Foro Global sobre Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (Foro FSN)

Este miembro contribuyó a:

    • Micro franchising the key to Eradicating Poverty in Equatorial Region of Africa-Central African Republic & The Democratic Republic of Congo.

      Natural resource management is critical to the eradication of poverty in Equatorial Region of Africa. This region is gifted with over 9 million square km of arable land and sufficient rainfall all year round in agricultural production especially crop production, livestock, fisheries and bee keeping. The natural environment has potential for crop production, livestock production and fish stocks and species that should be preserved, while being propagated to meet the global food needs.

      It is important to look at the natural resources management and link technology to monitoring access to forest land for agricultural production through remote fencing. The idea being balancing global food needs and the capital monopoly in agro-business. When policies are developed to govern natural resource management, care should be taken that these policies do not affect food production. Let us take the laws developed in Central African Republic and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo around forest exploitation. There is a blanket policy of protecting trees from the local population, yet this policy does not seem to apply to multi-national companies that can pay the often punitive and deterrence license fees established to protect forests.  This policies stifles the local population to access capital from logging that would spur economic growth if it were to be allowed with stringent measures put in place to ensure sustainability.

      The challenge that both Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo face is a double edged sword natural resource management policy that gullotines their economic development. The local population still operates an archaic subsistence economy, while competing with multinationals that operate a sophisticated international natural resource market that they (locals) cannot break in. It would be important therefore to organize the economy around natural resources that allows local population a chance to exploit, access to market through transfer of technology and linkages so that the natural resources can be of use to the local population and the global market. This was at the core of the Rio-De Janeiro Conference in 1992 principles 1&3 that stated that human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development, they are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature, while principle 3 states that the right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental needs of present and future generations. These two principles if adopted would engineer the implementation of natural resource conservation exercise and will unlock opportunities for poverty eradication.

      While focusing on the rights of the local populations, there is also need to have the multinationals change their corporate responsibility policy. In many places in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic, the corporate responsibility strategy of the multi-nationals is a pittance compared to the benefits they reap and the impact of their actions to the local communities. The corporate responsibility should rather instead of building clinics and schools that are poorly managed and end up being white elephant projects. The multinationals should commit to mentor the local communities to engage and break into the cooperate market that the multinationals are exploiting. These in itself will be a fast track into transforming the global market in word and spirit. This means, that multinationals should share part of their franchise and give the local communities micro-franchising opportunity so that they (multinationals) can do quality control of goods that are produced by locals under their franchise. In this way they mentor them to break into the Global market.

      Transfer of technology and skills by multinationals engaged in agricultural productions in high potential zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the production of coffee, tea, palm oil and other lucrative crops. The multinationals should transfer this technology to the locals in this way, low or cheap labour costs will be factored in the profit margins that the multinationals gain in these high agricultural potentials in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic.

      James Wabwire Agoro-Regional Livelihoods Specialist-Kinshasa 18/04/2018