"Two Blows in a Row: The New Alliance for Food Security Loses Ground"

The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NAFSN) was launched in 2012 by the G8 in “partnership” with 10 African governments, private corporations, development organizations, and aid donors. This controversial agreement aimed to "unlock private investments in agriculture in Africa" and lift 50 million out of poverty. From its very inception, it came under heavy criticism for promoting the reach of multinationals like Monsanto, Syngenta and Yara, into African seed, pesticides, land, and fertilizer markets—to the detriment of smallholder farmers...

The first big blow to the New Alliance came in January 2018, when World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer revealed that politically motivated methodological changes skewed the Doing Business report (DBR) of Chile, decreasing artificially its score under socialist president Michelle Bachelet. These revelations led to Romer's resignation a few days later. In 2013, the World Bank’s own independent panel of evaluators highlighted that the DBRs rely on a narrow information source which does little to reflect realities on the ground. The researchers also criticized the reports' data-collection methodology and raised the issue of the rankings becoming a normative drive for policy change. All of these internal and external criticisms contribute to the mounting evidence against the methodological flaws and unreliability of the DB indicators and reports...

The second major upset for the New Alliance happened with France’s withdrawal from the initiative in February 2018. Following an independent evaluation of the impact of the NAFSN in Burkina Faso, France decided it was time to back out. "The measures taken there to free up land for future investors caused profound changes in food security and food consumption practices", Le Monde Afrique quoted the report. As affirmed by Marie-Cécile Thirion, head of the rural development division at the French Development Agency (AFD), “[The New Alliance] did not really promote useful new investments and it did not prevent bad ones."