Published in August 2002: Volume on Sustainable Development

In August 2002, to coincide with the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), ECA will publish "Catalyzing Transition to Sustainable Development", a new report which maintains that combating HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, tackling food insecurity, and reducing environmental stress should be prominent objectives of the fight for poverty reduction and sustainable development in Africa.

The Report identifies the epidemiological (health), and agricultural productivity transitions as currently the priority along the continent's path towards sustainability. Recognizing that modern technology is indispensable to such transitions, the Report focuses on how the 'new' technologies - medical biotechnology, and agricultural biotechnology, in particular -- can contribute, and the challenges involved.

Improving Africa's Health

Malnutrition and ill-health are prevalent in Africa while mortality and morbidity rates are high contributing to shorter life spans. In recent years, the situation has further been worsened by the spread of HIV/AIDS and the resurgence of tuberculosis and malaria. The pervasiveness of low level of well-being is caused, and in turn perpetuated by, limited productive capacity. Combined with the fact that about 70 percent of all Africans earn their livelihood from agriculture, low, and in some instances falling, agricultural productivity engenders considerable poverty and food insecurity. The situation is further exacerbated as a result of rapid population growth and urbanization, contributing to unsustainable development in most African countries.

This evidence has been corroborated by the index of overall sustainability developed by the ECA. The index jointly measures the economic, environmental, and institutional sustainability of African countries. It combines twenty-eight key economic, environmental, and institutional indicators and tracks the performance of thirty-eight African countries from 1974 - 2000. The scores reveal that the number of countries with low sustainability has increased (from 16 during 1974 - 83 to 19 countries to during 1994 - 2000), while the number of those with high sustainability remained the same (only 3 countries). More tellingly, the fraction of the total population (of the thirty-eight countries) which lived in low sustainability countries increased from a third during 1974 - 83 to a half in 1994 - 2000.

What this means is that the continent urgently needs rapid, sustained, sufficiently broad-based economic transformation that is equitable within and across generations -- in short, sustainable development. It is therefore critical for Africa to explore radical new avenues to these problems. The Report maintains that advances in, and diffusion of, technology can, under the right circumstances, pull Africa out of its current state of low development.

Despite significant improvements, the state of health in the continent is still unsatisfactory. The application of genetic engineering techniques to health care, 'red biotechnology', is creating a wide range of powerful new tools that are changing the ways that common diseases are diagnosed, managed, and treated. These include gene therapy, DNA-based vaccines, and new vaccine delivery systems. Modern biotechnology is creating the fascinating possibility that vaccines capable of tackling a wider range of diseases with increased efficiency, including sexually transmitted diseases, will soon be developed. These medical technologies have the potential to reverse the damage being done by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other diseases and put the continent back on the path of the epidemiological transition to sustainability.

Enhancing Agricultural Productivity

Agricultural productivity is quite low in Africa, particularly in SSA, calling for an accelerated agricultural productivity transition, which is unlikely to occur without substantial changes in the technology of agricultural production. The Biotechnological or Gene Revolution, which constitutes the third phase of the Green revolution, mainly consists of technological applications involving reproductive biology and/or the manipulation, or use, of the genetic material of living organisms for specific uses, including the use of molecular DNA markers, gene manipulation and gene transfer, and vegetative reproduction. Of particular importance to Africa are the recent advances in crop biotechnology that promise to produce foods with greater yields, higher resistance to pest and disease, and better nutritional, health and environmental attributes.

Putting in Place the Right Policies

Realizing the expected benefits of both medical and agricultural biotechnology in Africa is challenging in a number of respects. First, some of these technologies may not be readily applicable in Africa, as the effective exploitation of them demands considerable investments in physical and human capital as well as institutions. It partly reflects the need for systematic provision of information and training to generate sufficient knowledge about the use of specific technology. Also, it is partly to do with the high cost of developing some of these technologies and adapting them to a specific location. Second, the relevant technologies are not without inherent potential risks, mainly concerning bio-safety (or risks to human health and safety as well as to the conservation of the environment).

Regulatory diligence is thus required, although available evidence suggests that such risks are minimal. Finally the potential of biotechnology can be realized if and only if its innovations reach the ultimate beneficiaries. Delivering these innovations to poor and vulnerable individuals and communities (such as farmers, AIDS sufferers, and communities with high risk of malaria and tuberculosis) is thus as important as generating them. In short, the Report identifies that successful use of new technologies depends on efforts to educate, innovate, regulate, and deliver, and the Report provides recommendations as to how countries can go about creating the right environment for effectively utilizing these new technologies.

Overall, the report underlines the significant contribution of modern medical and agricultural biotechnology to increased food security and better health in African countries by speeding-up the agricultural productivity and epidemiological transitions in these countries. Indeed, the greatest risk for Africa would be to do nothing, letting the biotechnology revolution to bypass the continent.

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For more details, write to ecainfo@uneca.org