Emerging Technologies Can Work for Africa Only if the Climate is Right

Addis Ababa, 23 August 2002 (ECA) – If effectively harnessed, new and emerging technologies can help catalyze Africa’s transition to sustainable development by lowering the incidence of disease, reducing food insecurity, and decreasing vulnerability to environmental damage by allowing more flexible crop management systems.

However, the expected benefits of both medical (red) and agricultural (green) biotechnology can only be realized if a number of key challenges are addressed, including the extent to which the technologies are relevant to Africa, are pro-poor and mitigate biosafety and related risks.

Biotechnology should be viewed as one part of a comprehensive, sustainable poverty reduction strategy, and not as a technological “quick fix” for Africa’s hunger and poverty problems.

These are the key messages of a new policy research report entitled ‘Harnessing Technologies for Sustainable Development’, to be released by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) to coincide with the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), which takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa from 26 August – 4 September 2002.  

The Report identifies red and green biotechnologies as important ingredients often overlooked as a basis for sustainable development. The recent advances in biotechnologies offer crops that have greater yields, resist pests and diseases, and offer other positive nutritional, health, and environmental attribute. The Report notes that Africa, which depends heavily on agriculture – contributing 30% of Gross Domestic Product and 70% of employment – stands to benefit from any technology that can increase the production of food, enhance its nutritional quality, and minimize the exploitation of forests and marginal lands. Illustrating the range and nature of current risks and opportunities inherent in the biotechnologies, the Report focuses on how to ensure that poor farmers in Africa stand to gain.

Similarly, the breakthroughs in medical biotechnologies are revolutionizing the prevention, diagnosis, management, treatment, and cure of diseases: diagnostic tests are being simplified; more accurate medicines are being produced through pharmacogenics; gene therapy brings the possibility of directly correcting genetic disorders before they appear; and vaccines are being produced that tackle a wider range of diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, and with greater efficiency. The Report notes that these new possibilities are especially needed in Africa at a time that the toll of the HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria epidemics are reversing the health gains achieved over the past four decades.

The Report articulates the potential benefits of specific technologies and argues that the biggest risk for Africa would be to do nothing and let the biotechnology revolution bypass the continent. In doing so, it stresses that the new technologies are no panacea or silver bullet, and highlights a number of key challenges faced by Africa, among them:

• The current focus of biotechnology research on crops grown and disease strains that are prevalent in developed, rather than developing countries;

• The fact that in health, only 10% of research and development spending is directed to the health problems of 90% of the world’s people;

• The reality that most African countries are not well equipped to address the potential risks of these technologies to human and animal health, and the environment;

Recognizing that poor people and poor countries lack resources, infrastructure, and the business environment to attract new technologies and related investments, the Report outlines key components for a technology-infused development strategy within these limitations. It includes lessons learned and best practice examples from across countries in the continent, about strategic partnerships that are successful, products and processes proven to work, and ways to encourage new ideas and initiatives.

Biotechnology, the Report emphasizes, is only one of a suite of technologies to be embedded in established breeding and selection programmes. It argues that reaping the full benefit of the technological revolution will require critical planning and strategic investments – by regional and international organizations and governments, private sectors, and civil society.

African countries must exploit a range of options to ensure that future biotechnology initiatives reach their full potential for alleviating poverty, combating disease and securing food security. Specifically, and among other options, African countries should seek to:

·     Promote African-focused biotechnology research in which emphasis is laid on: the diseases and their strains prevalent in Africa, particularly HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria; and “orphan crops”, particularly cassava, millet sorghum, sweet potato and yams but also other cereals such as maize, rice and wheat;

·     Develop African-owned biotechnology policies whereby all the relevant stakeholders, including civil society, private sector farmer organizations, are involved in the formulation of national plans;

·     Establish national regulatory institutions for risk assessment and management since most African countries have inadequate human resource capacity to perform these functions;

·     Increase investment in modern biotechnology research. The current levels in most African countries are very low (hardly 2% of the total agricultural research funds); and

·     Promote public/private sector partnership in modern biotechnology research;

The experience of African countries that have deployed genetically modified (GM) crops shows that success depends on the extent to which countries have pursued these options. Countries cited as success stories include South Africa (maize and cotton), Kenya (sweet potato), and Egypt (maize, faba beans and cotton).

Beyond individual countries, the Report states that achieving sustainable development will require the production of regional and global public goods, services or resources whose benefits are shared among countries in a region or more broadly. These regional and global public goods include the knowledge, regimes, standards and rules required to address cross-border problems such as infectious disease control and use of GM crops; the institutions that monitor and enforce the rules and regimes; and the benefits that arise and are shared indiscriminately among countries.

To ensure the provision of these goods in sufficient quantity, international collective action will be critical, because no individual country has an incentive to pay for such things as the prevention of contagious diseases, the preservation of biodiversity, or research to develop new crops, vaccines, or drugs to treat tropical diseases.

The provision of these goods, stresses the Report, will require new and innovative financing at the regional level. Since development assistance remains anchored in country-based projects and programmes, greater flexibility will be needed to finance regional programmes for providing regional public goods.

Around $16 billion is allocated annually to international resource transfers for global public goods in health, environment, and knowledge creation, states the Report. Roughly $11 billion of this goes to support national infrastructure for public goods provision – such as basic health care systems and environmental management –leaving only a small share for regional and global public goods. Thus much more needs to be done at the regional level.

Additionally, the Report features innovative new indicators that track the progress of African countries towards sustainable development. These indicators combine 27 key economic, environmental, and institutional variables to track the performance of 38 African countries during the 1975-2000 period, summarizing reasonably the evolution of the current state of sustainable development. They also help identifying key factors that determine success and failures in achieving sustainable development, and priority areas for policy intervention.

The indicators reveal sobering challenges. While some countries have made good progress, many have slipped down the rankings. In fact, only three countries – Mauritius, South Africa, and Botswana – accounting for about 6.5% of the continent’s population, recorded relatively high overall sustainability throughout the period. Even more telling is the fact that among the 38 countries studied, the proportion of the populations living in those with low sustainability rose from one-third in 1975-84 to half in 1995-2000.

(END)

ATTN ALL MEDIA:

Media materials in English are available at www.uneca.org/harnessing/kit

The full report is available from the ECA website at www.uneca.org/harnessing

Tel: +251-1-51 58 26
Fax: +251-1-51 03 65
E-mail: ecainfo@uneca.org
Web: www.uneca.org