186 CHAPTER 7


Tracking Biosafety Legislation and Regulation


Studies of developments in the field of biosafety legislation and regulation in Africa are generally in-depth examinations on governance issues relating to the research, development, and dissemination of GE crops to researchers, farm- ers, and consumers in Africa. Key studies in this area include Baum, de Kathen, and Ryan (2001); Johanson and Ives (2001); Mugabe (2002); Alhassan (2003); Sithole-Niang, Cohen, and Zambrano (2004); Harsh (2005); Wafula and Clark (2005); and Karembu, Nguthi, and Abdel-Hamid (2009). These studies assess a range of regulatory issues, such as the health and environmen- tal risks of GE crop cultivation, the costs and benefits of agbiotech regulation, transparency and accountability issues in regulating GE crops, and challenges related to capacity strengthening to support the design and implementation of biosafety regulations. Studies on the broader governance issues, including the political and political


economy aspects of agbiotech and their influence on national regulatory systems in Africa (and in other developing countries) are offered by Komen, Webber, and Mignouna (2000); Paarlberg (2001); Cohen and Paarlberg (2004); Cohen (2005); Pray, Bengali, and Ramaswami (2005); and Birner and Linacre (2008), among others. A conclusion that can be drawn from these studies is that timely advancement of agbiotech and GE crop research, and its effective use to address local problems in agriculture, is often hampered in countries where approvals are few and far between, where political interest groups advocate against the design and implementation of agbiotech policies and regulations, or where the capacity of the country’s research and regulatory systems is limited. Interestingly, although data reported earlier indicate that research and


approval of GE crops in Africa is progressing at a sluggish rate, there is evi- dence suggesting that more progress has been made regarding the estab- lishment of functional regulatory frameworks. In 2004, only five countries (Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zimbabwe) had national bio- safety policies in place: by 2009, this figure had increased to include Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, and Zimbabwe (Karembu, Nguthi, and Abdel-Hamid 2009). Investment in the development of viable regulatory systems and the capacity to manage them has received a boost from the international community, with sig- nificant flows of resources originating from the US Agency for International Development (though the Program on Biosafety Systems and Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II), the United Nations Environment Program–Global Environmental Facility, the World Bank, and others.


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