The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spends most of its grants for agriculture to fight hunger in Africa by giving money to organisations in rich countries, according to a new report published by GRAIN on Tuesday. The non-profit group analysed the foundation’s food and agriculture grants since 2003 and found that half the $3billion awarded over the past decade went to global agriculture research networks and organisations. The single biggest recipient of this grouping is the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a consortium of 15 international agricultural research centres, which have received over $720 million from Gates since 2003. The grouping also includes international organisations, such as the World Bank and UN agencies, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF). The report states that the second half of agricultural grants ($1.5 billion) went to hundreds of different research, development and policy organisations across the world, with 80% of the grants being given to organisations in the US and Europe and only 10% to groups in Africa. The north-south divide is most shocking when it comes to the funds granted to non-governmental organisations; of the $669 million that the Gates Foundation has granted to NGOs for agricultural work, over 75% went to organisations based in the US while Africa-based groups received just a meagre 4%. GRAIN criticised the lack of support “for programmes of research or technology development carried out by farmers or based on farmers’ knowledge, despite the multitude of such initiatives that exist across the continent.” The report says the “foundation has consistently chosen to put its money into top down structures of knowledge generation and flow, where farmers are mere recipients of the technologies developed in labs and sold to them by companies.” The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has rejected the accusations, “the central assumption is that only organisations located in Africa can benefit African farmers - and we think that is incorrect”, they told Reuters in a statement.