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

There is growing awareness of the unique and important role smallholder farmers around the world play in conserving, using and enhancing biodiversity. Conventional breeding has created a separation between farmers and specialised breeders.

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.

Farm input subsidy programs play a central role in financing and delivering Green Revolution technologies to small-scale farmers in Africa.These programs are rolled out in numerous African countries-from Ghana to Swaziland.

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Harmonisation of Africa’s seed laws through SADC and COMESA

FARMER-MANAGED SEED SYSTEMS

Training Materials produced by the ACB for smallholder farmers in Africa in several languages on a range of topics dealing with seed and plant variety protection laws, including on: the value of farmer managed seed systems; UPOV 1991 and farmers’ rights; the Arusha PVP Protocol; women as custodians of seed, what is a seed law, harmonisation of A

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

This report considers the N2Africa programme, which aims to develop and distribute improved, certified legume varieties (soya, common bean, groundnut and cow pea); promote and distribute inoculants and synthetic fertiliser; and develop commercial legume markets for smallholder integration in 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Tanzania, Uganda,