publications

The ACB shares with you a blog written by ACB’s Sabrina Masinjila and KBIOC’s Anne Maina *

On the pretext of supporting scientific innovation for malaria eradication, African countries vociferously defended a techno-fix that does not address the wider determinants of malaria – but rather, represents the changing face of colonial medicine and threatens the biodiversity of an entire continent.

June 2018

In the climate change arena there are two main streams of work – mitigation, which are measures we need to take to stop emissions and halt climate change, and adaptation – the varied practices we are taking and can take to adapt to living with the new conditions that climate change brings.

Huge technical advances in molecular biology and big data biology are leading us towards a ‘forth industrial revolution’ with the ongoing development of novel genetic engineering techniques being reviewed by the UN Conventions for Biological Diversity, under the term ‘synthetic biology’.

This week the water-stressed city of Cape Town hosts the bi-annual Adaptation Futures conference, where scientists, business leaders, and practitioners from the world of development and agriculture will come together to engage in ‘dialogues for solutions’ to

A landmark decision on the establishment of an Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group to realize farmers’ rights was recently taken by the seventh session of the Governing Body (GB7) of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA; also known as the ‘Seed Treaty’).

Someone asked my son when he was about three years old, ‘What is your father’s job?’ He said, ‘Sibseba’, which in Amharic means ‘meetings’. This was because every time my son used to ask me where I was going, I used to tell him to sibseba.

This briefing deals with the three mega mergers taking place in the agriculture sector as Dow Chemical and DuPont are set to merge, China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) is to acquire Syngenta and Bayer is to acquire Monsanto.

This submission is made by the ABC because of serious public interest concerns about the proposed merger between Bayer and Monsanto. This merger is occurring in the context of other related mergers in agricultural input supply, between ChemChina-Syngenta and Dow-Du Pont.

This lobby paper Who will feed Africans: Small-scale farmers not corporations! produced by the partnership between FoEA and ACB, makes the compelling case for African agriculture to transition towards agroecology and food sovereignty, recognising and strengthening the role of small scale farmers, rather than benefiting few large scale c

Press Release from the African Centre for Biodiversity and PELUM Association in collaboration with the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa 29 November 2016 The authoritarian nature of the African Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) Secretariat and its undemocratic processes are scandalous and unacceptable.

Biosafety TWN Briefing - Biosafety aspects of genome-editing techniques. Download 3,4Mb PDF paper

The chemical fertiliser push in Africa and its implications for smallholder farmers is not receiving enough attention in current discourses concerning Green Revolution policies and practises in Africa.

CAGJ Media Round-up March 23, 2015 Seattle and London Actions Protesting Seed Privatization Meeting in London

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

This is a briefing about power and control in our food system, focusing chiefly on South Africa's staple food, maize. It shows how a select group of companies, including Tiger Brands, Pioneer and Premier Foods commandeer the entire maize value chain and continue to squeeze the poorest South Africans.

ACB's comments on the COMESA Harmonisation of seed trade regulations.

The Africa Centre for Biosafety (ACB), supported by Food & Water Europe and the Gaia Foundation, today wrote to UK Ministers for International Development, Business and Environment asking for evidence for the basis of UK

Author: Edward Hammond About the briefing: The interlocking problems of climate change, emissions from fossil fuels, and limited oil reserves have stimulated interest worldwide in the use of plant crops to produce fuel. Agrofuels are not a new idea.

'Marker Assisted Selection' uses molecular markers as tools in a plant or animal breeding programme to select for important agricultural traits, such as nutritional quality, drought tolerance, disease and pest resistance.