Money, politics keep progress at a crawl

By The Washington Post

	JUSTIN GILLIS / THE WASHINGTON POST Ugandan researchers W.K. Tushemereirwe, left, and Rose Gahakwa hope to develop pest- and disease-resistant bananas.
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If biotechnology is ever going to transform agriculture in Africa, you wouldn't know it from the evidence on the ground today. A recent journey through four African countries, and telephone interviews with people in several more, turned up evidence of success only in South Africa. There, both commercial farmers and poor, subsistence farmers are growing biotech crops, and they appear to be reaping economic gains.

But even in South Africa, the crops that have been successful were developed in America, and have essentially trickled down to African farmers. Projects are under way across Africa to use genetic engineering to improve staple crops on which tens of millions of poor people depend, such as cassava, cowpeas and sweet potatoes. But after more than a decade of work, not a single program has led to government approval and release of a new variety.

Ugandan banana biologist W.K. Tushemereirwe hopes to change that.

Outside the Ugandan capital of Kampala, white-coated scientists working in his unit hunkered down recently at a laboratory bench in a new government laboratory devoted to genetic engineering.

Bananas are the world's fourth-most-important crop, after rice, corn and wheat, based on the number of people who depend on them as a staple. Starchy bananas, similar to plantains, are a vital food in Uganda and throughout the tropics. But, as a result in part of growing trade links that help spread plant diseases, bananas are under attack from a host of pests.

Belgian and Ugandan researchers have struck up a collaboration, but even if the research goes smoothly, they said, they could easily be a decade away from having an improved highland banana.

Western agricultural companies have pledged to support other projects scattered around Africa. Monsanto, a St. Louis company, has backed efforts in Kenya toward a virus-resistant sweet potato, but after a decade of work, field tests were disappointing. Biotech advocates said government approval of any improved African crop remains at least three to five years away.

Some of the problems are political. Amid global controversy, many African countries have been slow to put in place the necessary regulations and test capability for biotech crops. All sides agree that new crops are going to have to go through arduous reviews, since the environmental risks they entail vary from place to place.

Many of the publicly funded, pro-biotech agricultural researchers doing the work said that money, not politics, has been their biggest problem. Companies have begun to contribute valuable patents and technical help for African projects, they said, but the industry's assistance has not been accompanied by any large infusion of cash.

Some scientists said African farming faces more pressing needs. Hans Herren, director general of the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, in Nairobi, Kenya, has worked in Africa for 25 years, and he won the World Food Prize for a program to control the cassava mealybug, a threat to the staple crop of 200 million Africans.

"I think it is wrong to sort of say that we need genetically modified crops to feed Africa," he said. "We need many other things first. You would need better agronomy, you need better fertilizer, you need better crop management. You have to make sure there are markets, there's storage, there are roads, there are trucks. Maybe in 15 or 20 years when we have solved all these other things, biotechnology will have something to contribute."

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