214 CHAPTER 8
environmental release of any GMO is permitted. In Kenya, moving beyond the confined field trial stage for WEMA maize will be difficult as well. Field trials of GM cotton have been underway in Kenya for years, yet as of 2011 approval for commercial planting had yet to be given. Meanwhile, not even confined field trials have been approved by Tanzania or Mozambique, so even if every- thing works perfectly for the technology, 2013 is now the earliest that field testing of the WEMA varieties can be undertaken in all five WEMA coun- tries, and it will not be until 2015, at the earliest, that WEMA’s GM drought- tolerant tropical white maize hybrids will have undergone enough efficacy testing, agronomic trials, biosafety testing, and variety development in these countries to generate the data needed to support an application to an NBC for commercial release. Even at this point, there will be little guarantee of a prompt regulatory approval. Why have so many governments in Africa chosen to follow this highly
precautionary European approach toward regulating GM foods and crops, despite the technology blockages and extended delays nearly cer- tain to result? Five separate channels of external influence on Africa have led to this choice of Europe’s regulatory approach over the approach of the United States. Bilateral foreign assistance is the first channel of external influence on
Africa. Governments in Africa are still significantly dependent on foreign assistance, on average, four times as aid-dependent relative to gross domestic product as the rest of the developing world. For this reason, much that takes place in Africa today remains donor driven. Because Africa’s official develop- ment assistance from Europe is three times as large as that from the United States, it is the voice of European donors in Africa that tends to be more domi- nant than any American voice. Governments in Europe have used their official development assistance to encourage African governments to draft and imple- ment European-style regulatory systems for agricultural GMOs. A second channel of external influence has been multilateral technical assis-
tance through the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) / Global Environment Facility (GEF) Global Project for Development of National Biosafety Frameworks. Of 23 African governments that had completed a National Biosafety Framework under this UNEP program by October 2006, all but South Africa and Zimbabwe had no previous regulations in place for agricultural GMOs, so UNEP was in effect writing on a blank slate. In the end, 21 of these 23 countries embraced the strongest possible approach (the “Level One” approach), requiring regulations through binding legal instru- ments approved by the legislative branch of government (parliament), parallel
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