Bill Gates promises the Green Revolution 2.0 to poor farmers in Africa and Asia. With the propaganda of his achievements and projects several times a year, the major media consummate the people concerned with hunger on the planet: nothing impossible for the world’s most successful and richest man, as he has been able to put Windows into the lives of most mundane, will invent to satiate every day the dishes of all the poor.

If you reach Agricultural Development by clicking on the Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation, a smiling black farmer will bring you the soul of the foundation: “Our goal: Alleviate the hunger and poverty of millions of peasant families in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, steadily increasing the productivity of agriculture.”

Later, the Foundation says: “We ask farmers what crops they want to sow and eat, what great challenges they have. We collaborate with the institutions that have the organization to understand and address these challenges, and we incorporate money into research to find and establish important and feasible solutions that farmers want and will use.”

GRAIN has investigated the reality behind verbal intentions. In defence of the interests of small farmers and associations working for food sovereignty, this Non-Governmental Organization, based in Barcelona, disseminates very important information on land theft, agro-industry, seed control, the climate crisis, etc. Among the founders is the historic leader of EHNE in Bizkaia, Paul Nicholson, who died in 2008.

GRAIN has just published How does the Gates Foundation use money to satisfy the world? report available in addition to English, Spanish and French. The main uses of the Foundation's sponsors, beneficiaries and amounts of money have been analysed in detail.

The foundation of the Gates is the largest foundation of today's accounts. He has raised over $40 billion 2.000.etik from now on, mostly donated by the Gates marriage and the billionaire Warren Buffet, who has a friend. Last year, the public tax revenue was 3.6 billion dollars. This money is the one that manages the large structure of 1,200 employees.

The Foundation's money is still spent in the United States, in its educational and health projects. But since 2006, the Gates have begun to give high salaries to agricultural projects, mostly in Africa, but also in East Asia.

To channel these investments, they created Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which calls for the Green Revolution in Africa. Many other donations are channeled through the CGIAR research agency, the foundations of Bill and Melinda. In 2007, $500 million was included in agricultural projects, with the aim of expanding them in the future. With these funds it has revolutionized the African agenda for research and development projects in the field of agriculture.

The new bondage of Africans

Along with the influence of the Gates Foundation, criticism of themselves has increased. Anti-multinational groups denounce that U.S. corporations promote technology-based seeds and chemicals to the market since the foundation, that they are obsessed with centralized laboratory scientists disregarding the knowledge and networks created by local farmers for generations, and that they also participate in the political agenda, pushing seed and transgenic laws.

GRAIN has analysed the support and investments of the Foundation during these years. On its website, it has thoroughly squandered the philanthropy actions of the Gates. With great sportiness, GRAIN has joined Bill Gates and AGRA’s responses to the statement. Here we summarize the main conclusions of GRAIN.

One: Gates fights the hunger of the South by giving money to the North. 80% of donations belong to associations in the United States, while Africans only represent 10%. Many of the funds are allocated to universities and research centres. In donations to NGOs, the margin is even more pronounced.

Two: Gates gives money to scientists, not to peasants. Attention is drawn to the support given to the CGIAR network of research centers. In the decades of 1960-70, CGIA played a major role in the first Green Revolution based on industrial cultivation, and later it was shown that this possible revolution increased the influence of researchers beyond solving hunger, as well as major economic, social and ecological problems. Now, thanks to Gates, he announces the Second Green Revolution.

In ten years, Gates has given over $700 million to CGIA, mainly to the European and American centers of the network. AGRA is complementing its research and development work in Africa, carrying out basic work to promote imported technologies from the north and their results (tools, chemicals, seeds...) among the baserritars. Meanwhile, baserritars in Africa, where 90 percent of the seeds used in agriculture are still produced, have not seen Gates' money.

Three: Gates buys political influence. It created the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) network in 2006 and has since pasted EUR 414 million. AGRA has a huge influence when African states decide their cultivation policies, as well as land management.

It works through policy action nodes in each country, with experts appointed directly by AGRA. With the impetus of these groups, Ghana and Mozambique have changed the laws to preserve seeds and biodiversity, Tanzania has changed the laws governing land ownership...

The work is completed with a lobby through the African Foundation for Crop Technologies (AATF) so that citizens and authorities can change their views on GMOs.

GRAIN ends the analysis as follows: “African farmers want to be mere receivers, consumers of knowledge and technologies created by others. It should be said that the Gates Foundation is basically governed by the following principles: it is an exercise in marketing its technologies to sell them to farmers. This is a lot like Microsoft.”