Latest Resources

ACB 2024 Annual Report: Our Year in Review

In 2024, the ACB collaborated with progressive civil society networks to advance an integrated agroecological response to the biodiversity, climate change, and sustainable food systems issues of our time, intensifying our efforts to conceptualise what just and sustainable food systems could look like in the future. We actively participated in several policy processes in South […]

Tracing ACB’s sustained resistance to GM wheat in South Africa

In this web post, we trace the push to introduce genetically modified (GM) wheat into South Africa and Africa, beginning with Monsanto’s 2004 application to import Roundup Ready wheat into SA, through to the current ongoing opposition led by the ACB. After Monsanto’s initial application was rejected, there was a long period before further applications […]

Media campaign highlights urgent need to ban Terbufos, HHPs

In December, the ACB, alongside a coalition of organisations, academics, and unions, submitted a letter of demand to the Minister of Agriculture, Mr John Steenhuisen. This urgent appeal calls for the immediate ban of Terbufos — a highly hazardous pesticide implicated in the tragic deaths of six children in Naledi, Soweto, last year. To amplify […]

One year later and no substantive response to our call for a review of 2,4-D

Minister Steenhuisen, when can we expect the Registrar to respond? Today marks a year since we called for a review of the registration of 2,4-D in South Africa, in a letter to the Registrar: Act No. 36 of 1947, Mr Jonathan Mudzunga. With no substantive response forthcoming, despite substantiation in a further submission, and persistent […]

Arrêt inédit de la Cour de cassation dans l’affaire ACB contre Monsanto/Bayer et l’État

Annulation de l’autorisation commerciale d’un maïs génétiquement modifié tolérant à la sécheresse Cliquez ici pour lire en anglais. Cliquez ici pour lire en espagnol. Johannesburg, le 22 octobre 2024 Après neuf ans de procédure judiciaire ardue menée par le Centre africain pour la biodiversité (ACB), un collège complet composé de cinq juges de la Cour […]

Kenya Seed Savers Network workshop on CBD and GBF

In September, ACB research and advocacy officer Sabrina Masinjila participated in a multi-stakeholder workshop hosted by the Kenya Seed Savers Network. The aim of the meeting, which took place in Gilgil, was to develop a strategy for grassroots organisations to effectively engage in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and actualise the Global Biodiversity Framework […]

World Food Day 2023: Working towards a just food system for all

This World Food Day, marked annually on 16 October, we’re connecting the dots between agriculture, our wider food system and the multidimensional crises we face, which includes climate change. The industrialised food system, from agricultural inputs and production to consumption, transport and storage, feeds climate change, and climate change, in turn, impacts the food system, […]

The Last Seed – A film produced by Rosa Luxemburg

‘The Last Seed,’ a documentary film produced by Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung in association with the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), Biowatch, and Participatory Ecological Land Use, Management (PELUM) Tanzania, features ACB’s ED Mariam Mayet as one of the key voices advocating for seed sovereignty on the African continent. Through the lived experiences of African small-scale […]

Agroecology advocacy meeting held in Suurbraak

In February, together with the Environmental Monitoring Group (EMG) and Trust for Community Outreach and Education (TCOE), the ACB hosted a meeting in Suurbraak, Western Cape, bringing together a network of farmer and civil society organisations to discuss a strategy to approach government to support agroecology. Through the lens of advocacy, and a focus on the challenges facing […]

Manipulate and Mislead: How GMOs Are Infiltrating Africa

The most persistent myth about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is that they are necessary to feed a growing global population. Highly effective marketing campaigns have drilled it into our heads that GMOs will produce more food on less land in an environmentally friendly manner. The mantra has been repeated so often that it is considered […]