Biotech critics undermining Africa's pressing needs

by Calestous Juma*

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan always said he would become a farmer after leaving office. But one of his first acts as chairman of the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has been to respond to whether the alliance would promote the use of genetically-modified (GM) seed in African agriculture. (Annan said AGRA would not use GM seeds.)

One of the most critical aspects of innovation policy is balancing between the expected benefits or new technologies and their unintended negative consequences. Nowhere is this so vividly expressed as in the debate over agricultural biotechnology. Arguments against the use of biotechnology in African agriculture have been conducted with unprecedented ferocity. While critics of agricultural biotechnology claim to act on behalf of Africa's interests, they are undermining the continent's capacity to acquire the technology needed to meet its agricultural and economic needs.

There are genuine concerns about the safety of the products that need to be addressed. Indeed, most of them have been addressed. But the chorus that products must be proven safe before they are introduced in the market is hardly used in the European countries that perpetrated the campaign. Using such a high standard of prescience not only defies logic (since one cannot prove a negative), but smacks of outright political arrogance.

Safety continues to be on the starting point when debating the use of biotechnology in Africa. But the capacity needed to ensure safety is often derived from efforts to develop the technology itself. Just like the capacity to manage the safety of swimming pools presupposes the existence of these facilities. It would be futile to go around introducing such safety laws in places with no swimming pools in the first place.

Advances in the safe use of biotechnology in South Africa, for example, show that safety measures co-evolve with the development of the technology. Safety without technology is empty; technology without safety folly.

Emptiness abounds in much of Africa's biotechnology discussions today. Africa's challenges are so grave that finding lasting solutions will require more creative use of existing technologies; not less as critics tend to argue. Areas with poor rainfall require more intensive land husbandry; not a fatalistic appeal to the vagaries of nature.

Africa must learn to stand its own ground and its leaders must show greater courage when matters crucial for the survival of their people are at stage. Caving in to external pressures is a poor substitute for taking charge of one's future.

It is not too late to reclaim the ground lost to groups that have no moral standing to determine Africa's destiny. Africa needs Kofi Annan's support now.

*Prof. Juma teaches at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

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