AGRA Exposed for Censoring Criticism of its Green Revolution

On January 14, the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) exposed a wide-ranging black-hat image-laundering scheme that implicated government and philanthropic leaders. Among the culprits, who included the Qatari government, were the Gates Foundation and its signature Green Revolution agriculture initiative, the Nairobi-based AGRA. The Guardian covered the story but barely mentioned the Gates and AGRA connections.

Journalist Claire Wilmot found that these influential institutions had hired Portland Communications, a UK-based public relations firm founded by Tim Allan, until recently the communications director for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, to surreptitiously edit Wikipedia web pages about its clients to enhance their presentation and remove potentially embarrassing or damaging content. This was in direct violation of the ubiquitous public encyclopaedia’s terms-of-use, which encourages public contributions to its web pages but prohibits interested parties, and their paid consultants, from editing articles about themselves.

According to TBIJ, Gates and AGRA both contracted Portland Communications, which hired a consultant to use multiple fake “sock-puppet” email accounts to evade Wikipedia’s security measures. TBIJ, which interviewed former Portland employees involved in the schemes and identified one fraudulent network of accounts, pinpointed specific edits to the Wikipedia page for AGRA that sought to expunge information critical of the controversial initiative.