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At the National Seed Dialogue and Celebration, hosted by the African Centre for Biodiversity at Constitution Hill in December 2017, this session on Participatory Plant Breeding and Smallholder Farmers looked at issues of smallholder farmers & seed breeding/crop improvement and the pot
In December 2016 Monsanto shareholders voted in favour of the sale of the company to Bayer for US$66 billion, making it the largest-ever foreign corporate takeover by a German company. Both Bayer and Monsanto are major global manufacturers of agrochemicals and seeds, including genetically modified seed.
This paper explores the likely implications of an approved Bayer-Monsanto merger for the South African agricultural system.
The revised regulations for the implementation of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation’s (ARIPO’s) Arusha Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants continues to perpetuate the impingement of national sovereignty, fails to safeguard farmers’ rights and farmer seed systems and to provide safeguards against biopiracy
Draft Regulations for the implementation of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation’s (ARIPO’s) Arusha Protocol for the Protection of New Plant Varieties (Arusha Protocol), were considered for adoption in June 2016.
Sub Saharan Africa’s seed systems are undergoing a profound transition, with the private sector leading the way.
The latest salvo in the battle over Africa's seed systems has been fired, writes Stephen Greenberg, with the Gates Foundation and USAID playing puppet-masters to Africa's governments - now meeting in Addis Ababa - as they drive forward corporation-friendly seed regulations that exclude and marginalize the small farmers whose seeds and labour fee
PRESS RELEASE FROM ALLIANCE FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY IN AFRICA Addis Ababa, Accra 3 April 2014 The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)1 strongly condemns the move by the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) to join UPOV 1991, which will effectively outlaw the centuries-old African f
The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa[1] strongly condemns the approval during September 2013, by the Council of Ministers of the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) of the draft COMESA Seed Trade Harmonization Regulations, 2013 (hereinafter referred to as the '
This submission was made by civil society groups at a COMESA meeting in Lusaka during March 2013, in which serious concerns were raised about the COMESA seed trade laws as negatively impacting on small farmers in the COMESA region.
The core of the paper is focused on the pressures being exerted on African governments to adopt the 1991 Act of the International Union for the Protection of Plant Varieties (UPOV), particularly through regional harmonisation of plant variety protection (PVP) policies and laws.
(Dar es Salaam, Harare, Kampala, Johannesburg). The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) has proposed a draft regional harmonized policy and legal framework on Plant Variety Protection (PVP), based on the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) Convention of 1991.