Five years have passed already. It was on this precise day that I wrote my first weekly newsletter on abcburkina.net. I send it to you once more, because in rereading it, it seems to me that it is altogether up to date. With the sole addition that today it is necessary to bring forth the issue of the Economic Partnership Agreements, which the EU is compelling the ACP countries (Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific) to take on board. It is now necessary for West Africa to have its right to food sovereignty recognised.

Too much is too much!

Too much is too much! This is what civil society proclaimed unanimously following the assassination of journalist Norbert Zongo on December 13th 1998.

Too much is too much! This is the thought that spontaneously springs to my mind, as I decide to start this weekly newsletter.

Too much is too much! When I consider the string of world summits (from Monterrey in Mexico in March 2002 on development financing, the food world summit of the FAO in Rome in June 2002 and to the world summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg) and the refusal to face the actual facts, I tell myself: too much is really too much!

On November 2001 at the WTO summit and Doha Round in Qatar, the nations of the South demanded an evaluation of current agreements, before considering new ones. Their demand was rejected by the great powers of the planet, those same ones which submerge the world with feasibility studies and statistics … in order to impose their cross border liberalism.

This stark reality, which rich countries refuse to acknowledge, can be felt every day here in Burkina Faso, ranked as one of the LDCs (Least Developed Countries) by the masters of the globe. At the very time when a new round of negotiations on agriculture are to start at the WTO and when the EU is preparing reforms of its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), we want to make the facts known. I am referring to the effect that existing regulations are having on the rural populations in the nations of the South. That will be one of the objectives of this newsletter (View of the South).

LDCs, the Least Developed Countries! Indeed, but what if it were precisely those rules of the game which the U.S. and the E.U. want to enforce at  world level, to prevent the poor countries from making progress – as Nicodème Biwando, a small scale cotton farmer in a village in Burkina Faso was quick to realise. On December 25th 2001 he said:

“We must tell the Americans and the Europeans that we are all of the same world, they are our brothers and we need one another. They must not organise their work (a reference to the subsidies paid to cotton farmers) as if they lived on another planet, apart. Their ways are not good, because they prevent us from advancing. Let them look for a different solution so that we all together, us and them, can make progress. (Globalisation as seen by African cotton farmers).

Such words may force a smile, considering the powerful means deployed by the U.S. and Europe to bring the countries of the South to accept their rules. However, is there not another way, if one does not want to sentence the rural populations of these countries to infinite poverty?

At a time of globalisation of the economy and international trade, it is the tenets of the Farm Bill (the new U.S. legislation on agriculture, designed to give additional protection to farmers growing cotton, rice, soy and corn) and  the EU Common Agricultural Policy, which generates the worlds highest subsidies, that we hear about most. And it is those two which demand of poor countries to abolish all protective barriers around their agriculture! Has the time not come for the nations of the South to work out genuine agricultural policies, based on an analysis of the situation of their own farmers and livestock keepers? Has the time not come for the South to express their views on the present rules, as well as on the planned reforms?

This will be the second objective of this newsletter (Views from the South).     

Koudougou 4th September 2002 and 2007

Maurice Oudet

Director, SEDELAN