Latest Resources

8 March 2019

Urgent call for African food sovereignty movements to connect with radical feminist movements on ...

This article was first published on the Inter Press Service Agency, on March 8, as part of its coverage of International Women’s Day. Africa is facing dire times. Climate change is having major impacts on the region and on agriculture in particular, with smallholder farmers, and especially women, facing drought, general lack of water, shifting […]

4 March 2019

Failure of Monsanto’s drought tolerant maize pushed on Africa – confirmed in US

The ACB shares with you a blog written by ACB’s Sabrina Masinjila and Anne Maina from Biodiversity and Biosafety Association (BIBA), Kenya A recent United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) report confirms what independent biosafety scientists, and African civil society, have been stating all along: Monsanto’s drought tolerant (DT) maize (MON87460) does not work! The […]

12 November 2018

Good Food and Seed Festival, Harare, Zimbabwe

By Edmore Parichi and Busi Mgangxela From the 18-20 October 2018, the Good Food and Seed Festival was held at the Harare Botanical Gardens in Zimbabwe. Edmore Parichi, Busi Mgangxela and Aviwe Biko are small-scale farmers from Eastern Cape in South Africa who took part in this very important event with support from African Centre […]

1 November 2018

Demystifying GM maize through collective action on World Food Day

In an effort to highlight the complex and concentrated South African agricultural and food system, with its unsustainable and deepening inequality, the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) and partner organisations initiated a “no GMO-maize campaign” earlier in 2018. This was followed up in August 2018, with a meeting of organisations that included Zingisa, Ntinga Ntaba […]

18 June 2018

Agroecology points the way towards resilience against climate change

This week the water-stressed city of Cape Town hosts the bi-annual Adaptation Futures conference, where scientists, business leaders, and practitioners from the world of development and agriculture will come together to engage in ‘dialogues for solutions’ to the multifarious problems wrought by our rapidly changing climate. As actors with different perspectives design modes of collaboration, […]

12 March 2018

Insights into our food system: Why did catering indigenous local food at the National Seed Dialog...

On December 2017, the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) hosted a National Seed Dialogue and Celebration at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg. The event brought together farmers and civil society organisations from eight provinces, as well as from across the region, to celebrate the work that small-scale farmers do as custodians of seeds, and to share […]

22 January 2018

Art, Seed Sovereignty and Activism: Weaving New Stories

Preparing for the National Seed Dialogue and Celebration, hosted by the African Centre for Biodiversity, smallholder farmers, activists and government officials are crowded into the atrium of the Women’s Jail at Constitution Hill and a drum is beating. A performer, Simo Mpapa Majola, dressed in blankets, is praying and singing and imploring the audience. He […]

13 November 2017

Smallholder farmers score victory at international ‘Seed Treaty’ meeting

A landmark decision on the establishment of an Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group to realise farmers’ rights was recently taken by the seventh session of the Governing Body (GB7) of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA; also known as the ‘Seed Treaty’). There was stiff opposition from countries from […]

27 September 2017

Seed sovereignty for Peasant Farmers in Malawi blocked by emerging national seed policy

The government of Malawi is poised to adopt a draconian National Seed Policy that blocks peasant farmers’ opportunities to secure and strengthen farmer-managed seed systems (FMSS), and which would undermine farmers’ rights and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, to which Malawi is a Party. An ad hoc stakeholder policy […]

25 August 2017

Seed capture in South Africa: A threat to seed freedom but the seed movement is fighting back

Simangele Siko, a member of the central committee at Izindaba Zokudla, in her thanks to ACB after the workshop said, “The farmers have got power, immense power, but you have just unearthed the power!” Who can claim to own a seed? In these kernels lie the genetic wisdom of millions of years, co-created within specific […]