The World Bank is Driving a Failed Strategy in DRC

---FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE---

April 9, 2019

Contact:
Anuradha Mittal
[email protected]
+1-510-469-5228

 

Oakland, CA—As the Spring meetings of the World Bank get underway in Washington D.C. this week, our new videos expose the Bank’s disastrous and ill-conceived plans to establish agro-industrial parks in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Bukanga Lonzo, local communities have already lost their land to the first of 22 mega-farms planned on over 1.5 million hectares. While they fail to benefit from any development outcomes from such projects, local villagers instead face abuses and arrests for ‘trespassing’ on their own land.

Our new report, The Bukanga Lonzo Debacle details how the World Bank is driving the strategy for agro-industrial parks in DRC, and with the African Development Bank, is responsible for site selection as well as feasibility, and technical studies. The videos expose not only a faulty project, but a failed strategy that prioritizes industrial agriculture over the rights, well-being, and livelihood of local communities. Even more shocking is that this plan works against the country’s own agricultural policy and the will of farmers and their organizations.

Watch the videos and join us in urging the government of DRC, along with the World Bank and the AfDB, to learn from the Bukanga Lonzo debacle and end their plans to develop additional agro-industrial parks in the country.

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