International organizations created to help the developing world often impose policies that do the opposite, a delegation from Africa recently told the Senate foreign affairs committee.
Members of the delegation said these organizations cause some of the problems by insisting that food aid include genetically modified material.
“There is a school of thought that genetically modified organisms will stop hunger,” Mwananyanda Lewanika, executive director of the National Institute for Scientific and Industrial Research, told senators. “They will not stop hunger. If anything, they will contribute to food insecurity.”
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As an example, Lewanika discussed the controversial Zambian decision in 2002 to block import of food aid containing GM seed.
The decision was widely condemned in the developed world as ill-informed fanaticism at the expense of hungry people.
The Zambian official had a different take on the issue. It was an unnecessary attempt by developed countries and the World Food Program to impose unwanted solutions on a population facing food shortages, he said.
Assessment needed
Lewanika said Zambia does not have the technical expertise to properly assess the safety of GM products and a population weakened by hunger and riddled with HIV/AIDS would be susceptible.
Besides, there were alternatives, he said. Some parts of Africa and even Zambia had food surpluses that could have been purchased.
“However, the World Food Program said that according to their regulations, they can only source from the cheapest source, even if it meant the source was as far away as the United States,” he said. “The feeling was actually that we were being forced to take GMO and it was a question of either you take it or you starve.”
Regassa Feyissa, executive director of Ethio-Organic Seed Action, said the same is true in Ethiopia, home to many of the native plants that are the ancestors of many major crops.
He said the push by the West and multinational companies to make GM varieties a key tool in hunger alleviation and development plans is dangerous.
“To date, countries or regions such as Africa, having lost all options, are suffering the consequences of unintentional but indiscriminate pushing of technology or other ways to overcome these problems,” he said.
Lewanika said that as recently as the early 1990s, Zambia was food self-sufficient.
“Once we started implementing prescriptions from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, reducing subsidies to agriculture, reducing spending on social services like health and education, our poverty level started increasing,” he said.
Understanding wanted
The Zambian activist urged Canada and other development-interested countries to understand that when international agreements are being negotiated, “we are partners but weaker partners.”
Conservative senator Pat Carney, along with other members of the committee, said she too has complaints about the policies promoted by the World Bank and IMF.
“What is it that they could do that would help you or is the culture in those institutions so poisonous, so disturbing to your agriculture that they cannot be helpful?” she asked.
Lewanika said international agencies should listen more carefully to the people they are trying to help.
“There is a tendency to bring experts,” he said. “Some of these experts have never been to Africa before. We have local experts who could be used. When somebody tries to assist us, it is best to go to the grassroots to learn what the problem is.”
