Africa needs a common biotechnology policy

A Kenyan legal researcher has urged African countries to adopt continent-wide biotechnology regulations in order to boost food security and calm public fears of new technology.

Pamela Andanda, a Kenya-born law researcher now based at the University of Witwatersand, South Africa, made the call at a Public Understanding of Science in Africa conference held in Nairobi last month.

Andanda's presentation was on using public engagement to bridge the gap between creating regulatory frameworks for biotechnological advances and the actual implementation of the legislation.

"There is a need for a regulatory framework which can be domesticated in all countries on the continent to ensure there is a progressive acceptance and use of the technology in Africa," she said.

Legislation on biotechnology had to take into consideration constitutional provisions and public consultation, said Andanda, who is one of six editors of the South African Law Journal, founded in 1884 and the oldest of its type in the world.

"It is important that people are aware of the complexity of the technology, involved in both the legislation and implementation processes," she noted.

Andanda, an advocate of the High Court of Kenya and former conveyancer and policy research and analysis consultant, was critical of the lack of public engagement in not just drafting but using most technology-related laws.

She said that public participation should go beyond policy formulation and adaptation to include implementation.

"The public must be involved in the process of formulating the laws and not invited to just support it, they must be considered as an important stakeholder in the relationship between science and the public," she said.

As part of her interests in biotechnology, Andanda recently completed working on GenBenefit project, otherwise known as Genomics and Benefit Sharing with Developing Countries: From Biodiversity to Human Genomics (funded by the European Union's Science and Society unit under the sixth Framework Programme).

Andanda is also a member of the strategic advisory committee for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, a special programme of the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank and the World Health Organisation. She is also an executive member of Ethics, Law and Human Rights Working Group of the African AIDS Vaccine Programme.

The Public Understanding of Science in Africa meeting was based at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA).

This month, the directorship of the BIEA will be taken up by Kenya-born Ambreena Manji on a two-year secondment from the law school at Keele University in the UK.

Since her doctoral research in Tanzania in 1997, Manji, a fluent Kiswahili speaker, has written extensively on women's land rights and land reform. Her special areas of interest are Tanzania and Uganda.
published by CAAST-Net