Launched by the G8 two years ago, the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NASAN) aims to improve food security in 10 African countries through attracting private investors into agriculture. However, in Burkina Faso, implementation of the New Alliance risks harming rather than helping family farming and food security. Burkina Faso is deregulating its farming sector, to attract big agribusiness investors, and enacting political reforms (including tax reform and land access reform) that will exclude smallholder farmers from investment opportunities and endanger food security.

In this paper, Oxfam again denounces the unacceptable risks surrounding the G8 New Alliance initiative. The New Alliance in Burkina Faso is paving the way for growing agribusiness investments and smallholder farmer marginalization. The set-up of the New Alliance in Burkina Faso needs to be reviewed, based on food security and nutrition objectives. Civil society organisations and those affected by the initiative should be consulted throughout the process; and risks to smallholder agriculture need to be urgently mitigated. Urgent reforms are needed to strengthen existing accountability and measurement mechanisms and to ensure that smallholder farmers, particularly women, are seen as the priority investors in agriculture.