Africa too Slow on Biosafety Legislation

Only four sub-Saharan African countries, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sudan and Burkina Faso, have fully functional biosafety legal frameworks despite the fact that other parts of the world have been growing biotech crops for over ten years. Fifteen other Sub-Saharan countries, including Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania, have interim biosafety frameworks. Francis Nang’ayo, biosafety expert at the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), speaking during the tenth session of the Open Forum for Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB 10) held recently in Nairobi, wondered why African states were so reluctant to enact biosafety laws, yet had signed and ratified the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which mandates them to enact national biosafety legislations.

‘There is encouraging progress towards enactment of biosafety laws in Africa’, he noted. Even so, participants at the OFAB 10 were concerned that most states were held hostage by anti-biotech lobby groups who could easily influence them to enact stringent laws that would impede rather than facilitate biotechnology research, development and deployment” OFAB is a monthly networking and biotechnology discussion forum for scientists, regulators, policy makers, media, politicians and the public.

For more information contact Dr. Francis Nang’ayo (email: f.mangayo@cgiar.org), Regulatory Specialist, AATF, or visit: http://www.aatf-africa.org