Africa is one of the regions in the world currently confronted by acute food insecurity. In the 2023 Global Hunger Index, many African countries appeared among the nations with alarming hunger levels, including Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen.
To survive the growing food crisis, some African countries have resorted to the commercialization of genetically engineered crops otherwise called genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
As far back as 1996, South Africa became the first African country to adopt a GMO when it commercialized the planting of genetically modified maize. Since South Africa paved the way for the adoption of GM crops in Africa, other African countries like Eswatini, Ethiopia, Malawi, Sudan, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya have at different times, similarly, adopted GM crops for commercial farming. Nigeria, for example, has approved four GM crops – cowpea, cotton, soybean, and maize – for commercial planting.
The approval of GM crops in some African countries has, however, not escaped stiff opposition and criticism from some persons and quarters. Writing for the Premium Times, Abdulkareem Mojeed noted that the introduction of GMOs has been a subject of intense debate among scientists, environmentalists, and even food activists as according to him, while some “argue that planting GM seeds will help to produce enough food for the global population, hence achieving food security at a fast pace, others…argue that food productivity can be improved through natural methods.”
To the first category of persons i.e. those who support the introduction of GMOs, the resort to GMOs today is inevitable due to some harsh environmental conditions which negatively affect farming such as drought, soil degradation, crop diseases, etc. They argue that unlike natural crops which are prone to pest attacks, GM crops are “genetically engineered for improved insect resistance and drought tolerance. “
Opposing the above view, some scientists have argued that GMOs, just like any other artificial methods of production, are not as healthy as naturally produced foods. Advancing this view, a non-governmental organization known as the Centre for Food Safety alleges that GM foods pose 6 health risks: toxicity, allergic reactions, antibiotic resistance, immuno-suppression, cancer and loss of nutrition.
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Also lending a dissenting voice to the introduction of GMOS, the Executive Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Nnimmo Bassey, while noting that GMOs pose a danger to our environment stated as follows:
It is totally unacceptable that in the name of food sufficiency, the country is exposing its citizens to products of risky technologies without adequate, independent and/or long-term assessment on their impacts on human and environmental health.
But while the debate on the benefits and the risks associated with the introduction of GMOs in some African countries rages on, the following are the real questions that should stare us in the face as a people:
How did we (Africa) retrograde into a nation that cannot feed itself without the assistance of artificial methods of food production like GMOs?
How did countries like Nigeria regress from being one of the largest producers of food and cash crops like rubber, groundnuts, palm oil, cocoa, etc. in the 1950s-1960s into its present status of a country that spends the whooping sum of N1.9 trillion on food importation?
And why can’t Africa which has about 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land (according to the World Economic Forum) produce enough food to feed its population of 1.4 billion people and even beyond?
