WEMA 2009 Social Audit Report

WEMA 2009 Social Audit Report Ethical, Social, Cultural and Commercialization Audit Report for the Water Efficient Maize for Africa Project, 2009 Ethical, Social, Cultural and Commercialization Program McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health University Health Network and University of Toronto Toronto, Canada February 8, 2010 INTRODUCTION Drought is one of the greatest constraints for African agriculture, severely affecting maize crop, the continent’s most important food staple, and a major source of income for rural communities. The Water Efficient Maize for Africa Project (WEMA) is a public-private partnership (PPP) led by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), and includes the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, Monsanto (a private agricultural company), and the national agricultural research systems (NARS) in Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. The project seeks to introduce drought tolerant maize to these five countries and make it available, royalty free, to small-scale farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. 2The Ethical, Social, Cultural, and Commercialization (ESC ) Program of the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health (MRC), University Health Network and University of Toronto, conducted an independent social audit of the WEMA project in 2009. A social audit can be defined as a process whereby an audit team collects, analyses, and interprets descriptive, quantitative and ...