Groundswell’s COVID-19 Response: People-Centered Solutions for Community Health, Food Security and Resilience

April 8, 2020

COVID-19 is spreading to developing countries, where high levels of poverty, inequality and inadequate healthcare infrastructure make controlling the virus even more challenging than it is in developed nations. Almost three billion people across the developing world do not have access to clean water, and hundreds of millions do not have access to adequate healthcare and live in crowded conditions where social distancing is all but impossible. Without urgent action, the COVID-19 pandemic will kill hundreds of thousands of people and set millions more on a downward spiral of ill health and pover …

The Most Important Innovation for Agriculture in Africa: Democracy

March 30, 2020

The front page headline of Ghana’s Business and Financial Times for January 17, 2020 reads:  “National Well-being wins over foreign interests as the gov’t ditches GMOs.”   The article quotes a dramatic statement from Ghana’s Agriculture Minister Dr. Akoto Owusu Afriyie, rejecting the need for GMO seeds in Ghana.  “I’m a scientist,” said Minister Afriyie. “I believe in science. GMO is a method of science. But it’s like cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. Ghana does not need to go GMOs… Forget about GMOs. There is no GMO in what we are doing. It’s only when we have …

Groundswell International Publishes Brief: “Scaling Agroecology in the Sahel: Elements of Good Practice – A Guide for Civil Society”

November 13, 2019

“There is a lot of learning that still needs to be done about how to scale or amplify agroecology,” says Peter Gubbels, Groundswell’s Director for Action Learning and Advocacy in West Africa.  “Some valuable principles have been identified, but there are not a lot of good, practical examples of how to do this.  What are the steps and pathways?  It is a crucial area of learning because we have to scale agroecology effectively to transform and fix our global agricultural and food system.” The recent IPPC report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) emphasizes nature-based so …