TWN Info Service on Biosafety
28 August 2025
Third World Network
www.twn.my
https://acbio.org.za/gm-biosafety/dont-need-genome-editing-to-ensure-africas-food-sovereignty/
African Centre for Biodiversity
26 August 2025
We don’t need genome editing to ensure Africa’s food sovereignty
Will stringent regulation safeguard Africa’s food systems?
Across Africa, powerful corporate, donor, and government interests are driving a rapid push to deregulate genome editing in agriculture. Countries including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Malawi, Ethiopia, and Burkina Faso have adopted product-based guidelines that exempt many genome-edited crops from GMO regulation if no foreign DNA is present in the final product. This opens a regulatory back door for fast-tracking field trials and potential commercialisation, often without robust public consultation, transparency, or independent risk assessment.
Our latest briefing tracks these policy shifts and examines the influence of public-private partnerships, multinational agribusinesses, and well-funded communication campaigns that shape both public opinion and policymaking. While proponents promote genome editing as a silver bullet for food security and climate resilience, there is little evidence that these technologies are delivering tangible benefits to African farmers. Most projects remain in the laboratory or limited trials, and the pipeline of viable crops is thin.
The paper details current regulatory frameworks, country-by-country project updates, and the key funders and institutions backing genome editing on the continent, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Corteva Agriscience, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. It also sets out critical concerns: risks to seed sovereignty and biodiversity, corporate control through intellectual property, and the erosion of precautionary biosafety systems.
We argue that Africa does not need genome editing to achieve food sovereignty. Instead, stringent, transparent, and participatory regulation is essential to protect farmers’ rights, biodiversity, and democratic decision-making in the face of this powerful technological push.
Read the briefing here.