They said there was no need for African countries to resort to "green revolution" to solve the problems of the continent's agriculture and that it was a false model.

 Mr Ange David, the GRAIN West Africa Sub- Regional Coordinator and Mr Wisdom Kofi Adjawlo, the Executive Director of YVE, Ghana, made the assertion in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra.

 Mr David said: "When assessing the agricultural potential of the continent, there is no need for a "green revolution" if the objective is indeed to feed Africa.

 "The issue of the fight against hunger can't be a business of agribusiness and that of multinationals. Because in the different tactics and strategies of the latter appear only the quest for profit and the control of resources that are land, water and seeds."

The Sub-Regional Coordinator said the pressure on farmers for the intensive use of chemical fertilizers, laws that criminalise peasant seeds, privatisation of land, race for mechanisation, hybrid seeds and monocultures, among others were  the farming systems and practices promoted by the "green resolution" on the continent.

"The 'green revolution' is in total contradiction with the quest for food sovereignty as it imposes an abundant and massive resource to chemical fertilizers and mechanisation, it imposes agricultural productions, which were useful for its consumer market, but not for that of peasants, and thus destroying the local markets that are at the centre of this food sovereignty," Mr David said.

He said food imports on the African continent were the results of policies directed and pushed by multinationals in complicity with some of the continent's elites.

Mr David said: "This 'green revolution' was preparing the climate chaos of tomorrow, which strongly depended on fossil fuels.

He said the last special report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on August 8, 2019 recognised the harmful role of industrial agriculture and paid tribute to agro-ecology peasants.

Mr Adjawlo on his part said the ecological footprint of fertilizers was enormous, although it  was underestimated in the calculations because  the real magnitude of emissions of the chemical fertilizers, impacted on global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.

 "Due to its growing energy needs, increasing water consumption, dependence on pesticides and other highly toxic chemicals that are destructive to the environment and health, the 'green revolution' cannot claim to be friend of the climate and biodiversity," he said.

Mr Adjawlo said: "Before pretending to become one, it should above all break its proximity to the multinational agribusiness, the first beneficiary of its actions which are  highlighted in the fora of AGRA, main windows of a private sector in search of podiums to continue to convey its propaganda on the absolute necessity of the public-private partnerships, which are done however to the detriment of the people and the African agriculture.

"African agriculture just need land and not land grabbing, it just needs peasant seeds, not hybrid seeds and biotechnology, it needs agricultural policies that are specific to it and not those imposed by institutions such as AGRA. Only at this price that Africa can meet the agricultural needs of its citizen and be resilient to climate change," he said.