Rounding out his multi-state African tour Monday, US President Barack Obama pledged a new era of “partnership” with the continent, promising “an end to famine and a thriving African agricultural industry.” However, critics and food sovereignty advocates—wary of such remarks—want to know who gets to “thrive” and at what cost.

Speaking before a crowd Sunday at the University of Cape Town, President Obama touted a “new alliance of governments and the private sector” and the billions spent on agricultural research that “grows more crops”—words frequently used as doublespeak for Big Agriculture’s genetically modified organism (GMO) technology.

He said:

“A lot of concerns are being raised in Africa around this question of food sovereignty,” Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, told The Real News Network ahead of the speech. “It sounds great when we think about this new alliance for food. You know, increasing yields, increasing productivity all sound fantastic.”

However, she added, “if you look beyond the mask, beyond the title,” what you see is what many are calling a land grab by multinational corporations, or an appropriation of much of the “last remaining arable land on this planet.”

Woods cites a number of issues with these policies including communities and longtime residents being forced off their ancestral lands, the rise in biofuel production and, namely, efforts by “US agribusiness companies to expand their production of genetically modified foods.”

She continues: