Food sovereignty, challenges to West Africa, WTO and EPA

Summary

The external political pressures and the numerous internal constraints opposing an operational implementation of food sovereignty in West Africa carry little weight in relation to the tremendous challenges of its increasing food dependency in the long run. The large convergence of the assessments made by NGOs, developing countries, many researchers and of recent official models in underlining the negative impact of agricultural trade liberalization for the poorest countries is backed up by the historical experience of the presently industrialised countries, including from the South. But the pressures of the globalised agri-food corporations and the dogmatic nature of the faith in freetrade of the Western politicians render them blind and deaf at this necessity. The EU claim that the WTO rules are imposing the EPAs is contradicted by several other WTO rules which have at least as much legal weight. On the other hand it is clear that the EU as the US are not complying with the rules of the Agreement on agriculture and that litigations will very soon force them to demand to rebuild this Agreement on food sovereignty.

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