African farmers are facing serious challenges because of increased engineering of seeds and the determination of leading global agro-chemical corporations to dominate the African agricultural sector. 

This contribution draws on time spent interviewing, walking with villagers and witnessing the eroding base of women’s security and empowerment in rural and informal sectors in some African countries, a trend that has heightened in the last decade. The countries in question share some common features: a colonial legacy of peoples displaced from their ancestral lands; vast and valuable natural resources; high illiteracy rates among rural populations; patchy rural infrastructure; the vestiges of weakened traditional accountability systems; and investment policies that significantly favour the industrial commodity chain [*] over peasant-based food sovereignty.

In the context of changing climates and increased stresses on the natural environment, women farmers need consistent, relevant and intelligent support, in a timely manner, to secure their critically important roles in food security, health and biodiversity conservation. There are important lessons from the Caribbean in this regard

The UN Special Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter exposed the ‘appallingly poor’ record of the Canadian government on the abuse of the rights of Canada’s indigenous peoples. In a vengeful and contemptuous response the Canadian government withdrew from a United Nations convention that fights droughts and desertification.

Victim protection is a critical response measure, but women need to address systemic issues. They need to challenge systems that undermine their ability to participate in decision making and their control over resources

Food production systems in Africa are founded on values centered around incomes and profitability that Nidhi Tandon challenges. Unless and until the over-emphasis on the values that underpin the global market economy is reversed, equality and equity for women is doomed.

A critical analysis of different ‘solutions’ to improve the situation for rural women in Africa within the context of an iniquitous global food system.

Social policies and instruments will need to be developed to ensure that the Green Economy not only alleviates poverty and improves equity, but that the interests of the people who depend on Green Economy are deliberately safeguarded from the very outset.

Thanks to the US’s 2009 Global Food Security Act, food aid policy for the first time mandates the use of genetic modification technologies. Nidhi Tandon looks at how this legislation helps biotechnology companies monopolise the seed industry at the expense of farmers, and explores some of the dubious links between these corporations, the Gates Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

Uncertainty around food and fuel supply globally has sparked investor interest in the acquisition of large parcels of productive land around the world, for commercial production or long-term investment, writes Nidhi Tandon. But these developments, which effectively take land away from local farmers and in many cases perpetuate ‘environmentally damaging farming methods’, threaten to have ‘serious negative impacts for small farmers, in particular women, who have no say in the political and trade decisions around their lands,’ Tandon warns.