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World Bank: Turning African Farmers into Plantation Workers?

April 3, 2014
Source
RFI

Free market reforms are often heralded as helping to bring about prosperity, raise living standards and speed up development. The World Bank is the one of the biggest supporters of opening up or liberalizing economies with a system of rankings called the Doing Business index. But are the World Bank's reforms really about doing business? Not according to a new campaign led by the Oakland Institute think-tank. It says there's another agenda at play and criticises the World Bank's reform agenda saying it increases land grabbing in the agricultural sector to benefit foreign investors at the expense of local farmers. RFI's Daniel Finnan speaks to Anuradha Mittal, the head of the Oakland Institute, about World Bank reforms and its affect on agriculture in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Senegal...