Untangling the roots of Empire
The coterie of billionaires and foreign aid agencies intent on transforming African agriculture have mostly upturned people’s lives.
Agriculture
Living on the land
Small scale farmers in Tunisia are caught between international actors and a domestic policy that protects corporations.
Banana Republics
Western leftists are arguing among themselves about whether there will be bananas under socialism. In Africa, however, bananas do not necessarily represent the vagaries of capitalism.
A slow emancipation
What peanut trading in late 19th century Senegal tells us about the fine line between slavery and freedom.
The land doesn’t lie
Safi Faye's 1976 film, 'A Farmer's Love Letter,' exposes the gap between the post-colonial state and the concerns of ordinary people.
The external domination of Africa’s agricultural future
The changing structure of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) threatens the food security of the Global South.
A crop that changed the world
The story about peanuts, and the people who grew it at the margins of an empire in 19th century West Africa, then the most abundant source of the world’s most important oilseed.
There was no Green Revolution
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa was presented as a game-changer to address hunger. The consensus 15 years later: It failed.
A just recovery from COVID-19
COVID-19 exposed and exacerbated inequality and insecurity in North Africa's food systems. But the roots of the current crisis can be found in the legacy of colonialism and new forms of imperialism.
While 282 million Africans go to bed hungry every night
More than 500 indigenous and farmer organizations across the continents have raised their voices to expose the UN’s Food Systems Summit as only advocating one food system—so they’re being silenced.
Time for an agriculture Green New Deal in South Africa
Land reform should focus on justice and social transformation, not on creating a new class of black commercial farm owners.
The lessons of the Indian farmers’ protests
The latest COVID-19 crisis in India is overshadowing a farmers' revolt over land and agriculture. That revolt holds lessons for Africans.
What is Capitalism Mtaani?
In the first video from a series for the Capitalism In My City project, Brian Mathenge decodes what everyday capitalism looks like from the margins of Nairobi.
The political economy of biofuels in Mozambique
Local biodiversity loss and degradation of resources will have the greatest effect on communities in regions of biofuel expansion.
Commerce is cannibalism
How economic disparities, inequities, and opportunities occur side by side in Lesotho.
Death by pesticide
How pesticides banned in the European Union continue to be sold in Kenya, and with devastating impact.
GMOs for Africa?
Rather than addressing food scarcity, genetically modified crops may render African farmers and scientists more, not less, reliant on global markets.
Des OGM pour l’Afrique?
Plutôt que de pallier l’insécurité alimentaire, les cultures génétiquement modifiées risquent de rendre les agriculteurs et les scientifiques africains plus, et non moins, dépendants des marchés mondiaux.
Can we end the chocolate industry’s labor abuses?
A new effort to block chocolate imports from Cote d’Ivoire to the US brings attention to cocoa’s problematic supply chain.
Alternatives to starvation in Zimbabwe
An effective response to imminent starvation in Zimbabwe requires listening to the country's farmers.