This has really created a race to the bottom, when countries are competing with each other to lower labor and environmental standards, to change regulations around seed laws for instance - where saving or sharing seeds can become a criminal activity resulting in fines or imprisonment - opening African markets to Western agrichemical corporations. This is what these rankings are all about, based on this flawed logic that only private investment will lead to agricultural development.

The Oakland Institute's Anuradha Mittal explains how the World Bank's coercive ranking systems harm farmers and democracies in the Global South by pushing governments to lower environmental and labor standards for the benefit of largescale commodity agriculture, and why a high level corruption case and resistance from farmers and civil society could overturn the entire project.

The Oakland Institute released the brief A Death Knell for the EBA? on their website.