GM crops: A continent divided

When Jocelyn Webster was asked bya South African reporter for heropinion on “genetically modified

orgasms”, she was exasperated but not sur-prised. For Webster, who heads the pro-biotech campaigning group AfricaBio, thisquestion was just one more symptom of theendemic misunderstanding about trans-genic technologies in Africa.

Africa is emerging as one of the front linesin the battle for acceptance of geneticallymodified (GM) foods. Webster believes thattransgenic agriculture is vital in the fightagainst world hunger, and AfricaBio, alongwith agribiotech companies and other pro-biotech campaigners, is now fighting toothand nail, often by somewhat controversialmethods, to spread the word about GMcrops.But the anti-GM lobby is equally pow-erful and vociferous, and vast amounts ofmoney are flowing in to Africa in support ofboth sides of the argument, as the various

parties try to influence policy-makers andthe public.

For AfricaBio,a coalition of scientists andcompanies based in South Africa, the idea isto improve GM’s image — perhaps withgood reason. Today, some 200million people in sub-SaharanAfrica don’t know where theirnext meal will come from, andthe problem will not be goingaway. Despite international aidto feed the hungry, Africa willstill have 183 million under-nourished citizens by 2030,according to a report published by the UNMillennium Hunger Task Force this year.AfricaBio is one group among many thatbelieves transgenic crops, modified so thatthey will grow in salty soils or conditions ofdrought,offer a solution to starvation.

But the group’s methods would be con-sidered in some countries to be blatant

media manipulation. Webster talks abouttraining journalists how to report GM stor-ies, telling them that the term ‘geneticallyimproved’ is more accurate than ‘geneticallymodified’. In early 2003 she hosted a press

briefing where the journalistswere fed GM fritters withoutknowing it. The idea, Webstersays matter-of-factly, was todemonstrate that GM foodtastes just the same as conven-tional fare, and does no harm.She claims that the journalistswere amused and there were no

angry headlines in the next day’s papers.Although Webster stresses the role of GM

crops in improving nutrition in Africa, thereare wider issues at stake for companies suchas the US-based agribiotech giant Monsanto,which is one of the funding sources ofAfricaBio. If GM crops can be sold as the wayto feed the starving, there could be a subtle

news feature

224 NATURE | VOL 426 | 20 NOVEMBER 2003 | www.nature.com/nature

A continent dividedAfrican activists, backed by wealthy supporters in the United States andEurope, are locked in combat over the merits of transgenic crops. EhsanMasood tracks the people, the politics and the cash behind the campaigns.

Appealing to the people: Africa’s food shortages have put it at the heart of a political tug-of-war over genetically modified crops.

“We resent the waythat the stereotypedimage of the hungry hasbeen used to force astyle of agriculture thatwill only exacerbateproblems.” Tewolde

B.P

RE

SS/P

AN

OS

PIC

TU

RE

S

20.11 News Feat Africa MH 17/11/03 5:43 pm Page 224

© 2003 NaturePublishing Group

shift in the political landscape worldwide,making GM food more acceptable to con-sumers in Europe and elsewhere.

On the other side of the fence, opponentsof GM crops are just as determined to keepthem out of Africa. Over the past few years,international non-governmental organiza-tions (NGOs) involved in development,suchas Oxfam, Christian Aid and Action Aid,have joined their environmentalist cousinsfrom Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth inlobbying against GM in both Europe andAfrica. Their extensive network of inter-national media contacts has helped them togenerate publicity for their views in a rela-tively short time.

Battle linesThe two sides are squaring up to each otherat a crucial time for Africa. South Africa isthe only country on the continent that iscurrently growing GM crops commercially.Egypt, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Uganda aredoing GM research. But elsewhere, GM isstill very much an emerging issue. Onlythree countries so far — Egypt, South Africaand Zimbabwe — have introduced regula-tions to govern transgenic agriculture.

The local policy-makers who will ulti-mately decide on the future of GM in Africaare being pushed and pulled in both direc-tions, and are being showered with moneyfrom the developed world, some in the formof grants for ‘biosafety research’ — moneyfor regulatory infrastructure and testing ofwhether GM affects the environment orhuman health.

At last year’s Earth Summit in SouthAfrica, the US government pledged $100million over ten years to support agriculturalbiotechnology in the developing world.In May, the US Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID) announced a grantof $15 million to support biosafety policy-making and research in Asia and in East and West Africa.At the beginning of Octoberthis year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Founda-tion — the charity established by Microsoftfounder Bill Gates — pledged $4 million forGM technologies, as part of a $25-millionproject to combat malnutrition. And laterthe same month, Germany approved a grantof €2 million (US$2.3 million) to helpAfrican countries strengthen biosafety laws.

The USAID and German grants are particularly significant when viewed in thecontext of a looming trade dispute betweenthe United States and the European Union(EU) over the latter’s failure to approve new GM products for sale and growth (seeNature 425, 655; 2003). Against this background, both powers are trying hard toinfluence African interpretations of a newinternational treaty on GM trade — the Cartagena biosafety protocol, whichcame into effect on 11 September 2003. Theprotocol governs trade in ‘living modified

organisms’ — from seeds to fish — intendedfor direct release into the environment.A country can use it to block GM imports ifit thinks a crop will damage the environ-ment, human health or the trade in locallyproduced goods.

Vested interestsThe United States and its private-sectorallies would like the laws in African coun-tries to reflect their own views — that GMtechnology is inherently safe unless provenotherwise, and that countries should not beallowed to refuse GM imports just becausethey don’t particularly want to eat GMfood. There are strong reasons to think thatthe USAID grant will be used to supportthis position. In April, the agency’s head,Andrew Natsios, told the US Congress: “Thegreat bulk of African agricultural ministers,presidents and prime ministers I have spo-ken with are all interested in bringing thistechnology into their agricultural systems.”Natsios accused “Europeans” of spreading

NATURE | VOL 426 | 20 NOVEMBER 2003 | www.nature.com/nature 225

misinformation, which did “enormousdamage to poor people in Africa”.

European governments and aid groupssee things differently. The EU, unlike theUnited States, insists that all GM produce islabelled and traceable back to its source.Measures that would add those require-ments, and even stricter regulations, to theCartagena protocol were endorsed by theAfrican Union’s heads of state at a meeting inMozambique this August.The German grantwill help member states to draw up similarregulations that would allow them to blockimports of all GM produce without needingto cite specific reasons, and possibly to claimdamages if a GM product harms humanhealth or the environment.

The brains behind this African law, andthe man who is courting European fundingfor the project, is Tewolde Berhan GebreEgziabher,head of Ethiopia’s EnvironmentalProtection Authority.Tewolde is soft-spokenand understated; it is hard to believe that hisinfluence extends across Africa and beyond.He has powerful European supporters inenvironment ministries and NGOs, includ-ing former British environment ministerMichael Meacher, who since his departurefrom government has emerged as a figure-head for the anti-GM movement. Meacherhosted Tewolde at the House of Commons inLondon last month to address members ofparliament on the African position regard-ing Cartagena.

Natural responseWhen Nature caught up with Tewolde at hisLondon base, the offices of the environ-mental organization the Gaia Foundation,he argued that he isn’t entirely anti-GM,nor does he want to stand in the way of thetechnology feeding the poor. “We simply do not want to grow GM crops without due consideration given to human health,domestic animals and the environment,” hesaid over a plate of non-GM rice, bread andlentils. “We suspect that Africa is high onthe agenda for the United States’ next pushfor GM acceptance. And we resent the waythat the stereotyped image of the hungry indeveloping countries has been used to forcea style of agriculture that will only exacer-bate problems of hunger and poverty.”

Until the late 1990s, those views domi-nated nascent African public opinion ontransgenic agriculture. EnvironmentalNGOs drip-fed messages questioning thesafety of GM technology, its relevance to theneeds of ordinary Africans, and the inten-tions of the multinational corporations whopromote it. Their argument was, and is,simple: Africa does not need to waste itsscarce resources on a technology whose principal products to date are herbicide-tolerant cotton and longer-lasting tomatoes.The anti-GM campaign reached a high point in 2000, when European and African

news feature

Opposite sides: Florence Wambugu (below) is afirm supporter of GM technology, whereasTewolde (above) remains sceptical of its benefits.

SOLO

MO

N H

/MA

RIA

M



governments, led in part byTewolde, formed an alliance todefeat the United States and othergrain-exporting countries at theUnited Nations and forcedthrough the Cartagena protocol.

Stung by this defeat, pro-GMcampaigners realized that, if theywanted to wield equal influence inAfrica, they would need to take aleaf out of the green activists’handbook and bring on board successful public-relation strate-gies. The biotech lobby has sincesought out charismatic Africanscientists, farmers and policy-makers who believe in the power ofGM, and has built up their publicprofiles at home and abroad.

A prime example is Kenyan plant scientistand farmer’s daughter Florence Wambugu,who in 2001 formed A Harvest Biotech Foun-dation to spread the message that Africawants GM crops. She has strong connectionsto Monsanto, having done her postdoctoralresearch at its labs in St Louis,Missouri.

A boost for biotechWambugu, a passionate and assertive cam-paigner, wrote to a committee of the USHouse of Representatives about GM andpoverty earlier this year. She argued that theEuropean anti-GM lobby’s primary accom-plishment was to “keep safe and nutritiousfood out of the hands of starving people”.Those are strong words, but her choicestremarks are directed at Tewolde. “This is avery exciting time for biotechnology inAfrica, but Tewolde’s agenda is to preventAfrica’s participation in this. My agenda isto promote it,” she says.

AfricaBio is singing from the same hymnsheet. When this article was beingresearched, Webster was visiting Germanyand Britain, where Tewolde’s influence isstrong, trying to counteract the “nonsense”,as she puts it, that he and his allies promote.Webster was accompanied by ThembitsheJoseph Buthelezi, a cotton farmer and chairof a federation of small farmers’ associationsin South Africa’s eastern Kwazulu-Natalprovince. Over a breakfast meeting in Lon-don organized by Monsanto, the SouthAfrican pair enthused about the power ofGM to reduce poverty.

Buthelezi argues that planting Bt cotton— a GM variety that produces its own insec-ticidal toxin — has transformed his life. Hesays that, in common with 90% of theregion’s cotton farmers, he is seeing betteryields, a better quality of cotton, and isspending less on the chemicals and labourneeded to spray insecticides. One of theslides that he uses in his presentations to governments and corporations proudly says: “Normally, I used to ask my wife how we intend to pay our bills. Now I ask her,

how are we going to spend this money?”Taking such feel-good stories to con-

sumers and the media in Africa and abroad isan important plank in AfricaBio’s strategy.To that end,it is helping to train staff workingin South Africa’s supermarkets — includingthe UK-based Tesco chain — to handle ques-tions about GM foods from shoppers. Theorganization is also working with women’sgroups in poor townships,and is advising thegovernment of Lesotho — a tiny indepen-dent country landlocked within South Africa— with its planned biosafetylegislation.

Perhaps surprisingly, con-sidering AfricaBio’s stance, notall of its funding comes fromsources with a strong pro-GMagenda. One of its biggestdonors is the Rockefeller Foun-dation — the wealthy US-basedphilanthropic organization set up by John D.Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil. TheRockefeller Foundation has positioned itselfas a bridge between opposing sides, andseems to have the trust of all the key players.It funds AfricaBio and Florence Wambugu’sA Harvest. But it also gives grants to NGOswith a cautionary stance on GM, includingthe Winnipeg-based ETC Group in Canadaand the London-based Consumers Inter-national, a federation of consumer groupsand agencies worldwide.

Balancing actGary Toenniessen, the Rockefeller Founda-tion’s head of food security, says it supportsboth sides in the GM debate to ensure thatthe public has access to a spectrum of infor-mation, both for and against. The hope isalso to promote dialogue between oppo-nents and help them to see an issue fromanother perspective. “Often they find theyhave more in common than is evident fromtheir public statements,” he says.

Toenniessen does not think that GMtechnology by itself is the answer to hungerin Africa — it is,at best,one component in anoverall strategy to achieve a secure, sustain-

able food supply. This is evident in the foundation’s portfolio offood-security research: it investsabout $3 million annually ingenetic modification, and up to $7 million in supporting conven-tional plant breeding.

The Rockefeller Foundation’sapproach is in tune with the think-ing of an international task forceassembled by United Nations Sec-retary-General Kofi Annan in 2000to find ways of halving globalhunger before 2015. The Millen-nium Hunger Task Force, overseenby Jeffrey Sachs, director of theEarth Institute at Columbia Uni-versity in New York, published its

first report this April. The task force agreesthat biotechnology has opened up newopportunities that could help feed Africa’sstarving, including projects involvingdrought-tolerant maize and disease-tolerantcooking bananas. But it points out that GMwon’t remove many of the present barriers tofeeding the poor.

Between 1980 and 1995, sub-SaharanAfrica was the only region in the developingworld that showed a decrease in crop pro-duction.Yields increased by 27% in Asia and

12% in Latin America, but fellby 8% in Africa. The task forceconcludes that this is principal-ly because of poor-quality soils,inadequate irrigation, fertiliz-ers that are sold in remote areasat inflated prices, pot-holedroads that delay the sale of freshproduce, and little access to the

credit that would help farmers manage theirbusinesses better. Unless these conditions are improved, the task force concludes, theGM revolution won’t be able to live up to its promise.

Pro-GM campaigners have a hard timedisputing these findings. Wambugu herselfwas a member of the task force and doesn’tdisagree with the facts — although sheobserves that the emphasis on improvingAfrica’s soils may have something to do withthe fact that the task force was co-chaired by asoil scientist. Webster also agrees that GMalone is not a panacea. But if anti-GM cam-paigners succeed in the battle now going on inAfrica,she claims,they will stock up problemsfor the future.“You can say ‘no’to the technol-ogy now,” she argues. “But when you’ll reallyneed it, the technology won’t be ready.”

It is difficult to predict where Africa’s GMdebate will go from here. Almost certainly itwill involve a legal minefield of internationaltreaties and arguments about the economicsof trade. But you can count on Wambugu,Webster and Tewolde remaining at the heartof the battle to win the hearts and minds ofAfrica’s people. ■

Ehsan Masood is a freelance writer based in London.

news feature

226 NATURE | VOL 426 | 20 NOVEMBER 2003 | www.nature.com/nature

End of the line: could GM crops stop the queues for food in Africa?

“Biotech has openedup new opportunitiesthat could help feedAfrica’s starving — butGM won’t remove manyof the present barriersto feeding the poor”

M.O

STE

RG

AA

RD

/PA

NO

S P

ICT

UR

ES



Documents

GM crops: A continent divided