Latest Resources
11 September 2020
DRC’s seed laws set to destroy small farmers’ seed systems
(Veuillez cliquer ici pour le français) This briefing, in collaboration with the Common Front for the Protection of the Environment and Protected Spaces of the DRC (FCPEEP), is concerned with how the Seed Bill of the Democratic Republic of Congo may impact on farmer managed seed systems (FMSS), which remain the very basis for seed, […]
5 June 2020
Citizens of the world oppose intellectual property over seed, reclaim and restore local food syst...
Passer à la version française Haga clic aquí para la versión en español — Press release — Johannesburg, 5 June 2020 On 26 April, 2020, civil society organisations from across the world collectively called for a celebration of International Seed Day and not World Intellectual Property Day. Organisations numbering 348, from 46 countries, united to […]
29 May 2020
Profiteering from health and ecological crisis in Africa: The Target Malaria project and new risk...
Cliquez ici pour le français The ACB shares this research paper with you, of the wave of ‘Trojan horse’ second-generation genetic engineering strategies targeted at, inter alia, malaria in Africa, at a time when the COVID-19 crisis is fracturing the myth that global health expertise is the domain of North America and Europe. Global health […]
28 May 2020
GM Fungi to kill Mosquitoes: Illegal experiments in Burkina Faso?
(Cliquez ici pour le français) Conducted silently and out of the public eye, a three-year experiment involving a new and potentially unsafe and risky genetically modified (GM) fungus to kill mosquitoes was performed in the village of Soumousso in Burkina Faso in 2019. When the study was published in a US scientific journal in May […]
18 October 2019
Prudence versus Pressure at the Seed Treaty
Will the critical need to address digital sequence information break the Seed Treaty’s effort to fix its benefit-sharing system? It probably should. (Veuillez cliquer ici pour le français) (Por favor, haga clic aquí para el español) In November 2019, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (“Seed Treaty”) will meet in […]
8 October 2019
Crunch Time for the Seed Treaty
A review of some outstanding issues in the negotiation Will the effort to fix ITPGRFA’s broken benefit sharing system measure up to expectations? (Veuillez cliquer ici pour le français) (Por favor, haga clic aquí para el español) This paper reviews the key outstanding issues that are expected to be discussed by the ITPGRFA Governing Body, […]
26 July 2019
Gene Drive Organisms in Africa: Civil Society Speaks Out
On Monday 1st July 2019, Target Malaria announced the release of 6400 genetically modified (GM) sterile male mosquitoes in Bana, a village in Burkina Faso – the first GM insects to be released in Africa. This is Phase I – by Phase III, Target Malaria aims to release gene drive mosquitoes. Gene drives are based […]
2 July 2019
Civil Society Denounces the Release of GM mosquitoes in Burkina Faso
We, the undersigned civil society organisations from Africa and around the world, denounce the release of genetically modified (GM) “male-sterile” mosquitoes in Burkina Faso. The GM mosquitoes were released in the village of Bana on 1 July 2019 by the Target Malaria research consortium.[i] The open release is intended to test the infrastructure and systems […]
15 May 2019
Input Subsidies in Mozambique: the future of peasant farmers and their seed systems
In this report, the African Centre for Biodiversity outlines and assesses input subsidy programmes in Mozambique, as part of the larger agriculture policy landscape, and the impact this has had on the agricultural sector, particularly on smallholder farmers. In Mozambique, peasant farmers feed the country mostly using their own seed. Yet the majority of (donor-funded) […]
13 May 2019
Gene drive organisms: What Africa should know about actors, motives and threats to biodiversity a...
The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) has produced a briefing paper in regard to a new and controversial genetic engineering (GE) technology to produce gene drive organisms (GDOs). These GDOs have been specifically designed to spread an engineered, ‘modified’ genetic trait such as sterility, with the potential to eradicate entire wildlife populations and even species. […]