Page 20 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 13

Wholeness

Table 1: Gates Foundation agricultural
grants by type of grantee, 2003-2021

AGENCY $ US MAIN RECIPIENTS
MILLION

CGIAR 1,373 The CGIAR is a consortium of 15 international research centres set up to promote
the Green Revolution across the world. Gates is now amongst its major donors. Main
recipients include: IFPRI ($223 million), CIMMYT ($346m), IRRI ($197m), ICRISAT
($151m), IITA ($166m), ILRI ($74m), CIP ($91m), and others. Most of the grants are
in the form of project support to each of the centres, and many of them are focusing
on developing new crop varieties.
AGRA 638 A total of 20 grants for core support and AGRA’s main issue areas: seeds,
soils, markets, and lobbying African governments to change policies and
legislation.
Int’l orgs (UN, 601 World Bank - IBRD ($192m); World Food Programme (WFP) ($99m); UNDP
World Bank, etc.) ($54m.); FAO ($88m.) UN Foundation ($76m). The lion’s share of the grants to
the World Bank are to promote public and private sector investment in agriculture
($70m), WFP is supported to improve market opportunities for small farmers,
UNDP to establish rural agro-enterprises in West Africa, and the support to FAO is
mostly for statistical and policy work.
AATF 170 AATF (African Agricultural Technology Foundation) is a blatantly pro-GMO
pro-corporate research outfit based in Nairobi. The bulk of the Gates’ support is to
develop GMO drought-resistant maize, a project that has already miserably failed ac-
cording to many. But it also gets support to raise “awareness on agricultural biotech-
nology for improved understanding and appreciation”, and to get legislation approved
for allowing GMOs in African countries.
Universities & 1,393 Over three quarters of all Gates’ funding to universities and research centres goes to
National Re- institutions in the US and Europe, such as Cornell, Michigan and Harvard in the US,
search Centres and Cambridge and Greenwich Universities in the UK, amongst many others. The
work supported is a mix of basic agronomic, breeding and molecular research, as well
as policy research. A lot of it includes genetic engineering. Michigan State University,
for example, got $13m to help African policy-makers “to make informed decisions on
how to use biotechnology”.
Although most of the Foundation’s grants are supposed to benefit Africa, barely 11%
of its grants to universities and research centres go directly to African universities and
research institutions ($147m in total, of which $30m for the Uganda based Regional
University Forum set up by the Rockefeller Foundation).
Service delivery 1,446 The Gates Foundation sees these as agents to implement its work on the ground.
NGOs They include both large development NGOs and foundations, and the activities
supported tend to have a strong technology development angle or focus on policy
and education work in line with the Foundation’s philosophy. A whopping 70% of
these grants end up with US-based beneficiaries, and another 19% in Europe. African
NGOs get 4% of the NGO grants ($73m total, $36m of which goes to groups in
South Africa, and another $13m for “Farm Concern International”- an NGO based
in Nairobi with the mission of building “market-led business models” for small
farmers).

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