What lifting of Kenya's ban on GMOs means to Africa

It came as no surprise to Dr Sheila Ochugboju that President William Ruto lifted the ban on genetically modified organisms in Kenya.

“Kenya is an early adopter of technology and is one of those places that is a critical nexus, I think for the continent, if not the world,” she says.

The announcement drifted her mind back to 1967 when, seven years after independence from Britain, Nigeria collapsed into a civil war.

The war began when a 33-year-old army officer led the self-declared Republic of Biafra to secede from Nigeria.

The breakaway forces had little chance of winning. The federal government captured Port Harcourt in May 1968 and blocked the shipment of military arms to the Biafran army.

The blockade also meant relief food and medicine could not reach civilians. As a result, there was mass starvation never seen before in Nigeria.

Ochugboju was born in the Cross River State in the Biafran region the year the fighting began. She grew up on stories from people who lived through the war.

But she has vivid memories of the suffering that followed even after the war ended.

“There was a serious blockade of our region. So we suffered serious hunger. And if you look at what happened in the Biafra region, people died from starvation. There was widespread famine,” she says.

More than a million civilians in Biafra, mostly women and children, died.

The war ended on January 15, 1970, with the surrender of secessionist forces.

Ochugboju's own village was not badly off. “We had what today you would call resilience. Our food systems allowed us to have some stocks that got us through the war. And that was not the same for everybody in our region. The agroecology of some places did not allow and some people didn't live in spaces that were safe.”

That experience remains imprinted in her mind. She believes children should not ever have to think about what they will eat every day. “They should have confidence that I'm going to go home, there's going to be something. But our childhood was defined by waiting for a meal,” she said.

Although her family did not miss a meal because both parents were working, many other children did.  “I remember knowing that I had to be conscious about eating. So that goes to show you that there was an inherent fragility about whether food would be sufficient or not.”

The experience stoked her passion for food security. She has since become one of Africa’s top plant biochemist.

Ochugboju was in New York when the Cabinet lifted the ban on GMOs on October 4.

 “The lifting of the ban unlocks something extraordinary. Not just for Kenya, but for the world. We need this moment to take us to the next level. We need Kenya to give us the solutions that Africa needs in agriculture.” 

Ochugboju is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Science (AfS), a New York-based communications initiative that promotes access to scientific innovation for enhancing food security.

She was appointed to the position in May, becoming the first African woman to head the lobby, which is based at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

The alliance is known for promoting genetically modified foods, which Ochugboju is passionate about and believes is key to making Africa food secure.

She recently visited Nairobi to meet players in the food sector and celebrate the government’s decision.

Ochugboju notes that even in the absence of war, many African children still have to worry about what they will eat every day.

“Our food systems are fragile. If you are a child that grows up thinking about what you eat every day, then clearly you're not from a very secure society,” she says.

After completing her studies in Nigeria, Ochugboju joined the University of London where she graduated with a degree in Medical Biochemistry, and a PhD in Plant Biochemistry in 1996.

She then completed a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford in 1998.

She is concerned that although scientists are creating solutions to food insecurity, Africa is not benefiting from those solutions because few countries have embraced biotechnology.

Apart from Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Malawi, Nigeria, Ghana and eSwatini have also allowed the planting of GMO seeds. A number of other African countries are at different stages of development and commercialisation of a number of GMOs.

She believes the current opposition to GMOs in some African countries is tied to the waning activism in Europe.

“A lot of economic and food markets are tied to European markets. So legislation on GMOs can affect how we do our agriculture affects our approach among,” she says.

“But it's also European activism that has influenced Africa in stronger ways, maybe it's a post-colonial legacy.”

She notes while nearly all of Europe is food secure, Africa is not.  Despite the constant droughts and the fact that agriculture is the backbone of most African economies, there is little investment in agriculture research.

Ochugboju also blames the opposition on the ideology people have about food.

“There's an ideology that frames what we think about our food, either. Sometimes it's a religious ideology. Sometimes it's also about giving power to either corporations or scientists. So I think it comes from that sort of a stance. I mean, it's very hard for us to like really put our finger on it in several ways, because not all of Europe is anti-GMO,” she says.

She says opposition to GMOs has been waning as people gain more understanding about what it means.

GMOs refer to plants, animals or microbes whose genetic make-up is altered through the introduction of a select gene from an unrelated species. For crops, this is often done to increase yield or make it drought or pest-resistant.

One of the projects during her post-doc was using a scorpion toxin gene to develop a biological pesticide that targeted pests in a cabbage and would not harm the plant or people.

“If you say  you're taking a scorpion toxin gene, and you're putting it in a pesticide to kill a pest on your cabbage, people think oh my god, Scorpion toxin cabbage, I might eat the cabbage and die. It's just the word association that people don't like,” she said.

So activists from Greenpeace picked up on Scorpion toxin, and started to draw cartoons of salads containing scorpions.

It was an effective campaign that shut down the research. One crop Kenya is going to commercialise is the Bt Maize, which contains a gene from the naturally occurring soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis.

The Bt gene produces a protein that kills the stem borer pest, which means farmers do not need to spray the maize with insecticides.

Ochugboju laughs at the idea that GM crops can harm people.

“I would say that half the population of America would be dead by now. Studies have been done over the last 20, 30 years. There is not a single study that can show the GMO is not safe,” she says.

“So these campaigners that are talking about it may cause cancer, it is not based on any science. So imagine if GMOs were unsafe, how would they still be eaten, being sold in shops? It's not true. It's just simple common sense.”