Zambian government rejects fresh calls to accept GM crops, technology

The Zambian government has rejected a call by a group of scientific and agricultural organisations to use genetically-modified (GM) crops to reduce poverty and hunger.

The group -- consisting of AfricaBio, the Africa Biotechnology Stakeholders Forum, Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International, Biotechnology-Ecology Research and Outreach Consortium (BioEROC) and the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Application (ISAAA) -- released a joint press statement endorsing the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which was published in the Times of Zambia on 30 July.

Responding to the statement, Zambian minister of agriculture and cooperatives, Ben Kapita, said, "We have always said that Zambia will not be used as a dumping place for GMO products."

In April the Zambian parliament adopted a biosafety bill aimed at preventing the entry of GMOs in to the country.

But Wisdom Changadeya, executive director of BioEROC in Malawi said in a press release that nobody could deny Africa its right to a technology that would help its farmers solve some of its most serious and urgent problems.

Margaret Karembu, a researcher at the Kenya-based AfriCenter, run by the ISAAA, warned that African agricultural productivity could drop while the rest of the world embraced new tools such as GM technology. She said that African farmers should not be restricted to traditional methods of agriculture.

The same group of five organisations also welcomed a clarification from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) about its stance on GM technology.

Last month, many media outlets reported that AGRA and its president the former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, had rejected the use of GMOs completely. The reports came after a speech by Annan in Nairobi in July in which he said that whatever the future potential of GM crops might be, conventional breeding represented an important path to food security. AGRA has since clarified their position on GM technology, stating that although they are not currently funding research into GMOs, they support the use of science and technology, including GM, to aid African smallholder farmers.

Norah Olembo, chief executive officer of Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International in Nairobi, Kenya, welcomed AGRA's clarification that GM technology has an important role to play in fighting poverty, hunger and malnutrition.

allafrica.com