Africa, GMOs & The Gates Foundation

Director: Jean-Baptiste Renaud

France, 2021

52′

Synopsis

Across Africa, lobbyists, philanthropists and businessmen are working to open up the continent to GMO food. They argue that GMOs can provide a miracle solution to two of Africa’s biggest problems: famine and malaria. The main promoter is Bill Gates, now the head of the most powerful philanthropic foundation in history. This film reveals how the Gates Foundation became the main funder of genetic experiments underway on the continent and investigates the possible repercussions of their actions. By financing the development of GMOs in Africa, a neoliberal model of development and corporate domination is being imposed on Africa, opening it up to the global agribusiness. This is the new world of philanthrocapitalism, where humanitarian aid has a stubborn aftertaste of business, famine programs are often a pretext to introduce GMOs and public investments can serve private interests.

Director's bio

An investigative documentary director since 2010, Jean-Baptiste Renaud has directed or co-directed around ten feature-film enquiries. After seven years on the editorial teams of Premières Lignes and of Cash Investigation, he chose to make his films as part of the SlugNews collective, which produced his first film for Arte France: American Crusade in Africa (November 2019). In recent years, he has become very interested in the world of agriculture, in France and abroad, and in the way in which our globalised food system is dangerous and doesn’t benefit the farmers of what we find on our plates. The idea of investigating the development of GMOs in Africa has been close to his heart for the past three years, and his first shoot was in a GMO corn field in Uganda.

Künye

Camera: PASCAL KARDOUS
ÉTIENNE HUVER
JEAN-BAPTISTE RENAUD
LAURE VAN RUYMBEKE
BORIS HEGER

Editor: ROMAIN VITIELLO
QUENTIN EIDEN
MYRIAM MILENT

Written by: BORIS RAZON
JEAN-BAPTISTE RENAUD
LILA BERDUGO
Sound: BENOÎT HERY

Music: NICOLAS BABY

Producer: MARINA LADOUS AND ÉTIENNE HUVER