Africa needs GM crops: scientist

African plant geneticist Dr Florence Wambugu has accused Western activists, seeking to block the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa, of having “no understanding” of the needs of African farmers and communities.

The Kenyan plant molecular geneticist, who will be a speaker at next month’s International Congress of Genetics in Melbourne, developed Africa’s first GM crop - a virus-resistant sweet potato, now being trialled in Kenya.

Wambugu has been instrumental in establishing the research expertise and infrastructure to take African nations into the age of GM agriculture, based on African staple crops like sweet potato, cassava, banana, sorghum and maize.

She says non-government organisation (NGOs) in Western nations who oppose GM agriculture in Africa have only their own job security at heart.

“These people are a hard-core group,” says Wambugu. “The truth is that they’re in a $100 million business – the business of spreading fear – and they don’t want to lose it. They don’t want to know about gene technology.” Wambugu has been a target of “mudslinging” by anti-GM activists, but it has failed to stick – she’s not interested in the arguments of the anti-GM movement, only in helping impoverished farmers and consumers in Africa.

But she fears that, amid signs that community and political opposition to GM crops in Europe is now ebbing, Western anti-GM activists will now step up their campaigning in Africa

Wambugu has worked to unite African scientists to defend GM agriculture – she says if Australian scientists had done the same, anti-GM activists would not have been able to manipulate the opinion of middle-class Australians to achieve an effective national moratorium on GM canola.

“I’m a scientist, and a genetic engineer. I love my laboratory work, and I’ll never leave it. I’m not really interested in talking about these anti-GM things, I’m interested in helping poor African farmers.

“But because of what the anti-GM campaign could do to them, I can’t sit in my lab and say nothing. You have to come out and take a position for your science.”

Wambugu is critical of European nations for their refusal to fund any project in Africa that has anything to do with GM crops – “The attitude is, ‘If we can’t have it, we’ll impose our opinions on Africa.”

“It’s very unfortunate because Europe’s rejection of GM crops is based on different issues – we have serious food deficits, and many other reasons to adopt GM crops. African lives are at risk if we don’t.

She says Europe doesn’t have a food deficit – it actually suppresses food production, through subsidies for its farmers.