We invite you to explore our crisp user-friendly site and take this opportunity to recap some highlights of the year so far.
ACB website
Warm spring greetings from the ACB!

Being based in the South, we are synchronising with the onset of spring to share our fresh new website and introduce our beautiful new logo, hand-painted by Mzwandile Buthelezi, who also invigorated our organisation’s palette and look. We invite you to explore our crisp user-friendly site and take this opportunity to recap some highlights of the year so far.

ACB comments on SA Regulations of Plant Improvement Act & Plant Breeders’ Rights Act
30 Aug 2022
The South African government has taken important steps in these Regulations to ensure farmer seed systems can operate, allowing for homestead, traditional and small-scale farmers’ practices to continue. However, these exceptions do not constitute legal measures toward descaling industrial agriculture and upscaling agricultural biodiverse, agroecological, regenerative and just agricultural and seed and food systems.
Read more...
 
Playing chess with world’s biodiversity: Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework & Africa
27 Jul 2022
In the lead up to COP-15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Montreal in December, ACB's Sabrina Masinjila, Linzi Lewis and Mariam Mayet reflect on the negotiations on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) to date. The negotiations towards a new global deal on biodiversity comes at a pivotal time, with multiple, converging crises threatening life on the planet. With biodiversity plummeting worldwide, the GBF aims to transform this trajectory, but it builds on previous failed attempts. Will countries rise to the challenges and ensure a liveable future for all? The ACB will be releasing a series of briefings in the lead-up to COP in Montreal in Dec.
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The battle over regulation of new breeding techniques in South Africa
25 Jul 2022
ACB director Mariam Mayet details what transpired since the government determined in October 2021 that the regulatory and risk assessment framework for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) will apply to new breeding techniques (NBTs), which entails many new genetic engineering technologies. This decision echoes a European Court of Justice ruling that since NBTs entail genetic modifications that do not occur naturally, as with GMOs, new breeding tech should be similarly regulated. A Big Ag consortium is challenging the determination, through an appeal launched in November. The ACB debunks their position.
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Zanzibar’s draconian seed law in the offing. Case study of unabated corporate expansion and control of Africa’s seed systems
21 Jul 2022
The ACB critiques Zanzibar’s draft Seed Bill, which will criminalise farmer seed systems while aiding the corporate entry and control of seed and agriculture systems on the Isles and contributing to input market-based problems such as ‘fake seed’. We urge the Zanzibar government to rather support and upscale existing farming initiatives that promote and protect the autonomy of seed and biodiversity and embrace indigenous knowledge systems, cultures and traditions. The briefing is in English and Swahili.
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Will GM cane be the icing on South Africa’s masterplan for sugar?
25 May 2022
The ACB was shocked to discover that the South Africa government has given the go-ahead for trials of a genetically modified (GM) insect-resistant (Bt) and herbicide-tolerant (Ht) sugarcane variety. This renewed interest in GM sugarcane seems to ride the global trend of growing crops for agrofuels, since the Sugar Masterplan indicates that diversification into fuel ethanol could boost the sugar industry. We raise our concerns.
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The financialisation of malaria in Africa: Burkina Faso, rogue capital & GM /gene drive mosquitoes
28 Apr 2022
In our most recent paper on malaria, we explore how solutions have become increasingly financialised, with financial markets, institutions, actors and motives playing a pivotal role in disease response. This not only limits effective intervention but also funnels rogue capital towards patented products and risky experimental research such as genetically modified (GM) and gene drive mosquitoes, as in the case of Burkina Faso. The briefing is in English and French, and includes three fact sheets about malaria.
Read more...
 
Coalition demands a ban of Bt Cowpea in Nigeria and neighbouring countries
8 Mar 2022
In an online press conference in March that the ACB co-hosted with Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMeF), a coalition of African NGOs, farmer groups and research experts called on the Nigerian government to revoke the permits granted for the commercial release of genetically modified (Bt) Cowpea. Nigeria is the first country to commercially release Bt Cowpea, which is an indigenous staple African crop for humans, as well as an essential animal feed. On the panel, Dr Casmir Ifeanyi from the University of Abuja warned of the dangers this tech poses to the environment and human health and Christoph Then discussed his research findings, which raise serious issues in terms of the failings of the assessment process and the underestimated risks of release into the environment.
Read more...
 
Press conference and highlights online

There are several highlight segments in our playlist from the conference, including a clip featuring Lovelyn Ejim, farmer and founder of the Network of Women and Youth in Agriculture. She commented: “Farmers, when they understand the implications of these GM varieties, will refuse to plant them. No to Bt Cowpea.” 

Update post media briefing: HOMef hosts workshop with government

Recently HOMeF hosted a workshop with judicial officials, lawyers and representatives of the Ministry of Justice, to examine issues related to GMOs and biosafety in Nigeria. A key recommendation is that the National Biosafety Management Agency Act urgently needs to be reviewed to close existing gaps and establish measures for strict implementation.

Ghanaian battle over centre-of-origin crop

Other countries are also under pressure to adopt this technology; namely Burkina Faso and Ghana, and the latter is putting up a fight with two related legal battles being waged by Food Sovereignty Ghana (FSG). First, they are trying to stop the entry of BT Cowpea and GM rice into Ghana through a legal suit in the High Court. This is groundbreaking social resistance against the release of a GM indigenous centre-of-origin crop. 

Simultaneously, FSG is challenging the constitutionality of the Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Act 1050, 2020 in the Supreme Court. Their claim points out that UPOV 1991 not only infringes on farmers rights but is also in contradiction of international agreements and treaties that provide for sui generis models affording protection of farmer seed systems and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources and related traditional knowledge. Read more here.

FSG’s Edwin Baffour updated us that the Ghana Judicial service is currently on annual break and FSG awaits to hear of a date later this year for the Supreme court PVP case, as well as a date in the High court, when the defendants’ second of three witnesses is expected to testify. Find out more in this two-part conversation with ACB.

The developments in Nigeria, Ghana and Burkina Faso, as well as other threats facing the continent in terms of the push of second generation technology, despite the failures of the first generation, was on the agenda at a meeting hosted by the ACB in Kenya.

African CSO push-back against GMOs
Independent scientist network in Africa

Following on from online meetings and with support from Professor Marion Mutugi, Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, the ACB hosted another meeting in May in Kenya, which led to the founding of the Network of African Scientists for Biosafety, Biodiversity, and Health (NASBIOH) – Réseau des Scientifiques Africains pour la Sécurité Biologique, la Biodiversité et la Santé (ReSABS) in French. Seipati Mokhosi, an Accelerated Academic Development Programme lecturer in the School of Life Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, who attended the event, was quoted in a university article, as saying: “One of the main issues related to the growing and emerging trends has been the use of genetic editing tools and techniques on the continent, and how responsive corporate science and scientists are to the current issues of Africa.” You can read the article here.

LVC SEAf Youth Training in Zimbabwe

The ACB participated in the La Via Campesina Southern and Eastern Africa (LVC SEAf) Regional Youth Training in Harare, with a focus on the historical conditions that shaped the current agro-food systems/agriculture practices. ACB’s Advocacy and Research Officer Rutendo Zendah spoke to Chengeto Muzira from the Zimbabwe Smallholder Farmer Forum (ZIMSOFF) and Lynne Effie Atieno of the Kenyan Peasants League here.

Africa Group Regional Preparatory meeting for 9th Session of ITPGRFA Governing Body
Africa Group Regional Preparatory meeting for 9th Session of ITPGRFA Governing Body
ACB research and advocacy officer Rutendo Zendah Chirape attended the Africa Group Regional Preparatory meeting for the Ninth Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 30 Aug to 2 Sept. This is part of ongoing support for African governments and farmer organisations on issues particularly focused on Farmer’s Rights and Sustainable Use of genetic resources. The ACB will also attend the GB meeting in India later this month.
Draft White Paper on Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity in South Africa: deadline for comments – 8 Sept!

 

Comments are open until 8 September on a  draft  White Paper that points to the need for a shift to conservation that enables access and beneficiation by communities adjacent to protected areas, as well as for previously disadvantaged individuals. The ACB are preparing comments, which we will put in the public domain. You can have your say here.

Upcoming.....

The ACB is bringing farmers from around the continent together for on-site training and sharing of experiences in October. Participants will meet in Harare, Zimbabwe and then travel to two districts – Chimanimani and Mudzi. This is hosted together with the Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM) Zimbabwe and in collaboration with Towards Sustainable Use of Resources Organisation (TSURO) and Community Technology Development Trust (CTDT). We have also embarked on producing a film about seed in Southern Africa so watch this space for more details...

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