As it has come to dominate the agenda for reshaping African
agriculture over the years, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has
been very careful not to associate itself too closely with
patent-protected biotechnology as a panacea for African farmers.

True, the foundation named 25-year Monsanto veteran Rob Horsch to the position of “senior program officer, focusing on improving crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Yet its flagship program for African ag, the Alliance for a Green
Revolution in Africa (AGRA), explicitly distances itself from GMOs.
“AGRA does not fund the development of GMOs,” the organization’s Web
site states.

But AGRA—co-funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, proud sponsor of
the original Green Revolution—is just part of what Gates does around
African ag. What precisely is the foundation getting up to over there?
Is it pushing GMOs on African smallholder farms?

[I have a call into the foundation to ask directly about the role GMOs play in its efforts. I’ll report on the response.]

It has been surprisingly hard to say. Until now.

In a speech at the World Food Prize
gathering last week (see video below), Bill Gates himself chided the
critics of GMOs—and shed some sunshine on the foundation leadership’s
philosophy on ag development. At one point, he declared, “some of our
grants [in Africa] do include transgenic approaches, because we believe
they have the potential to address farmers’ challenges more efficiently
than conventional techniques.”