10 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND


usually, but not always, a first step before the process of assessment for com- mercial release. Applications for confined field trials are pending in many more countries.


Biotechnology Product Development/Regulatory Pipeline


Table I.1 lists GE crop technologies under product development or biosafety regulatory assessment. The number of GE crops is expanding beyond the four crops with two traits planted as the dominant share of global GE crop area; the number of countries testing and approving them is also expanding. A note- worthy development is the rise of crops of special interest to some countries in Africa, including bananas, sweet potatoes, cowpeas, and cassava. Furthermore, the number of traits in development is also increasing. These include resis- tance to fungal and viral diseases and tolerance to drought conditions.


GE Cotton and Maize Adoption and Socioeconomic Impact in Africa


According to the estimates of James (2011), in 2011, South Africa cultivated approximately 2.3 million hectares, Burkina Faso 0.3 million hectares, and Egypt less than 0.05 million hectares of GE crops. Maize and cotton account for most of the area planted to GE crops in Africa. More specifically, South Africa planted 2.3 million hectares of GE maize,


cotton, and soybeans. Burkina Faso cultivated 300,000 hectares of insect- protected cotton (Bt) representing approximately 70 percent of total cotton area, which represents a significant increase from 2009, when roughly 25 percent of the area was planted to Bt cotton (James 2011). In Egypt, the actual area planted has been quite small since the commercialization approval granted by the com- petent authority in 2008. Much of the area planted has been for seed reproduc- tion purposes, although there are some reports that the expectation in Egypt is that area planted to GE maize will increase rapidly in the near future (Adenle 2011; James 2011). The socioeconomic impact assessment literature on the effects of GE


crops in SSA is relatively thin. As shown in Smale et al. (2009), much of the ex post assessment work has been done on measuring producer impacts from the adoption of GE crops, mostly focused on insect-resistant cotton in South Africa, with a handful of reports from Burkina Faso. There is a small, but grow- ing, ex ante assessment body of literature for proposed technologies in Africa. Reports from South Africa and other developing countries that have adopted GE crops show that considerable spatial, temporal, and user variabilities exist and have an impact on results. These conclusions have been validated in a for- mal meta-analysis done by Finger et al. (2011).


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