How philanthropists hijack our national food agenda

American tycoon Bill Gates has told the world that Kenya has legalised cultivation of genetically modified maize. Recently, the philanthropist sparked off debate online after his remarks to the Wall Street Journal on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

By pumping billions to promote agricultural development, Gates is chiefly interested in getting Kenya and other African countries to adopt genetically modified crops (GMOs) and related technologies without any regard to our traditional agricultural practices.

Our scientists in the Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organisation (Karlo) have rendered a hand. Jointly with their counterparts from the African Agricultural Technology Foundation NGO, Karlo scientists said last year that they have developed genetically modified maize varieties that can withstand drought and pests through the Water Efficient Maize for Africa project (Wema).

They later asked the National Biosafety Authority to allow farmers grow the relevant varieties.

What nobody said is that Gates pumped into the Wema research some $85.7 million (Sh1,028,400,000); Howard G. Buffett Foundation gave US$7.9 million (Sh805, 800,000) while USAID US$7.5 million (Sh705, 000,000). This amounts to Sh2,599,200,000; which can comfortably fund sinking of some 1,244 boreholes. But the billionaires are not intrested in sinking boreholes, they want 300 million farmers in Kenya, Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa to start growing GMOs under Wema.

And so the founder of Microsoft Corporation, Gates, pumped some $28 billion into the agricultural development intiative and later coaxed his friend, Warren Buffet, to boost the kitty resulting to a whopping $41 billion (Sh4.18 trillion). He now uses this money to improve people‘s health and give them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty.

Kenya is one of the countries targeted by Gates and his wife Melinda. But the two are not keen to give us cash to alleviate poverty the Kenyan way.

Instead, they have been keen to control how we, and fellow Africans live and do our things. They do this through strategic relationships with governments and our policy makers. They also deploy foreign experts to oversee what our farmers grow; how we achieve our national health agenda; the type and nature of vaccines we give to our children and so on.

This is ostensibly done to enable us have reliable supply of ugali. But is what Gates and others are doing devoid of selfish interest?