Agritech dialogue: The high price of Africa's GMO hesitation

Genetic modification of crops confers them with resilience against a number of environmental challenges, key among them drought, pests and diseases. [iStockphoto]

When British doctor Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had previously caught cowpox could not get smallpox, he used cowpox to create a smallpox vaccine. This caused a strong public backlash.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), even the medical fraternity then, circa 1796, called the vaccine ‘a ridiculous idea’, with a rumour circulating that the vaccine would turn people into cows.

Whirled around in the eye of a storm, observed scientist Calestous Juma in his book ‘Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies’, society still loves to keep a skeptical outlook when new technologies are mentioned.

“Perceptions about immediate risks and long-term distribution of benefits influence the intensity of concerns over new technologies,” wrote the late Prof Juma.

One would have thought that dying from smallpox, the population would have been glad to jump onto a potential solution. Even handwashing among doctors helping mothers deliver, proposed by Ignaz Semmelweis in the 19th century, was initially met with resistance even by the medical community.

For many scientists in agricultural biotechnology, this is the same approach that society is using in reaction to new technologies in the field. It is not isolated, or unexpected, that there has been sustained resistance to adoption of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in spite of a great need for the same, they say.

Shouted down by activists for years, a renewed push for adoption has largely been attributed to the current regime’s effort to ensure food security amid huge population increase and erratic weather. This is because it was President William Ruto who, shortly after assuming power in 2022, lifted a ban that had stood for a decade on domestic cultivation of GMOs.

With GMOs flagged  in 2012 after a controversial paper by French molecular biologist Gilles-Éric Séralini, who, after conducting a study of genetically modified corn and the herbicide RoundUp fed to rats, claimed that GMOs had the potential to cause cancer, Kenya fell significantly behind in research on the same, even after the scientific community had almost unanimously denounced the paper which subsequently, was quickly retracted from the journal in which it had been initially published.

The ban that the government of Kenya slapped has led to monumental losses over the years, as other countries have greatly advanced within that time and are largely food secure.

Speaking during the Africa Biennial Biosciences Communication (ABBC 2025) symposium in Lusaka, Zambia in August, climate change specialist Vitumbiko Chinoko lamented Africa’s feet- dragging at adoption of GMOs even as its population’s predicament worsens.

“It is projected that by 2030, 582 million people will be chronically undernourished, more than half of them in Africa. Our continent experiences an average lag of 12 to 15 years in GM crop commercialisation, compared to a five to 10 years lag elsewhere,” he said.

Economic loses

Such delays, said Chinoko, have cost the continent huge economic losses. For Kenya, he quantified an average five-year delay across three key technologies– Bt maize, Bt cotton, and genetically modified (GM) potato, all which are genetically modified crops.

“For Bt maize, whose commercialisation could have occurred in 2019, the delay cost is estimated to have been Sh8.6 billion ($67 million) between 2019 and 2024, yet its potential gains by 2029 is Sh28.1 billion ($218 million). Bt cotton, ready by 2015 but released in 2020, lost Sh155 million ($1.2 million) and 650 tonnes in potential production.

GM potato, projected for 2028 commercialisation, could yield upto Sh31.9 billion ($247 million ) in combined farmer and consumer benefits over 30 years, but a five-year delay could erode Sh11.5 billion ($89 million) of these gains,” he said.

Genetic modification of crops confers them with resilience against a number of environmental challenges, key among them drought, pests and diseases. In Kenya, the only commercialised GM crop is Bt cotton.

And yet misconceptions continue to fly, with a belief that everything that is unusually large, smooth or succulent, in the market is automatically genetically modified.

Court battles have rallied since the ban was lifted three years ago, and Kenya has not imported GM crops and animal feeds since.

Research has been ongoing in earnest, however, and other crops are in the regulatory review process.

Across Africa, nine countries including Kenya, Eswatini, South Africa, Malawi, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Ghana and Burkina Faso cultivate genetically modified crops, with atleast 3.6 million hectares of land under GMO cultivation. The seven approved GM crops in Africa are banana, cotton, maize, soybean, cassava, potato, and cowpea.

Speaking in a previous National Dialogue organised by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA-AfriCenter), the Principal Secretary for the State Department for Science, Research, and Innovation Shaukat Abdulrazak, warned that the reluctance to adopt key biotechnologies could compromise Kenya’s food security and leave it paces behind other countries that long took that leap.

“Through rigorous research, scientists have demonstrated that several biotech crops – such as genetically modified cotton, maize and cassava –  are climate-resilient and highly productive. These innovations offer promising solutions for enhancing food security and strengthening the resilience of our agricultural systems,” said Shaukat.

He reiterated the government’s willingness to support scientists’ work towards approvals and subsequent commercialisation.

ISAAA-AfriCenter Director Margaret Karembu warned that there was little time to waste in endless exchanges over biotechnology, with food security pegged on decisive actions taken today.

“As populations increase rapidly in the face of rampant climate change, there is increasing need for improvement of agri-food systems for a food secure future. New and more virulent crop and animal diseases have emerged over time, wiping out farms, leaving farmers counting huge losses and plunging the country into an abyss of food and feed insecurity,” she said.

“Agribiotech has been responsible for enhancement of food security and reduction of land use pressure, reduced the risk of spread of zoonotic diseases through improvement of poultry and livestock health by improving feeds and development of disease-resistant breeds, and further reduction of human and wildlife conflict, promotion of sustainable agriculture and ecosystem health through reduced use of pesticides, and improvement of the biodiversity,” she said.

Biosafety framework

The country, keen to ensure safety of GM products hitting the market, introduced The Biosafety Act No. 2 of 2009, which established, in turn, the National Biosafety Authority (NBA).

Nehemiah Ngetich, the acting chief executive officer of the NBA, says that the country has a robust biosafety framework and sufficient regulatory capacity for GMOs, and that efforts and great care are being taken to ensure that biotech foods available in the global market are safe for humans, animals and the environment.

Dr Allan Liavoga, a food safety expert, says Kenya’s greatest advantage is going into adoption at a time when sufficient research has been done globally, and when these products have been used for years in many other countries and been proven safe.

“Kenya is adopting the technology at a time when much of the heavy lifting around safety has already been done by early adopters – it is now over 30 years since the first GM food product was approved in the U.S. Safety, from a scientific standpoint, is not in question,” says Liavoga.

Alive to public concerns, he warns that insufficient information could lead to confusion, and, like Prof Juma, fears that the nation could be self-sabotaging as it caves in to unfounded beliefs.

“Public fears are rarely rooted in scientific evidence but rather in narratives encountered through informal sources like social media, some of which promote outright falsehoods. For the average citizen, distinguishing fact from fiction is understandably difficult, and as a scientist, I truly empathise,” he says.

He urges other scientists to actively engage with the public to ensure that unnecessary delays are not experienced in adoption and that challenges that GMOs can address are quickly out of the way.

“Unlike real risk, perceived risk is complex and deeply personal. It does not yield easily to data or expert reassurance. Therefore, addressing scientific safety alone is not enough, we must also actively engage with perceptions. Without doing so, broader acceptance of the technology will remain elusive. This phenomenon however is not unique to GMOs; it is common with all new technologies.”

Martin Mwirigi, head of the Biotech Research Institute at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), emphasises that biotech crops not only offer nutritional benefits but are also climate-resilient and in the face of erratic weather, largely inspired by climate change, they present a viable solution to food insecurity in Kenya.

Only around 11.4 per cent of land in Kenya is arable, supporting maize, tea, coffee, sorghum, and horticultural crops. Consequently, Kenya is a net importer of food and feed. Kenya has commercially released Bt cotton, resistant to the African bollworm, while Bt maize and virus-resistant cassava are advancing through regulatory review.