From The Standard, Kenya
A series of genome editing-related research work in Africa has triggered the need for the continent to develop a dedicated policy for new and precision breeding techniques.
According to experts who are already doing gene editing research, National Biosafety Authorities in the continent need to develop regulations on …
Something akin to Asia’s rural development may, at last, be happening in parts of Africa. Since 2002 the proportion of African workers employed in agriculture has fallen from 66% to 57%. Yet the real value of agricultural production has grown at an average pace of 4.6% a year, double the …
The Director of the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI), Prof. Eric Danquah, has underscored the need to improve on agriculture sector in sub-saharan Africa to enable it attain food security.
According to him, current forecasts identified sub-Saharan Africa as the only region in the world where hunger and malnutrition …
Kenya and much of Africa have been denied the tools of modern crop technology available in more industrialized countries mostly because of political opposition, often linked to European activists. GMOs developed or in the pipeline to contain diseases like armyworm and climate change related challenges such as drought and flooding, but …
Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA) has drafted a law governing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Rwanda which will soon be forwarded to the Rwanda Law Reform Commission for review.
The draft bill was prepared along with the National Biosafety Framework, biosafety policy and regulations according to officials.
The objective of the legislation …
A former Director of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Professor Hans Adu-Daapah, has called for the immediate passage of the Plant Breeders Bill by Parliament to address food and nutrition insecurity in the country. The Plant Breeders Bill, which was put before Parliament in 2013, went through the …
THE Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) says African countries need to develop harmonised regional agricultural policies that promote investment in key resilient infrastructure to boost regional trade in agro-products.
The policies should also aim to mitigate climatic challenges.
COMESA climate change advisor Mclay Kanyangarara said strengthened regional integration measures …
Researchers from Wageningen University in the Netherlands have concluded that over 5,500 Ugandans could have died because of food shortages arising from delays to enact the Biosafety and Biotechnology law. The study, published July 31 in PLOS One journal, used modelling to calculate how delays in the introduction of three …
Agriculture experts from West Africa attending a conference on the West Africa Seed Programme (WASP) have lauded the government’s Planting for Food and Jobs agriculture policy, describing it as revolutionary enough to boost productivity in the sector.
They have, however, observed that quality seeds would be crucial to the success of …
One of the findings from the entre of Excellence in Food Security’s (CoE) Agro-food value chain, regulation, and formal and informal livelihoods project, coordinated by Dr Shane Godfrey and Dr Gareth Haysom from the University of Cape Town, is that, despite much of the power in the South African food …