Abstract
While modern biotechnology and, specifically, genetic modification are subject of debate in many parts of the world, an increasing number of countries in Sub-Sahara Africa are making important strides towards authorizing general releases of genetically modified (GM) crop varieties for use by farmers and agribusinesses. Obviously, the documented economic and environmental benefits from planting GM crops—based on a track record of over two decades—are a major driver in the decision-making process. Another key factor is the increasing alignment of biosafety regulatory policies with progressive agricultural and rural development policies in Africa, resulting in—compared to past experiences—greater emphasis on anticipated benefits rather than risks in biosafety regulatory reviews. In several cases, this has led to expedited reviews of GM crop release applications, either for confined field trials or general environmental release, taking experiences and data from other countries into account. Such regulatory approaches hold promise as the pipeline of relevant, pro-poor GM crop applications is expanding as are the opportunities provided by novel plant breeding techniques. This review article analyses the shifting policy context in select African economies, resulting in adoption of new agricultural technology, and novel regulatory approaches used in biosafety decision-making. Case studies will be presented for Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Uganda to analyze challenges, distill lessons learned and to present general policy recommendations for emerging economies.
Highlights
The detection, identification and quantification of genome edited products will be a major challenge. This fact will become more problematic when exporting countries authorize the cultivation of genome edited crops that will not be regulated as GMOs
In order to address this situation, EC-SAM recommends amending the EU's GMO Directive to reflect the growing track record of safe use and consumption and associated scientific evidence, in particular on genome editing and established techniques of genetic modification, considering the obligation for GMO legislation to be: “[C]lear, evidence-based, implementable, proportionate and flexible enough to cope with future advances in science and technology in this area” (EC-SAM, 2018)
Such supportive statements will continue to be important to bolster the current momentum
Summary
Towards the final stages of the regulatory review process, post-release requirements are being considered related to, among other things, product labeling, product liability, co-existence, monitoring and surveillance. These concepts are in many cases not yet implemented and tested in African countries, associated expertise is low, and enforcement will be problematic. In the early phases of regulatory framework definition in Africa, strict post-release requirements were usually formulated and only later it is realized that these will form an impractical impediment to technology deployment
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