By JAMES MPINGA

On July 1, the government of Kenya announced plans to open its borders to genetically modified (GM) crops for the time. Having thus cleared her decks, Kenya is now rooting for cotton that uses the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis to fight pests (hence the name Bt Cotton).

The product will become the first crop approved under Kenya's new rules for GM organisms. The country's National Biosafety Authority is due to publish its long-awaited regulations governing the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in open fields for research and commercial purposes.

This first ‘transgenic’ crop is called Bt Cotton in science vernacular – which means it carries added genes from the bacterium, enabling the plant to produce toxins that confer resistance to some insect pests.

Kenya now follows Burkina Faso, Egypt and South Africa in giving the go-ahead to commercial production of GM organisms but Kenyan researchers say the move could not come soon enough and that the absence of regulations was stalling research. According to recent press reports, Simon Gichuki, crop scientist and head of the biotechnology centre at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) in Nairobi, reportedly says:

"Without the regulations, projects can't move forward into unconfined trials where crops are released into the environment and their performance is tested under different climatic and soil conditions."

The regulations require a minimum of three months to get the green light for environmental release after permission is sought from the authorities, the reports add. Next in line will be Bt maize (corn), also being developed by scientists at KARI, Gichuki is quoted as saying.

Other crops undergoing confined field trials include virus-resistant sweet potatoes and drought-resistant maize, he says. Kenya passed a biosaftey law in 2009 which allowed the commercial production of transgenic crops in principle.

These regulations set out the details of how the law will be implemented, including rules governing experimental laboratory work and confined field trials and the import, export and in-country transport of GM products. With Kenya now well on the way to commercialised GM crops, hard questions are being asked about the fate of policy decisions among her neighbours Tanzania and Uganda.

Along with Mozambique and South Africa, the three East African nations are enjoined in a private-public partnership known as Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) aimed at developing drought-resistant maize varieties and deliver them to smallholder, resource-poor farmers.

South Africa apart, Kenya has the strongest economy among them – and is being touted as an example to other countries in the continent, including Nigeria and Ghana which are taking steps to improve national provision for biotechnology and biosaftey.

"If Kenya succeeds it will have an impact on others to follow," Getachew Belay, biotechnology policy advisor for the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) — a regional trading bloc – is reported to have surmised. Belay is leading efforts to create common biosafety rules between COMESA member countries.

However, senior Tanzanian scientists and researchers believe this country doesn’t need prompting from Kenya, arguing that there are more compelling reasons to go biotech (read GM) in agriculture. As one of the players in WEMA, Tanzanian scientists have also cleared some of the first stages of their hurdles:

During the last quarter of 2009, the country’s project managers had selected and developed a suitable site to conduct confined field trials (CFTs) or mock trials, at Makotupora in Dodoma. They had also acquired the necessary approvals to carry out the CFTs.

Development of the site included the installation of Israel-style-drip-irrigation systems, under which sections of the crop in the test farm were well watered and others denied of the precious liquid at critical moments of need or deliberately left under ‘managed drought stress’ in science-speak.

Although conducting a mock trial doesn’t require regulatory approval, a formal notice to do so was duly submitted to the National Biosafety Committee (NBC) as part of the training process. The mock trials themselves – using conventional drought tolerant germplasm – were aimed at calibrating the irrigation systems and simulating the steps were later to be followed during the actual transgenic maize varieties.

Like their Kenyan counterparts, Tanzanian researchers now argue that the country’s ‘precautionary’ approach to formulating its biosafety regulatory rules are stalling development work, earlier scheduled to have begun last year. Even then, a vital, significant move has since taken place:

According to highly informed sources, a comprehensive environmental impact assessment (EIA) on the test farm has been completed. Controversy over GM technologies isn’t new nor is it peculiar to Tanzania. In the Philippines the approval of Bt maize in December 2002 was not without livened debate.

It was the first ‘food-feed’ product ever to be allowed for commercial planting in Asia and hence attracted enormous amounts media and public attention both at home and abroad. In 2008, Mariechel J. Navarro, writing for the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), reported:

“Some cause-oriented groups uprooted a field trial, sued the technology developers and lobbied for a moratorium on GM crops. A group of Catholic priests and nuns pleaded with local government units to refrain from giving support to GM activities in the community. “Even politicians, including two senetors, joined the fray by alleging that GM products could cause cancer and that it was a crime to do GM research.”

But Philipino scientists battled it out with various groups in order to clarify the various concerns regarding the Bt maize technology. “Addressing the different concerns of such diverse groups of stakeholders became a real challenge, but was critical to the eventual commercial approval of Bt maize in the country,” Navarro reports.

The debate in the Philippines continued from 19996 to 2002 and well after Bt maize was approved for planting and commercialization. Our scientists and well intentioned researchers – as well as the policy-makers they are engaging in the ongoing debate – aren’t enjoying a cherry party either.

In the meantime, local media debate is beginning to demonize an otherwise noble word -- biotechnology -- which is now being used interchangeably with GM technology. In our somewhat livened discourse, some of us consider GM technology a “contaminant” along with hazardous wastes.

However, some forms of biotechnology are as old as early African and other civilizations. Fermentation is one such form of biotechnology – which is what our venerated brewers of ‘mbege’ on the slopes of Kilimanjaro have used for millennia. Let’s toast to those early biotechnologists.

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