Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
In a statement prior to the Tuesday, October 26, conference for African-European Union Foreign Ministers, leadership of various Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) and Civil Societies Organizations (CSOs) in Africa noted that land governance in Africa is a major concern to be addressed for sustainable transformation in the continent.
“The impunity of corporate and elite capture of African land and natural resources and the damage this is doing to Africa’s food systems, to our environment, our soils, lands and water, our biodiversity, our nutrition and health, is a major concern,” reads the collective statement in part adding that “Land grabs push people off the land, fueling conflicts and provoking displacement and subsequently migration in search of food and livelihoods (while) women are often the first to suffer.”
In the joint statement, members of a broad alliance of CSOs and FBOs decry that “over 25 million hectares of land deals have been concluded in the African continent, (and) Large-scale land acquisitions by private actors are encouraged and financially supported by governments and their public development banks.”
The African leaders who are members of Our Land is Our Life Platform disclose that “A complex web of financiers, including private equity funds and European Development Finance Institutions, finance the land acquisition projects,” and have called for “an end to the financing of large-scale land acquisition projects, corporate agribusiness operations, and speculative investments by public development banks.”
The objective of the African and European Union Ministerial Summit held in Kigali, Rwanda is to discuss issues of security, peace and governance; education, science & technology; migration and mobility; and sustainable transformation and also to set the stage for the 6th AU-EU Summit scheduled to be held in 2022.
According to the statement published Friday, October 22, “The legacy of colonialism and the huge differentials of power and capacity between Europe and Africa have tended to see such discussions framed in a European rather than African context. Consequently, the issues that are most urgent for Africa tend to slip down or off the agenda.”
The CSOs and FBOs leadership underscore that AU Draft Land Governance Strategy highlights “land as a key factor of production for most economic activities; more especially that Africa is an agro-based economy.”
“This narrow economic lens obscures the much broader African land context. For most Africans, land is neither a tradeable commodity nor an individual possession; it is a gift from God and our ancestors, a common good,” they added and called on Ministers to reach agreements that “ensure the sustainable use of land for the hundreds of millions of Africans who rely on it, particularly women.”
Talking about Green Revolution approaches to agriculture based on imported technologies and capital-intensive fertilizer and pesticide inputs, representatives of the Organizations have lamented that this techniques has “failed to raise productivity or reduce hunger and poverty, while degrading our soils, felling our forests, and wasting billions of public sector dollars.”
Additionally, “Importing subsidized European food surpluses is putting local producers out of business while creating more dependency (and) Agribusiness-food platforms and digital solutions are unlikely to benefit our small-scale farmers.”
In this regard, the leaders have asked the governments to put “agroecology on the policy table and recognize its track record of success in producing food with low input costs, with huge potential to create jobs for youth, provide healthy diets, and make farming communities more resilient to shocks.”
They also focused on security of families having enough food and providing a future for the children questioning whether young people would “risk their lives crossing to Europe if they could gain a decent living at home,” hence call on the Ministers to“embrace the need for transformational change in agriculture and food production.”
“Let us not forget the climate crisis that is already presenting major challenges to those living on and off the land, despite Africa having contributed so little to the problem,” reads further the published statement as the leaders add, “We need urgent support to enable our food producers to adapt to the challenges.”
Besides SECAM other FBOs and CSOs include, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), Convergence Globale des luttes pour la terre et l’eau en Afrique de l’ouest (CGLTE), Rural Women Assembly (RWA), Africa Europe Faith and Justice Network (AEFJN), Justiça Ambiental JA– Friends of the Earth Mozambique and Pan-African Institute for Citizenship, Consumers and Development (CICODEV).