By Gift Briton
The success stories of how biotechnology has enabled numerous African farmers to navigate farming challenges, brought about by climate change, pests and diseases, provide hope for the possibility of getting the continent back on track towards hunger and malnutrition elimination by 2030.
As documented by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), biotech crops have provided hope to most farmers who almost gave up agriculture due to persistent low crop yields.
Africa is the region with the highest hunger prevalence in the world, with two in ten Africans undernourished and about 868 million people moderately or severely food-insecure, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024 by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Over the past two decades, AATF has been at the forefront of connecting African farmers with the latest agricultural technologies and innovations, including high-yielding and drought-tolerant seed varieties.
Farmers who adopted biotech crops, including genetically modified (GM) crops such as TELA Maize and Pod Borer Resistant (PBR) Cowpea, received record-breaking yields, improving their incomes and food security. The bumpy harvests following the adoption of biotech crops are a vivid illustration of how the technology can help address food and nutrition insecurity.
Bernard Ojiambo, a cotton farmer in Mulwanda in Busia County, Kenya is among the beneficiaries of GM cotton variety. He has lauded Bt cotton, terming it as better compared to the traditional variety as he uses less pesticides compared to the traditional variety.
However, he notes that despite being highly tolerant to the African bollworm, Bt cotton still needs protection against pests and diseases such as blight, and Cercospora leaf spot.
“I normally use pesticides three times- after two weeks of planting, four weeks, and lastly seven weeks- but the traditional variety is sprayed about 12 times,” Ojiambo says.
In addition, Ojiambo says the new cotton variety yields quite well within a short period with adequate rain as it takes about four months to be harvested compared to the traditional variety which takes about six months to yield.
In 2021, when he first planted Bt cotton, he got about 200 kilos of cotton in a one-hectare piece of land whereas, in 2022, the yield reduced to 150 kilos with each kilo sold at Ksh52 (about half a dollar). The reduction in yields was a result of the prolonged drought experienced this year as a result of climate change.
“Bt cotton does very well, especially when it gets enough water up to four centimetres long. One hectare piece of land can yield about 1000 kilos of cotton, as each stem produces as many balls ranging between 30 and 50,” Ojiambo says.
Furthermore, he states that the spacing of the crop in the farm can also affect its yield.
“Proper spacing also affects yields because when the spacing is bigger or smaller, the production also reduces. We are also advised not to do mixed cropping because it affects the crop’s yields as well,” Ojiambo adds.
As of 2024, at least 12 African countries, including South Africa, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Eswatini, Tanzania and Uganda had ongoing biotech crop research, with crops under various stages of development.
The critical role of biotechnology in putting Africa back on track towards hunger and malnutrition eradication by 2030 was underscored by several speakers during the second Rwanda National Seed Congress held in Kigali, on July 19, 2024, with Dr Canisius Kanangire, Executive Director, AATF, noting that the use of biotechnology will help Africa to produce more foods for its ever-growing population expected to reach 11 billion people by 2025.
“Efforts to reduce hunger and malnutrition are hindered by low crop productivity, soil degradation, emerging pests and diseases, climate change, and inefficient policy environments,” Dr Kanangire noted.
He pointed out that crops like Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) TELA maize, Bt cotton, and Pod Borer-Resistant (PBR) cowpea, which are genetically modified to protect against certain pests, reduce the need for chemical pesticides that are harmful to the environment and human health, thus offering solutions to food production challenges.
PBR Cowpea, for instance, was introduced in Nigeria in 2019, and to date, 126 tons of Bt cowpea seed have been produced and supplied to over 63,000 farmers by seed companies in the country. Through Bt cowpea Nigeria, which previously used to import cowpea for domestic consumption, is now one the leading cowpea exporters in Africa.
Dr Kanangire further noted that in response to climate change and the damage and loss to stem borer and Fall ArmyWorm, AATF and its partners developed a transgenic drought-tolerant and insect-protected maize variety known as TELA maize to enhance food security in Sub-Saharan Africa.
“Since 2016, a cumulative total of 288 tons of TELA certified seed has been sold to smallholder farmers in South Africa, benefiting over 28,000 farmers,” he said, adding that TELA hybrids were successfully launched in Nigeria in June 2024 and already over 2,000 farmers have planted TELA seed for the first time in the country,” Dr Kanangire.
He emphasised the need for goodwill and support from African governments to expedite the approval for commercialisation of biotech crops, adding that: “For sustainable commercialisation of biotech products, stewardship must be effectively implemented to maintain the integrity of the products.”
According to Dr Joel Ochieng, Agricultural Biotechnology and Wildlife Programme Leader at the University of Nairobi, biotechnology is a wide term referring to a range of tools that farmers have deployed for centuries, sometimes even unknowingly, to increase productivity in agricultural systems.
He told Science Africa that biotechnology ranges from simple tools such as cross-breeding, vegetative propagation, grafting, and artificial insemination, to more complex ones such as tissue culture, genetic engineering and gene editing, among others.
In Africa, GM products have been met with a lot of controversy, with most African countries taking a more precautionary approach ranging from policy restrictions to outright bans.
“The apprehension of uncertainty with GM crops is mostly unfounded and based on unnecessary fear. The issue of science and technology should not be based on popular opinion but rather on what is verifiable. Science, technology and innovations are the drivers of the modern economy,” Dr. Rufas Ebegba, the immediate former Director General of, the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) in Nigeria, told Science Africa.
