Agricultural Biotechnology for Africa. African
Scientists and Farmers Must Feed Their Own People
Jesse Machuka
Few would disagree that the many claims and
counterclaims concerning what biotechnology can or
cannot do to solve Africa’s food insecurity problem
have mainly been made by non-Africans. It is no
wonder that Florence Wambugu’s (1999) excellent
article titled “Why Africa needs agricultural biotech”
is now widely cited by those who support the view
that developing countries, particularly in SubSaharan
Africa (SSA), stand to gain the most from modern
biotechnology applications. The article explained in a
nutshell some of the potential benefits Africa stands
to gain by embracing biotechnology. Although opinions differ regarding the role biotechnology can play
in African development, all (hopefully!) must agree
about the urgency to eradicate the perpetual cycle of
hunger, malnutrition, and death in a world of plenty.
It is an acknowledged fact that Africa is endowed
with tremendous natural (including genetic) and human wealth that has yet to be harnessed to the benefit
of its people. Sadly, some of this reservoir of resources have been disintegrating and the trend is
bound to accelerate unless urgent measures are taken
to stop and reverse this drift. Since farming is the
most important source of income and sustenance for
about three quarters of the population of SSA, there
is no doubt that agricultural biotechnology (agbiotech) can make very substantial contributions toward
increasing food production by rural resource-poor
farmers, while preserving declining resources such
as forests, soil, water, and arable land (Bunders and
Broerse, 1991). However, application of modern biotechnology tools is not likely to significantly reduce
the contributions that conventional disciplines such
as soil science, breeding, plant health management,
agronomy, agricultural economics, and social sciences make to enhance crop production.
In villages, constraints to crop production include
pests, diseases, weeds, environmental degradation,
soil nutrient depletion, low fertilizer inputs, inadequate food processing amenities, poor roads to markets, and general lack of information to make sciencebased decisions that underlie farming methodologies
and systems. For some of these constraints, biotechnology is the most promising recourse to alleviate
them. For example, an insect known as Maruca podborer is the major constraint restricting increased
grain legume production in Africa, often causing up
to 100% crop failure during severe attacks on important crops such as cowpea (Fig. 1). Many decades of
conventional breeding efforts have failed to control
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this pest. However, recent research in U.S. universities and at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture based in Ibadan, Nigeria, shows that this
pest can be controlled by applying biotechnology
tools. This is just one of the myriad problems facing
food production systems in Africa for which biotechnology can provide at least some solutions. Although
biotechnology has potential downsides, the major
“concerns” in Africa are not so much about justifying
its role in agricultural production—the “why” question. It is conceivable that the millions of dollars
being wasted each year by antibiotech activists elsewhere could go a long way to help build badly
needed capacity for agbiotech research in Africa! The
key issues revolve around questions of where, when,
how, and who will do biotechnology for Africa’s
benefit? If we are thinking of ultimate answers, then
there is probably only one answer: biotechnology for
Africa should mostly be done in Africa and mostly by
Africans themselves, now. And yes, this is being
realistic, and it can be done, if there is consensus and
goodwill.
Despite many years of agricultural and other “development” aid and promises by different agencies
related to increased food security and poverty eradication, those of us who live in Africa do not have
confidence that things are getting any better. Because
of this history, some are either pessimistic or skeptical, but the majority remain cautious and optimistic,
that modern biotechnology opens new opportunities
to address constraints that have led to declining harvests in farmers’ fields in the midst of an expanding
population. Richard Manning (2000) makes a good
point when he suggests that one way to feed the
increasing world population is to help “third world
scientists to feed their own people, while ensuring
sensitivity to culture and environment that we
missed in the first green revolution” (http://
www.mcknight.org/crop-frontier.htm). For SSA, the
pertinent question is, how does the international
community of public and private institutions and
donors, governments, scientists, and other actors
help African scientists (and farmers!) to feed their
own people? It is crucial that scientific information
reaches farmers in the rural areas who have space to
practice farming and that other actors such as agricultural scientists and extensionists interact with
farmers to attain acceptance and use of new technologies for sustainable food production and development. In this regard, we must have it in mind that life
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Agricultural Biotechnology for Africa
Figure 1. Podborer larvae infest legume pods. Inset, Podborer larva on cowpea callus in bioassay to test efficacy of cowpea
pest resistance characters.
science technologies that offer hope to farmers, such
as agbiotech, belong to the farmer. We must also
ensure that the technology not only reaches farmers
but that they understand it and are empowered to
use it. Furthermore, our starting point is not the
“ignorant peasant” but the practices, techniques, experience, and knowledge of the African farmer built
over the centuries (Duprez and DeLeener, 1988).
A good example of how biotechnology can reach
rural farmers involves a special program by the Biotechnology Development Co-operation of the Netherlands Government, the Kenyan Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, and the small-scale
farming system stakeholders. The program structure
is designed to ensure that biotechnology reaches the
small farmer (end-user) through a bottom-up approach steered by the Kenya Agricultural Biotechnology Platform. The composition of farmers includes
male and female farmers, oxen owners, different age
groups from different subvillages, etc. Projects under
the Kenya Agricultural Biotechnology Platform funding bring together collaborators who include scientists from research institutions such as universities,
national agricultural research centers, and farmers. A
Farming Systems Research Program ensures that
farmers participate in the research as partners with
scientists, extensionists, and other actors and enables
scientists also to utilize indigenous knowledge in
research and development. This prevents “cut and
paste” approaches that may be foreign market-driven
and which tend to provide short-term, quick-fix solutions to unique problems faced by small-scale
farmers in Africa who have developed their own
unique crops, cropping, and farming systems that
cannot be changed without their full and careful
involvement. Since 1992, Farmers Research Groups
and Farmers Extension Groups, established along the
Plant Physiol. Vol. 126, 2001
lines of Farming Systems Research Programs, have
been in existence in the Lake Zone of Tanzania for
purposes of farmer participatory research. This experience shows that such participatory methods increase farmers’ inputs in the decision-making process
as well as in the dissemination of research products
through their involvement in field trials, farmers’
and “on-station” field days, PRA surveys, and
farmer-to-farmer diffusion of information through
Village Extension Workers rather than institutional
extension (Fig. 2). Since Farmers Research Groups
represent different geographic zones and hence different agro-ecological and farming systems, linkage
mechanisms that bring together their experiences
need to be established to allow horizontal and vertical dissemination of technologies as well as collaboration in the SSA region. Obviously, this is not the
only way that research results from the laboratory
reach farmers’ fields, but it illustrates the fact that
applied agbiotech research can similarly be targeted
and tied to meet specific needs of rural farmers, both
in the short- and long-term, in the face of scant resources. With African farmers and scientists working
together to set the research agenda, there is hope that
the research will focus on uniquely African (“orphan”) crops such as millet and sorghum that are
very important in marginal, famine-prone regions
such as the Sahel and Horn of Africa. Root and tuber
crops such as yam, sweet potato, and cassava may
also begin to receive the attention they deserve.
Although Africa lags far behind other regions
when it comes to public information and awareness
of biotechnology issues, excellent work is being done
by organizations such as the Nairobi-based African
Biotechnology Stakeholders Forum and South
African-based AfricaBIO to educate the general public in biotechnology. Opportunities abound for scien-
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17
Machuka
tists in Africa to get involved in these efforts that are
urgently needed if Africans are going to decide for
themselves what biotechnology can do for them
rather than let others decide for them, especially
anti-genetically modified organism activists! There is
also urgency to educate policy makers in African
governments and the private sector concerning the
need to support and invest in biotechnology Research and Development (R&D). At the same time,
the international donor community needs to begin to
trust Africans and allow them to manage their research agenda for themselves. They can take the cue
from very successful initiatives undertaken by the
Rockefeller Foundation in Africa. There are enough
African scientists around to make a difference on
farmers fields if resources are properly channeled for
agricultural R&D. African scientists and science managers in government and other institutions as well as
farmers, on the other hand, need to be efficient and
faithful in the way they manage research programs
and funds if they are going to be trusted with money
by national and international donors. The current
success in tissue culture-aided production and multiplication of disease-free planting materials for cas-
sava, yam, banana, plantain, citrus, and flowers in
countries such as Kenya and Ghana is attracting private sector companies who are seeing the potential to
invest in successful new biotechnologies.
On November 8–11, 2000, the Strategic Alliance for
Biotechnology Research in African Development
(SABRAD) held a workshop in Accra, Ghana, that
brought together more than 150 participants from
southern, East, Central, and West Africa as well as
partners from the U.S. 1890 Land Grant Universities,
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, United
Nations Environment Program, International Agricultural Research Centers, other non-governmental
organizations, private companies, and journalists. International Agricultural Research Centers were represented by the Mexican-based International Maize
and Wheat Improvement Centre and International
Institute of Tropical Agriculture. The theme of this
first SABRAD Workshop was “Enabling Biotechnology for African Agriculture.” Increasing education
and awareness and formulation of regulatory (policy) frameworks that would allow access to modern
biotechnology for R&D were identified as key prior-
Figure 2. The bottom up approach: Farmers and scientists discuss “crazy top” disease (inset) in maize caused by the downy
mildew pathogen Peronosclerospora sorghi in Ogbomoso, southwestern Nigeria.
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Plant Physiol. Vol. 126, 2001
Agricultural Biotechnology for Africa
ities for enabling biotechnology for African development that targets resource-poor rural farmers. The
one thing that was unique at the Accra meeting was
that Africans themselves were at the center of discussions to work out plans for enabling biotechnology to
take root in their respective countries. The action
plans agreed upon will be implemented through networking between regions. The ultimate socioeconomic impact is food self-sufficiency and improved living conditions of resource-poor farmers
who were identified as the target recipients for products generated from biotechnology applications.
We live in a world that has become an increasingly
interdependent “global village” due to advances in
information and transportation technology. In this
global village, millions have plenty of food to throw
away, while millions of others die daily because they
have nothing to eat. It is not always true that those
with surplus food do not care about those who die in
near and far away places! In Africa itself, there are
many that have plenty of food, acquired either genuinely or by stealing public wealth, and who still
watch their hungry neighbors die helplessly. Al-
though Africans are thankful for development and
relief aid, they are uncomfortable about their condition of continuous dependence on handouts that
come in many forms, including food and expatriate
foreign aid, with no permanent solutions apparently
in sight. The SABRAD initiative is one step in the
right direction that deserves support from all those
who want to help African scientists and farmers to
feed their own people.
LITERATURE CITED
Bunders FG, Broerse EW (1991) Appropriate Biotechnology in Small-Scale Agriculture: How to Reorient Research and Development. CAB International, Wallington, Oxon, UK
Duprez H, DeLeener P (1988) Agriculture in African Rural
Communities. Macmillan and Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation. CTA, London
Manning R (2000) Food’s Frontier: The Next Green Revolution. North Point Press, New York
Wambugu F (1999) Why Africa needs agricultural biotech.
Nature 400: 15–16
Jesse Machuka
Biotechnology Research Unit
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture
c/o L.W. Lambourn & Company
Carolyn House
26 Dingwall Road
Croydon CR9 3EE, United Kingdom
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