Latest Resources
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 […]
5 March 2020
GM Potato Push in East Africa
Andean and African farmers condemn digital sequence information of potatoes from centres of origin – opens doors for biopiracy (Passer à la version française) (Por favor, haga clic aquí para el español) Cusco, Peru; Johannesburg, South Africa and Kigali, Rwanda – 05 March, 2020 Billionaire potato overlords on both sides of the North Atlantic want […]
3 February 2020
The GM potato push in Rwanda: With regulatory hurdles in Uganda, is this the industry’s fall back?
Sauter au français To enable the introduction of the first GM crop to be grown in Rwanda – a GM potato variety named ‘Victoria’ – the Rwandan government is fast-tracking the development of a biosafety policy and legal framework. Civil society is deeply concerned about the potential risks of this GM potato variety, which has […]
26 April 2019
Undermining farmers’ rights and seed systems: Why the EAC seed and plant varieties bill must be d...
In this vlog, African Centre for Biodiversity’s (ACB’s) Sabrina Masinjila, based in Tanzania, speaks about the East African Community Seed and Plant Varieties Bill, 2018 and some of the concerns related to the Bill, as more fully set out in a detailed report and summary. As described in the vlog and our detailed report, Concerns […]
4 June 2018
The debate on GMOs in Africa rages on, this time in Tanzania
A heated public debate on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) ensued during a seminar organised by MVIWATA – a network of smallholder farmers – in Morogoro, Tanzania. The meeting took place on 12 May 2018 and was attended by more than a hundred people, including parliamentarians and high-level government officials. The event, which was intended only […]
23 February 2018
Face to Face: African CSOs confront ARIPO, SADC over Draconian Harmonised Seed Laws
The ACB has the pleasure of sharing with you a short 5-minute video of the Southern African seed law and seed sovereignty dialogue, Face to Face: African CSOs confront ARIPO, SADC over Draconian Harmonised Seed Laws, co-hosted by the ACB in partnership with PELUM-Zimbabwe, which took place in Harare, Zimbabwe, 28-30th June 2017. Please watch […]
15 January 2018
Status report on the SADC, COMESA and EAC harmonised seed trade regulations: Where does this leav...
The Status Report on the SADC, COMESA and EAC harmonised seed trade regulations: Where does this leave the regions’ smallholder farmers? researched and written by Linzi Lewis and Sabrina Masinjila of the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), provides a brief background and status update on efforts by regional economic communities to harmonise seed trade and […]
15 December 2017
Harmonised corporate seed laws in Africa: Where does this leave smallholder farmers?
The expansion of the corporate seed market, embedded in the green revolution agenda in sub-Saharan Africa is progressing very fast. This expansion is going hand in hand with regional policies and regulations – in a process also known as seed harmonisation – that will enable facilitate trade across national borders. This has been the case […]
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 […]