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Plant biotechnology: a tool for development in africa Johan A. Brink Barbara R.Woodward Edgar J. DaSilva *Corresponding author Keywords: Africa, Development, Plant biotechnology
Africa is, paradoxically, a continent rich in resources, and yet, lacking and lagging in overall development. When the wealth of Africa's people is compared with that of other continents a contrasting picture of poverty, stunted growth and famine resulting from inadequate food production is revealed. The agricultural, and food security problems in Africa cannot be solved by applying plant biotechnology alone. Five key factors seem to be necessary for the improvement of crop production such as the use of agrochemicals, irrigation, plant breeding, farm management, and, of course, plant biotechnology. In this context, biotechnology can play a role in commercialising crops, creating new jobs and earning foreign exchange. The goals of national and regional development in Africa are attainable through proper planning and active participation in technical networks involving regional and international scientific co-operation that emphasise the use of plant and microbial genetic resources for economic development and progress. Africa, a continent yet to fulfil its food production potential, is especially vulnerable in terms of food security. The continent's wealth of natural resources and indigenous technologies have not been used either for endogenous technical development nor economic advancement (Michaelis, 1993). During mid-1995, the population of Africa, with the fastest growth rate in the world, was 720 million, which constituted 13% of the world population. At the present rate of growth this number will double over the next 25 years (Nyira, 1995). This population expansion which puts a burden on economic growth, also decreases food security, and environmental sustainability. To meet Africa's food requirements, it is therefore necessary to increase the efficiency of food production. Africa has lagged behind in reaping the benefits of the "Green Revolution" of the 1970s and 1980s on account of the limited use of high-yielding varieties of maize, wheat and rice on the continent. Furthermore, five key factors are required for improved crop production viz., use of appropriate agrochemicals, sustainable irrigation, efficient high-yielding (adapted) varieties, crop management, and plant biotechnology. Notwithstanding public concerns, it is felt that the major increase in agricultural productivity will be achieved through the direct use of genetic improvement and biotechnology (Villalabos, 1995). There are serious limiting factors to research activities and the use of biotechnology in African countries. These include inadequate infrastructure, lack of skilled human resources and availability of research equipment and facilities (Villalobos, 1995). In this context, Africa, therefore, also risks missing the opportunity to benefit from the "gene revolution". Status of plant biotechnology in Africa A literature-scan shows that there is a growing emergence of African biotechnological expertise that has been nurtured by several initiatives pioneered by ORSTOM1, CIRAD2, and the UNESCO-based BETCEN3 and MIRCENs4 in the Republic of South Africa, Senegal, Kenya and Egypt. The outputs of such initiatives are:
Table 1 summarises the current range of status and trends in plant biotechnology that exists in English and French-speaking Africa. Table 1. Current African trends and status in plant biotechnology in Africa
Constraints Investments in, and development of plant biotechnological research capacity in Africa is best accomplished in phases (Lynam, 1995). The first phase involves the use of plant tissue culture, which is appropriate for Africa as many of the important food crops such as cassava, sweet potato; yam and banana are vegetatively propagated. Specific techniques include in vitro mass propagation, the production of disease-free plants as well as regeneration systems for plant transformation. By focusing on tissue culture, the skills necessary to maintain and to manage a biotechnology laboratory can be developed. The second phase is the application of biotechnological tools, which can improve the efficiency of selection and breeding of varieties/cultivars. Techniques include more advanced tissue culture techniques (e.g. anther culture and embryo rescue) as well as molecular marker applications (diagnostics, fingerprinting and marker-assisted breeding). A prerequisite for this phase is to have an operational breeding programme in place. The third phase is the development of capacity to produce transgenic plants, which could include gene isolation and cloning, gene insertion/transformation, and regeneration of transgenic plants as well as verification of successful transformation and gene function. Constraints to the application of plant biotechnology in African countries are many. These are listed below: Lack of resources for plant biotechnology A serious deficit of skilled human resources in the plant sciences and biotechnology is evident in Africa. The building up of such knowledge and development of human resource capacity is necessary to produce improved varieties through use of biotechnology as well as to handle imported engineered varieties that also demand changes in agricultural management. Another serious constraint is the loss of skilled personnel who have received training in developed countries and have added to the brain drain. Working opportunities in Africa are often inadequate. Even specific focal research points that were created in Africa at high donor expense lack the critical mass of skilled personnel. Furthermore, training gained abroad is often not attuned to local needs because of the different research and infrastructural environments in many African countries. In several African countries, basic infrastructure and facilities even for the simplest tissue culture techniques such as micropropagation are not available. Modern communication systems, telephones, fax and access to e-mail and Internet are also lacking in large areas of Africa which seriously hamper the acquisition of relevant and necessary knowledge, and the application of plant biotechnology which is a rapidly changing and developing field. Again, unreliable power supply in many African countries is a serious constraint for the efficient application of even basic tissue culture techniques. And the availability of chemicals and consumables for research is often hindered as a result of poor infrastructure. Selection of crops for research Crops utilised in Africa are often not important enough to attract foreign investment in research. Nevertheless, some important African crops such as cassava and sweet potatoes attract only extrabudgetary funding. On the other hand, indigenous neglected crops attract funding only for exploitation outside Africa. Lack of linkages and networks Information and communication technology in Africa is neither not available nor up to standard. Funding to run electronic communicative networks is limited. Commercialised world crops are not so important in Africa Most of these crops are not well adapted to Africa, since imported lines or cultivars are inappropriate for local conditions. Furthermore, their cultivation is too expensive (premium to be paid), and have high energy input requirements. And again, these crops may be susceptible to local diseases and insects. Political/Legislature component A lack of (national/regional) priority setting in agricultural research is evident in many African countries, which is reflected in a lack of awareness and commitment by the national governments. As a result, no specific policy or strategy can be formulated by the National Agricultural Research Centres in each country on the application of plant biotechnology. Research & development programmes currently in place in Africa are often isolated, are not need-driven and have no definite objectives to develop specific products. Biosafety regulations and legislation are in place only in a few countries of Africa, and such limitation constitutes a serious constraint that impairs the use, evaluation and release of genetically modified organisms. Another concomitant issue is the lack of protection of intellectual property rights in Africa that hampers the development of new technologies, profitable inventions and investments, and initiatives by entrepreneurial African biotechnologists. General constraints Climate and weather characteristics in Africa often pose serious challenges to, particularly, tissue culture research. In many countries, the total absence of a viable public or private seed industry contributes to the absence of an appropriate channel for the transfer of products developed through plant biotechnology. Moreover, Africa's natural resources and lack of conservation of such resources are exploited without any returns to African countries. Also, products currently under development in Africa have been produced on an empirical basis rather than as a result of a full cost-benefit and impact assessment analysis that justifies investment. Networking, Associations and Training Opportunities in Africa Networking is an effective means for enhancing scientific co-operation and maximising information exchange at the regional and continental level. Major networks dealing with plant biotechnology in sub-Saharan Africa are the African Association for Biological Nitrogen Fixation (AABNF), the International Society for Tropical Root Crops (ISTRC), the African Plant Biotechnology Network (APBnet), the African Biosciences Network (ABN) the MIRCENS in East and West Africa, the Cassava Biotechnology Network (CBN) and several other initiatives all of which encourage dialogue between farmers, scientists and decision-makers to benefit from biotechnology or biotechnological activities of relevance to national and regional needs. As a means of building up reserves of skilled human resources in Africa, short-term fellowships of 3-months duration were awarded in the field of plant and allied environmental biotechnologies to 53 young researchers, inclusive of twelve women scientists, selected from a total of 130 applicants, and coming from Burundi, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Comoros, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, and Zaire. Likewise, during the period 1992 - 1998, 82 short-term fellowships were awarded to young researchers, inclusive of twelve women scientists, and coming from Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Comoros, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinee, Guinee-Bissau, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, for study in the industrial, desert, environmental, medical, bioconversion, aquatic and marine biotechnologies, and microbial systematics and taxonomy, fermentation technology, and diagnostic virology, within the framework of the UNESCO global network of Microbial Resources Centres. The African Biosciences Network (ABN) is a co-operative mechanism linking biological institutions and bioscientists in sub-Saharan Africa in a common effort aimed at improving the level of the know-how and the applications of the biosciences throughout the region. The ABN is the African regional arm of the International Biosciences Networks (IBN), through which the expertise of the international scientific community is brought into close contact with the African Network. Moreover, the ABN is the result of one of the main recommendations of the international symposium on State of Biology in Africa held in Accra (Ghana) in 1981 under the initiative of UNESCO, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) and IBN with financial support from several international organisations amongst which were UNDP and the United Nations Fund for Science and Technology. An assessment of the state of biology on the continent during that symposium revealed that biological resources, especially latest developments, could contribute to solving problems of food production and famines, endemic diseases, irrational use of natural resources, conservation of biodiversity, and counteracting poverty and its consequences on people and their environment in Africa. The second phase (1987-1992) of the African Biosciences network built upon the results of the proceeding phase with more emphasis on food production and endemic diseases. The programme comprised the following: - 91 research projects; 31 training courses, workshops, symposia and conferences; 25 travel grants and 9 publications. The main activities of member countries in the African Biosciences Network in the second phase were research projects carried out by two or more countries on a partnership basis; conferences; symposia; training courses, and workshops in the nine priority areas (Table 2). Table 2. ABN member countries and priorities
A major development problem facing a number of African countries is how to increase food production, which is invariably limited by the availability of nitrogen fertiliser. In Africa, the high capital costs of building chemical fertiliser plants prevent many African countries from manufacturing the quantities required to support a higher per-acre yield of food. Considerable experience in the network approach has already been gained, especially through the MIRCENs for East and West Africa at the University of Nairobi and at the Centre National des Recherches Agronomiques, Bambey, Senegal. These MIRCENs functioned as the anchors of the networks within the framework of UNESCO's major regional project 1981 - 1985) in applied microbiology and biotechnology for Africa and the Arab States. Among the main mandates of the Nairobi MIRCEN are the collection, preservation, storage and distribution of authenticated microbial materials for deployment in environmental management through the Southern and Eastern African region, especially Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and elsewhere, and to serve as a taxonomic reference centre. Likewise, the West African MIRCEN co-operates with research institutes in Mali, Sierra Leone, Gabon, Niger and Chad. The catalytic roles of the MIRCENs in East, West and Southern Africa in harnessing. Biological-Nitrogen-Fixation Technology (BNF) for boosting African Agriculture has recently been documented (Brink and Prior, 1998). The Biotechnology Action Council (BAC) of UNESCO established a Biotechnology Education and Training Centre (BETCEN) for the African continent at the Roodeplaat Vegetable and Ornamental Plant Institute of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) in Pretoria, South Africa in 1995. The main objective of the BETCEN for Africa is to provide short and medium term training in Plant Biotechnology to scientists of Africa. The BETCEN therefore also forms part of the BETCEN network that includes centres in Mexico (Latin and South America), Hungary (Eastern Europe), Bethlehem University, Palestine (Middle East) and Qingdao, China (Asia). This latter BETCEN specialises in marine biotechnology. Concluding remarks Africa can benefit from previous experiences and results achieved in other developing regions in obtaining benefits from the applications of plant biotechnology. This can be done through proper planning, interactive co-operation among and between countries, and as network participants. Opportunities to conserve and develop the natural resources of Africa's wild relatives of commercial crops, neglected and under-utilised crops, and plants with pharmaceutical applications should not be missed. This should be the primary focus of African researchers. Household food and health security can be ensured through breeding of disease free, higher yielding plants, mass propagation of better quality plants and crops with specific desirable characteristics. Plant biotechnology can therefore be an effective catalyst in commercialising crops, which can create jobs, earn foreign exchange and ensure a better quality of life for all. References Brink, J.A. and Prior, B. (1998) The UNESCO BETCEN-MIRCEN Scientific Symposium: Proceedings of the Joint BETCEN - MIRCEN symposium, South Africa, March 1998.Lynam J.K. (1995). Building biotechnology research capacity in African NARS. In: Turning priorities into feasible programs. Proceedings of a Regional Seminar on planning priorities and policies for Agricultural Biotechnology, South Africa, April 1995, p. 33-40. Michaelis, A.R(1993) The Crisis in African Agriculture, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. Vol 18:1-3 Nyira,
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for crop improvement. IAEA Publication, Austria, p. 477-486. 1 ORSTOM : Organisation de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique d'Outre-Mer 2 CIRAD : Centre de Co-operation Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement 3 BETCEN : Biotechnology Education and Training Centre 4 MIRCENs : Microbial Resources Centres 5 ISSAA : International Science for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications Ameri Center 6 USAID : US Agency for International Development 7 ABPS : Agricultural Biotechnology for Sustainable Development 8 KARI : Kenya Agricultural Research Institute 9 SADC : Southern African Development Community | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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