Latest Resources

27 August 2021
Guidelines for the Harmonisation of Seed Regulatory Frameworks in Africa: Call for African social...
The African Union (AU) has embarked on a mission towards harmonising seed regulatory frameworks across the continent, beginning with the establishment of a set of Guidelines on seed law harmonisation. The African Centre for Biodiversity, along with other civil society organisations and farmers’ associations from Africa, have actively engaged in the development of these Guidelines. […]

1 December 2020
Multiple shocks and the Ebola and COVID pandemics in West and Central Africa: extraction, profite...
Veuillez cliquer ici pour le français. We are pleased to present the first discussion paper in our “Multiple Shocks in Africa Series”. The tragic story of the Ebola pandemic in West Africa, and the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in particular, is not just one of disease emergence. It is fundamentally […]

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 […]

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. […]

1 September 2017
WEMA Project shrouded in secrecy: open letter to African governments to be accountable to farmers...
The Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project promises to develop drought tolerance in maize for the benefit of small holder farmers, but is really a project designed to facilitate the spread of hybrid and genetically modified (GM) maize varieties on the continent. WEMA involves five African countries: Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. […]

28 September 2009
Patents, Climate Change and African Agriculture: Dire Predictions
Uncertainty and apprehension often afford opportunity to the cunning. This is certainly the case with climate change. The multinational seed and agrochemical industry see climate change as a means by which to further penetrate African agricultural markets by rhetorically positioning itself, even if implausibly, as having the solution to widespread climate concerns. Their so-called “final […]

19 June 2009
Revised African Model Law Biosafety Strategy Briefing June 2009
Haidee Swanby of the African Centre for Biosafety attended a meeting hosted by the African Union during May 2009 in Arusha, Tanzania on various biosafety initiatives of importance to the continent. In this briefing paper Haidee discusses the meeting and the issues and challenges lying ahead for the continent. Read here.