Foreign investors in Africa have bought or leased an area twice the size of France, and this is likely to accelerate in the next few years. Many leasing contracts are fixed for 99 years. Thus, huge African arable areas cannot be used by the local population for generations to come.

Land investments lead both to decreasing space for people to produce their own food, and to increasing food prices, since the total amount of food produced decreases.

Africa needs its own resources of land, water and energy. The people living on the continent pay dearly for the wellbeing of other people. Should Africa in addition abandon parts of its own food production for the benefit of the increased energy consumption of the global rich?

The ongoing land grabbing in Africa may be compared to colonialism and Europe’s exploitation of the continent’s natural resources. It is now done in a more refined manner, but the consequences for people in Africa are largely the same.

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The new strategy for Denmark’s development cooperation will be a strong foundation for an effective Danish development cooperation geared to meet the development challenges and opportunities of the future.

The key message is that poverty must be fought through the promotion of human rights and sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Danish development cooperation should benefit the millions of poor women and men, girls and boys living in developing countries and promote their right to a better life.

We do not intend to be dogmatic in applying the human rights-based approach. Not least social and economic rights can often only be achieved gradually and requires the availability of adequate capacity, resources as well as political will, but we will work for their progressive realisation.

We will maintain the traditional strong focus on Africa in Denmark’s development cooperation and be willing to take risks when we engage in countries such as Somalia and South Sudan.

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A social cash transfer revolution is taking place in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). While most large cash transfer programmes (CTs) in the region date from the mid-1990s, the last 10 years have seen a rapid expansion of targeted CTs across the continent.

Sub-Saharan Africa is characterised by a much greater level of risk and vulnerability than other regions; the devastating effect of HIV/AIDS finds its global epicentre in Southern Africa.

In the last few years, rigorous impact evaluations of CTs have been carried out in no fewer than 12 African countries. The evidence indicates that CTs increased investments in agricultural assets and livestock and decreased negative coping strategies such as begging and pulling children out of school.

The targeting performance is better than the average CT programme around the world. The evaluations found that community-based targeting can be combined with other targeting methods to be effective in reaching poor populations in Africa.

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There have been harsh attacks on Western donors in the Kenyan press recently, with writers extolling the virtues of the Chinese approach to aid – investing in real development projects such as infrastructure, no questions asked. The West is obsessed with good governance and only provides aid with lots of conditions attached.

The critics are often ignorant of the most basic facts about what donors actually fund. Even Sweden’s Minister for International Development has stated that aid goes too much to funding conferences, workshops and courses, “just talk, talk, and talk when what we need is action on the ground”.

Actually, over half of public health spending is paid for by Western donors, as is about 18 per cent in the water and sanitation sector and at least 10 per cent in agriculture. Of state energy projects, China contributed the greatest single share of any country, but this was still less than half of total donor funding in that sector.

There are many things that one can criticise Western donor countries for. A failure to invest in core development areas is not one of them. The data speak for themselves, if anyone cares to look.

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The recent famine in Somalia has underscored the sharp differences between the traditional donors and the emerging ones, like Turkey. As Somalia still grapples to cope with acute famine and influxes of Somalia refugees into the neighboring countries, there has been strenuous debate over the donor community’s ineffective response.

Responding to such complaints, the Turkish prime minister braved into Mogadishu as the first non-African leader in 20 years and set the wheels in motion for Turkey’s new humanitarian foray into Africa.

Many international aid agencies have rushed to help Somalia, but the Turkish are remarkably different: They live in Mogadishu with their wife and families, use cheap hotels, tour in the refugee camps, deliver the much-needed foods and medicines, build hospitals and feeding centers, all under modest security detail.

The Nordic donors who contribute the bulk of Somalia’s aid should espouse Turkey’s model and adopt a new approach to humanitarian aid. Thus, your foreign aid would be accountable and, above all, reach the needy people who otherwise wouldn’t know where your aid has gone.

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A number of countries are now in the rising phase with rapid growth combined with worsening corruption and widening gaps. Some of these countries are major recipients of aid from Sweden and other Nordic countries.

We should be discussing our assessment of this development; we can rejoice and even take pride over the increased growth and poverty reduction, which is the very aim of development cooperation. But the growing corruption and the lack of growth trickling down throughout society and out to the villages should be a matter of concern.

The Swedish minister says we should be handing out improved stoves to poor people. If at least it had been to support local production of improved stoves, or to financially support micro-credits for poor people. No, the poor should get stoves, “more action” is the slogan.

That means disregarding everything about a long-term perspective, sustainability and people’s own responsibility for improving their situation. It means going back at least 50 years in time. It is an embarrassment.

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Policy attention across Africa is shifting to fostering agricultural innovation through enhanced research support and entrepreneurship. This will require radical transformation of the system of higher agricultural education. The current separation between research in national institutes and education in universities is a major obstacle to innovation.

This article proposes an alternative approach involving the creation of agricultural universities under the relevant line ministries. The seed for such universities already exist in the form of national agricultural, livestock and fisheries institutes which can be upgraded to combine research, teaching, extension and commercialization under one roof.

Unlike existing universities, the new institutions would work closely with farmers and agribusiness which would be a source of ideas on curricula, pedagogy, choice of students and location.

There are role models of such universities which operate under ministries of agriculture. One of the leading ones is the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences that was created in 1977 by upgrading existing research institutes and colleges. Such institutional innovation could form a basis for renewed cooperation between Nordic countries and Africa.

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Poverty is no coincidence. It is a result of international power structures. Of poor policies and poor leadership. Of historical trends and conflicts. It is about exploitation, discrimination and oppression. Although the world’s rich and poor are becoming increasingly intertwined in a complex global economy, the goods remain unevenly distributed. The disparity between those who have most and those who have least has never been greater.

Poverty is not only about not having enough money. Poverty is about armed conflicts and wars that make it impossible to run a business, visit the doctor or send the children to school because the road there is mined. The majority of out-of school children live in war torn areas. Foreign investors who are vital to economic growth flee from conflict areas.

Poverty is about politics, and we politicians need to create political solutions to the underlying causes of poverty, something that is even more difficult than providing enough money.

We are coming close to the deadline for the Milennium Development Goals, in 2015. We must do anything possible to reach them. But we must be careful not to fool ourselves into believing that the MDGs can be reached by development aid alone. The wider politics of poverty must be lifted to the top of the international agenda, along with the three factors most critical to development: climate, conflict and capital.

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Social protection has recently got more attention in the development debate. It is the focus of a growing number of reports and evaluations from development agencies, international organizations and academic institutions.

When you see the kind of results that cash transfers render, the rising interest should not come as a surprise. Many evaluations and studies show that cash transfers, be it in the form of child or family benefits, social pensions, guaranteed work or a basic income grant, do reduce poverty in an effective way.

As there are indeed good reasons for the growing interest, the question may rather be put his way: why didn’t this interest come earlier? The idea is perhaps too simple to have been seriously considered by development theorists: distribute money to the poor, and trust that they will know how to use it.

And why have Nordic donors not been in the forefront in the recent rise of interest in social protection? There are many lessons from the development of the welfare state in the Nordic countries that could be shared.

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In July 2011, two Swedish journalists entered the Ethiopian province Ogaden embedded with the ONLF guerrilla movement. The trial against the journalists and other abuses seem to surprise donor agencies, politicians and others outside of Ethiopia. But in fact, it is nothing new. On the contrary, abuses and crimes against human rights have been ongoing for many years in Ethiopia. Even so, Sweden and other countries have continued to fill the coffers in Addis Ababa with millions and millions of dollars in development aid.

Ethiopia is perhaps one of the most perverse examples of how a country continues to receive development money year after year, without any improvement in democracy and respect for human rights. But there are other countries that continue to receive development money from Sweden, without any questions asked. In fact, more than a half of the ten most important Swedish ’partner countries’ remain the same, year after year, without any having to justify their conduct. In spite of all the talk about human rights, efficiency and transparency, there are other, much more vague factors that determine the selection of a partner country.

Ethiopia has been one of the major recipients of international aid in recent times. Despite many years of human rights abuse, Sweden and other donors continue pumping aid into Ethiopia. Addis Ababa’s pleasant climate and the fact that we have an entwined history outweigh the murdered demonstrators and detained journalists.

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