns on investment, and thus favours targeted, technological solutions.” Just 3% of Gates Foundation projects included elements of agroecological redesign.  

The largest recipient of Gates agricultural grants is CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research), the world’s largest global agricultural research network. The Gates Foundation has donated over $1.3 billion to the influential research centers. In a July 2020 letter, IPES-Food raised concerns about Gates Foundation’s involvement in a “coercive” process to centralize control of the CGIAR research network into “One CGIAR” with a centralized board and new agenda setting powers. The reforms on the table “risk exacerbating power imbalances in global agricultural development,” IPES said. 

Expanding markets for commercial seeds and fertilizer: The second largest single recipient of Gates grant funding for agriculture is the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with $638 million in grants to date. AGRA’s primary focus is increasing farmers’ access to commercial seeds and fertilizers that AGRA said would boost yields and lift small farmers out of poverty. This “green revolution” technology package of commercial seeds and agrichemicals is further supported by about $1 billion per year in subsidies from African governments, but evidence shows these interventions have not delivered the promised boost in yields or incomes (see “green revolution” section below).  

Removing barriers to agribusiness expansion: The Gates Foundation is among the five top donors (along with the US, UK, Danish, and Dutch governments) of the World Bank’s Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) program that guides policymaking for pro-business reforms in the agriculture sector. The Oakland Institute and GRAIN research group have produced several reports about efforts by the World Bank and its funders to strengthen private property and intellectual property rights, and promote large-scale land acquisitions that benefit private actors. 

Reports on Gates Foundation funding and influence 

Gates Foundation perspectives

Critiques of the “Green Revolution” for Africa 

The Gates Foundation’s flagship program for changing African agriculture is the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The group works to encourage farmers to use hybrid seeds, fossil-fuel based fertilizers and agrichemicals to grow staple crops for the global market, with the goal of boosting yields and raising farmer incomes. AGRA promised to double yields and incomes for 30 million farming households by 2020. The deadline has passed (and the language since removed from AGRA’s website) with no comprehensive reporting on progress.

Independent assessments by Tufts Global Development and Environment Institute and African and German groups provide evidence that AGRA has not delivered significant yield or income gains for small farmers while hunger has grown by 30% across AGRA’s target countries. AGRA disagreed with the research but has not released data evaluating its results for over 15 years.

From the start, food policy experts predicted the green revolution for Africa would not solve hunger and poverty, because it ignored structural inequalities and the harsh lessons of the first green revolution in India. Over the past year, farmers in India have launched protests to oppose corporate control of their food systems and deepening inequality. 

Independent reports

AGRA perspectives and reports 

News coverage and critical perspectives

GMOs in the Global South

Bill Gates has said genetically engineered crops will “end starvation in Africa,” and he invests heavily in GMO research and development. But African governments, civil society and farmer organizations have long resisted GMO crops. They cite many concerns, including corporate control of seed stock, loss of traditional crops and local seed varieties, higher cost of GMO seeds, increased use of herbicides associated with GMO crops, the limitations of GMO crops to perform in complex environments, and doubts the crops will ever live up to the promotional hype. 

“The empirical record of GM crops for poor small farmers in the Global South has not lived up to expectations.”

Brian Dowd-Uribe, USFCA

The two largest introductions of GMO crops for small farmers in the Global South — Bt cotton crops in Burkina Faso and India — have been problematic for small farmers. Burkina Faso abandoned its genetically modified Bt cotton experiment after the seeds failed to deliver the same quality as the homegrown variety. In India, 20 years of data on Bt cotton found no yield increase associated with the crops, and determined that farmers are now spending more on pesticides than before the introduction of Bt due in part to insect resistance. A 2020 study in African Affairs found that nearly 30 years of strategic and well-funded efforts to bring GMOs to Africa have so far yielded very little. 

In South Africa, most of the country’s staple maize food crop is genetically modified to resist glyphosate-based Roundup herbicides. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the  World Health Organization, classifies glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen, and many local groups have raised health concerns about the prevalent use of the herbicides. 

Reports and articles about GMOs in the Global South   

Statements from NGOs and scientists 

Gates influence on media and food narratives

“News about (Bill) Gates these days is often filtered through the perspectives of the many academics, nonprofits, and think tanks that Gates funds. Sometimes it is delivered to readers by newsrooms with financial ties to the foundation,” reported Tim Schwab in Columbia Journalism Review. He documents more than $250 million in Gates grants to a variety of top news outlets.

“paid Cornell Alliance for Science fellows — under the guise of scientific expertise — launched vicious attacks.”

Fern Holland, Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action, Cornell Daily Sun

The Gates Foundation also funds many groups that work to shape public views on agriculture. One example is the Cornell Alliance for Science, a communications campaign based at Cornell University, launched with a Gates Foundation grant in 2014 to “depolarize the charged debate” around GMOs.” The group trains global fellows, particularly in Africa, to promote GMOs in their home countries. Cornell Alliance for Science affiliates were also active in opposing pesticide regulations in Hawaii. Gates Foundation has donated $22 million to the group.

Cornell Alliance for Science critiques 

Reporting on Gates’ media influence

More Gates Foundation news  

Reporting by U.S. Right to Know 

Follow our Bill Gates Food Tracker for more Gates Foundation-related reporting and sign up here for email updates. You can make a tax-deductible donation here to support the U.S. Right to Know investigations.  

Originally published by U.S. Right to Know.

Author Bio

  • U.S. Right to Know

    U.S. Right to Know is a nonprofit investigative research group focused on promoting transparency for public health and working globally to expose corporate wrongdoing and government failures that threaten the integrity of our health, our environment and our food system. Since 2015, USRTK has obtained, posted online and reported on thousands of industry and government documents, including many acquired through judicial enforcement of open records laws. Once-secret documents obtained by USRTK are now posted in the UCSF food and chemical industry documents libraries for free public access. USRTK has contributed to multiple New York Times investigations and global media coverage documenting how food and chemical corporations work to protect their profits at the expense of public health and the environment.

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