In the final days of the Trojan wars the Greeks left outside Troy a gift for the Trojans - a giant wooden horse. Once the Trojans had opened the gates and wheeled the gift into their city they discovered, too late, that it was full of Greek soldiers. The lesson from this incident is always to look a gift horse in the mouth - and the gifts offered by some western nations to facilitate Third World development are no exception, whether they be food and seeds or computers and software.

Cottoning on to a rip off
When the British colonised India one of the ways it 'helped' the subcontinent was to open it up to the benefits of free trade. What this meant in practice was that India's local manufacturing industries were shut down, their raw materials were shipped to Britain and turned into manufactured products that were then sold back at far higher prices to the Indians. This 'economic development' policy was introduced in close co-operation with the largest business enterprise of the time - the East India Company. The rural economy of India was devastated. Indian cotton was bought at very low prices and shipped to the dark satanic mills of Lancashire, whilst the manufactured clothes were shipped back to India to be sold at high prices to the cotton-growers and their neighbours. The principal beneficiaries were the shareholders of the East India Company. Such was the 'white man's burden'.

Regaining control of spinning and weaving was a central technique in Gandhi's independence movement. He said that what India needed was not mass production but production by the masses. Protest took the form of burning imported cloth and selling homespun fabric. Every day in prison he spun cotton for half an hour and clothed himself with homespun "khadi". The spinning wheel, or Charka, was the symbol of his struggle - and was depicted on the flag of the Indian National Congress. His struggle was not just for political freedom but also for economic freedom. Remarkably, when Gandhi visited Britain, the millworkers of Lancashire welcomed him as a hero - they valued his struggle against exploitation above their own low-paid jobs.

Facilitating famine through free food
"The principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the USAID contracts and grants go directly to American firms. Foreign assistance programs have helped create major markets for agricultural goods, created new markets for American industrial exports and meant hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans." -USAID website

In the light of such incidents it is worth inspecting carefully the 'aid' packages to Africa provided by several western nations. The usual complaint we hear about western aid - from Bob Geldof and his colleagues - is that there is not enough of it, but in the recipient nations the complaints are very different. In order to adopt the imperialist techniques used by the British in India it is not necessary to have an officially recognised Empire. USAID, the US Government's department for foreign aid, has a similar technique: US grain crops are cheaper than those of other nations because they receive a 30%-50% subsidy from US taxpayers. If too much grain is produced then the surplus is dumped, via the World Food Program, as Third World 'food aid'.

The shipments take place not when there is demand from hungry nations but when the grain silos need to be emptied to make way for the new harvest. The unrequested arrival of vast amounts of subsidised or free grain in nations that are not starving has a devastating impact on the local agricultural economy. Farmers are unable to sell their crops and so abandon their land. Local food production goes into terminal decline. Agricultural production has declined because it has become uneconomic and the nations have been driven into a state of permanent economic dependency. For these reasons other donor nations in the World Food Programme, such as the EU and Japan, oppose this "tied aid" and instead provide money for recipient nations to buy food from local farmers or farmers in neighbouring poor nations. Across the recipient nations farmers have repeatedly been involved in often violent protests against the US food aid policy.

This promotion of economic dependency could be viewed as unintended were it not for the fact that both the European Union and development charities have loudly opposed the policy for decades. The EU and the charities instead provide emergency money for the hungry to buy crops from local farmers and, in the longer term, help these nations to build up their self-reliance in food production. The USAID website candidly states, "The principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the USAID contracts and grants go directly to American firms. Foreign assistance programs have helped create major markets for agricultural goods, created new markets for American industrial exports and meant hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans." What this indicates is that what are presented as large donations are in fact large investments designed to lead to the creation of captive markets.

The cotton conmen return
The British equivalent of USAID is the Department for International Development (DfID). At first glance some of its projects are equally mysterious. Its largest aid project is called Vision 2020 and is based in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh once produced all its own textiles; it still produces much of India's cotton - employing millions of smallholders in the process. Its other distinction was that it was the only state in India whose government had economic policies compatible with those of DfID. The farmers and rural communities are still much poorer than they were in pre-colonial times because they only produce cheap raw cotton rather than profiting from the sale of manufactured cloth. Gandhi's solution was obvious, but DfID has a different strategy - one strongly backed by the seed and agrochemical multinational, Monsanto. They wish to remove over 20 million smallholders from the land, almost half the entire rural population, to make way for large scale cotton production which they say would boost exports and the income of the nation.

Unfortunately any such income would go to a few large landowners; no plans were developed for relocating or re-employing the smallholders removed from the land. Traditional seeds were replaced with Monsanto's expensive genetically modified Bt cotton seeds.

The resultant cotton crop in Andhra Pradesh failed in that year and in the subsequent year. Thousands of farmers committed suicide. The ensuing row reveals much about the hidden agenda. Opposition to Vision 2020 led to the creation of a vast state-wide alliance of grassroots organisations representing farmers and villagers. The state government fell and was replaced with one that opposed the project and that demanded compensation for the failure of the crops. The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) hosted a 'citizens jury' involving representatives of communities throughout the state to find out what strategy for development the farmers and villagers wanted. It was revealed that neither DfID nor the old state government had never consulted anyone except representatives of multinational corporations when designing the project. The citizens juries, as recorded in the Prajateerpu report, concluded that the popular demand was for "food and farming for self-reliance and community control over resources" - a strategy closely resembling that advocated by Gandhi - whilst DfID's policy was condemned as inimical to the interests of the rural poor. DfID unsuccessfully attempted to have the report destroyed.

Whilst DfID, unlike USAID, have not publicly stated their real agenda, it is clear that it sees this aid project as an investment that would increase Britain's access to cheap, high quality cotton whilst providing Monsanto with a captive market for seeds and agrochemicals.

When is "free software" not free software?
In 2001 Microsoft introduced a plan to offer free software to all of the 32,000 schools throughout South Africa. Ironically the plan was launched almost simultaneously with the release of a report by the Government's National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI), warning of the threats posed by proprietary software and urging the adoption of open standards and use of open source software. By 2003 South Africa's Government Information Technology Officers Council (GITOC) was also actively promoting open-source software to limit technological and economic dependency.

In 2002, SchoolNet Namibia, an existing charity providing internet access to Namibian schools via Linux-based computers and servers, was offered "free software" from Microsoft, together with fifty laptops. It eventually turned out that what was being offered was free licensing for Office Pro, valued at $2,000, and LAN software. In order to use this, SchoolNet would first have to pay $9,000 for Windows OS licensing and buy new LAN hardware. SchoolNet chose instead to expand its Linux-based system.

These are just two examples of a widespread problem and of how Africa is responding. Bildad Kagai, from the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), is very critical of shortsighted schemes to donate second-hand computers to Africa. "It has been a very very costly mistake" he says, explaining that "the issue is that we did not consider the consequent costs that come with the donation of computers." A key problem has been entrapment in long-term dependence upon proprietary software, the cost of which can easily exceed that of the computers themselves. FOSSFA, in its founding Statement, claims that "Africa can bridge the Digital Divide by adopting Open Source thus narrowing the effect of techno-colonialism."

Terminating Nature's Harvest
"[We] strongly object that the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly, nor economically beneficial to us" -Joint statement by Africa's Food and Agriculture representatives

In 1998 Monsanto sent an appeal to all Africa's Heads of State, entitled 'Let The Harvest Begin', which called upon them to endorse GM crops. Monsanto were following the advice of the world's leading PR company to avoid the 'killing fields' of health and environmental issues in the GM debate, such as the absence of independent safety testing and the need for increased herbicide applications, and to shift the debate to focus on supposed benefits for the poor. Monsanto's letter-writing exercise could well have been the most catastrophic PR stunts in history. In response the Food and Agriculture representative of every African nation (except South Africa) signed a joint statement called 'Let Nature's Harvest Continue' that utterly condemned Monsanto's policy. It stated: "[We] strongly object that the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly, nor economically beneficial to us", "we think it will destroy the diversity, the local knowledge and the sustainable agricultural systems that our farmers have developed for millennia, and that it will thus undermine our capacity to feed ourselves".

One particular objection was that the genes in GM seeds, like the code in Microsoft's software, was patented - so seeds could no longer be saved and replanted each year, as they traditionally were; instead the farmers would be trapped into having to buy patented seeds year after year. Another was Monsanto's involvement in the development of 'Terminator' seeds - seeds genetically modified to be sterile so physically ensuring that new seeds are needed each year. Concern led to the creation of a No Patents on Life campaign whose aims parallel those of the No Patents on Software movement.

Since that memorable occasion none of these African nations has really accepted GM food crops. The situation is no better for Monsanto in other parts of the Global South. After ten years of promotion there are only four significant crops that are available in a GM form (soya, maize, canola and cotton) and 98% of these are still only grown in four nations (USA, Argentina, Canada and Brazil).

How do you open up a market that has already rejected your products? Bribery is an option but it is risky - Monsanto was fined US$ 1.5 million in 2005 after it was caught trying to bribe at least 140 Indonesian government officials to approve GM cotton. What they need instead is a Trojan horse - a free gift that will persuade the recipients to open the gates to the other products. The biotech industry turned to their old friends USAID and DfID to soften up Africa. Their first attempt went badly wrong.

Force-feeding the poor: GM or Death
In 2002 USAID offered Zambia $50 million in 'food aid' on strict condition that was used only to buy GM maize from the USA through the World Food Programme. This happened several months after Zambia had stated that it did not want GM food aid. As mentioned earlier, other members of the World Food Programme oppose this sales technique.

Although some parts of Zambia were hungry there were surplus crops in other areas and lots of non-GM maize in neighbouring African nations. India had vast surplus stocks of rice - 65 times as much as Africa needs - that would have been available at half the cost of the US maize, but Zambia was forbidden to buy this with the money. The US aid policy became labelled as "GM or Death" by critics. Similar tactics were used by USAID against Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique and Malawi. Ethiopia's Dr Tewolde Egziabher, on behalf of an alliance of Third World nations, stated "Countries in the grip of a crisis.. ..should not be faced with a dilemma between allowing a million people to starve to death and allowing their genetic pool to be polluted" and Food First (USA) said: "The US food aid system appears to disregard the rights and concerns of recipient citizens in order to assure profits for US agribusiness giants. It is a system that allows for the misspending of public funds in ways that benefit the private sector; a system that takes advantage of the lack of regulation concerning the genetic engineering of food; and a system that undermines democratic decision making about food consumption."

Zambia asked for the right to use the money to buy non-GM maize from Africa because they did not want US GM maize. Zambia's national paper said "If the US insists on imposing this genetically modified maize on our people, we will be justified in questioning their motive". In response, Zambian Government scientists were summoned to the US and UK by USAID and DfiD for education on the safety of GM food. However, after both the US and the UK refused allow them to see any actual scientific safety data on the crops, Zambia rejected the aid and instead bought maize from Kenya using its own money - so no-one starved. This did not stop Andrew Natsios, head of USAID, from saying "The Bush administration is not going to sit there and let these groups kill millions of poor people in southern Africa through their ideological campaign".

Clearly African nations could see that this government 'aid' was not charity. A new strategy was needed to involve charities in marketing GM foods. Wheel in Bill Gates...

Opening Gates
For years development charities and campaigns have been saying that GM crops are irrelevant to solving world hunger. Statements and reports saying this have come from the British Overseas Aid Group (Action Aid, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Save the Children Fund) and many independent development experts. They were not willing to do marketing for the biotech industry. The challenge then was for USAID and DfiD to get heavyweight charitable backing from people who knew nothing about the real needs of the poor - how about the world's richest men? The new campaign, co-sponsored by USAID, DfID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (boosted by a vast $30.7 billion gift from Warren Buffet), the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Bank, is called Harvest Plus.

Harvest Plus plans to use genetic engineering to 'biofortify' crops with additional vitamins and minerals. That sounds like a benevolent goal but it ignores the advice of nearly all development agencies. Firstly, malnutrition of commonly caused because the poor can no longer grow fruit and vegetables because they have lost their land to industrial agriculture. Fortified rice is no substitute for a balanced diet. Secondly, the nutritional content and diversity of many crops has declined but many now rare high-nutrient varieties are still available to use in conventional breeding programs - programs that get results far faster and at a far lower cost than through genetic modification. A highly suspicious example is the GM Golden Rice project to insert beta-carotene genes from daffodils into rice. The very costly program has now been running for a decade amidst massive biotech industry hype but has still to create any usable product. Meanwhile, accompanied by no hype at all, the International Rice Research Institute found a variety of rice that already contained high levels of beta-carotene, iron and zinc, and, within a few years and at very little cost, crossed this with commercial varieties to produce a natural golden rice called IR-68114, whicch they say is a "high yielding, high iron, high Vitamin A, high zinc variety".

So why is the GM Golden Rice project and Harvest Plus getting such massive corporate backing? I think the answer can be found in the accompanying appeals to African nations to water down their biosafety regulations in order to allow these crops to be grown - and, of course, thereby allowing all the other patented and problematic GM crops to be grown as well. Like Microsoft's gift of free software to South African schools the unstated strategy could well be to 'get them hooked'.

Non-proprietary solutions to poverty
DfID, USAID, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation may have convinced naive governments that the task of imposing this kind of development on the Third World is part of the white man's burden, but are they truly unaware that they themselves are the principal or sole beneficiaries of this so-called development process - and that the poor are the principal victims?

In relation to both agriculture and information technology there is a need for non-proprietary solutions for the poor - a need for technology that is controlled by local communities rather than foreign corporations, that is public property rather than being privately patented and that empowers people to be self-reliant rather than inducing long-term economic dependency. In agriculture communities are experimenting with co-operative seed banks and unpatented seed varieties are being exchanged and cross-bred to develop varieties that do not have to be bought each year. Likewise what Africa needs, and is now developing, is free software that can be developed, exchanged and translated into minority languages by local projects in some of the world's poorest nations - and a laptop on which to run this software that is cheap enough for anyone and that is easy to maintain or repair.

Ubuntu - an African word meaning "humanity to others" - is a complete and freely-available Linux-based operating system which is accompanied by 16,000 pieces of free software, all of which can be easily translated into any language or be modified by any user. Edubuntu is the version developed for classroom use. It was developed by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, software developer and the first African in space, as a deliberate challenge to Microsoft's monopoly. Shuttleworth says 'Because open source is free, we can share knowledge much faster. If a kid learns to use a program at school she can take it and download it at home, show it to her parents and even her friends.' To obtain any of the 16,000 programs anyone can take a blank CD or DVD to a 'Freedom Toaster', to be found in many South African Universities and shopping centres, where they can select and burn on to their disk for free whatever software they wish.

His Shuttleworth Foundation produces educational software and publications, often for use in Africa, and provides teacher training to enable open source educational materials to be developed and used for maximum educational benefit.

Helping with the translation of the free software into South Africa's eleven official languages is Translate.org.za (in case you're wondering, the languages are English Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu).

Petition
Translate.org.za founder Dwayne Bailey, one of the key opponents of Microsoft's attempted takeover, is promoting a Civil Society Petition to Government on Free and Open Source Software and Open Content. This petition states that:

"We, South African civil society, petition you and our Government to adopt Free and Open Source software and open content wherever possible. As a developing country, South Africa, along with all the countries on the African continent, needs you and our Government to act as agents of positive change in our society and trigger shifts in the information and communications technology market dynamics, in order to favour the supply of local ICT content, support, skills and service providers, and to reduce our longstanding dependence on imports and the negative effects created by this dependence. We recognise that similar goals are set out in the black economic empowerment policies and charters adopted by Government and others. However we note here that those mechanisms are insufficient when it comes to the issue of software, other ICTs and content procurement, and therefore make this appeal to you to take a stronger, direct leadership role to the benefit of all."

Meanwhile the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project is developing the Linux-based 2B1 laptop that is designed to cost under $100 and to be distributed free to schools in poor nations through government schemes. It will be suitable for use with the Ubuntu / Edubuntu software. With a wind-up power unit, low power use, 500MB solid-state memory and wireless broadband it will enable children in poor areas to access networks and the internet even in areas without phone lines or power supplies.

Robert Vint

References

Ubuntu www.ubuntu.com
Edubuntu www.edubuntu.com
One Laptop per Child http://laptop.org
Shuttleworth Foundation www.shuttleworthfoundation.org
Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa www.fossfa.net
Freedom Toaster www.freedomtoaster.org

No Patents On Life www.gene-watch.org/programs/patents/petition.html
No Patents on Software www.aseed.net/callsandnews/software-patents.htm
Terminator Seeds www.primalseeds.org/terminator.htm
Prajateerpu report (PDF) www.iied.org/pubs/pdf/full/9135IIED.pdf
Prajateerpu video www.grain.org/h/?id=125

Force-Feeding the World www.ukabc.org/forcefeeding.htm
USAID: Making the world hungry for GM crops www.grain.org/briefings/?id=191
Grains of Delusion www.grain.org/briefings/?id=18