Tag Archives: biotechnology

The African Biosafety Network of Expertise (ABNE), an Agency of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and Nigeria’s Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu will hold a training programme for African policy and decision-makers on Biosafety, in collaboration with the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) and the Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA. According to a Concept Note developed by the ...

We are at crossroads in the struggle for sustainable agriculture, safe foods, biosafety and biosecurity. Navigating this intersection and assuring Nigerians that their concerns are not pushed out of view by profit-driven biotech transnational corporations and their agents can only be achieved through a broad movement of vigilant Nigerians, and Africans at large. The coming together of faith based organisations, ...

The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) has said that, during the last year, African farmers planted a total of 3.5 million hectares of Biotech/GM Crops. This was also during the 20th year of global GM crops commercialisation. Director of the Afri-Centre of ISAAA, Dr. Margaret Karembu, who presented Africa’s report during the launch of the 2015 Annual ...

Minister of Environment, Amina J. Mohammed, has said that Nigeria is ready to deploy biotechnology to boost the nation’s economy. She told media executives at the close of a courtesy visit to her office in Abuja on Tuesday by a delegation of the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) in Africa Programming Committee (PC) that Nigeria is blessed with experts ...

The Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association (NTMA) has expressed its support for ‎the environmental release and commercialisation of genetically modified Bt Cotton for Nigerian farmers. The GM cotton is said to be resistant to pests’ invasion. A position paper signed by the NTMA Acting Director-General, Hamma Kwajaffa, noted that while the Nigerian textile industry is a strategic non-oil sector and the largest ...

About 100 groups representing some five million Nigerians, comprising farmers, faith-based organisations, civil society groups, students and local community groups, have lodged an opposition to Monsanto’s attempts to introduce genetically modified (GM) cotton and maize into Nigeria’s food and farming systems. In written objections submitted to the biosafety regulators, the groups have cited numerous health and environmental concerns and alleged ...

“Agriculture must cease from being treated as development programme; agriculture must be treated as business. Our goal will be to pursue government supported private sector agriculture value chain to make agriculture more productive, efficient and competitive.” – President Muhammadu Buhari Since his assumption of office in May last year, Muhammadu Buhari, president of Nigeria, has repeated at many fora that ...

Sir Rufus Ebegba, the director-general and chief executive officer of the National Biosafety Management Agency (NABMA), at a meeting held in Abuja to review two applications submitted for the release of genetically-modified (GM) cotton and maize, said Nigerians should prepare to see more GM products in the market to serve as alternative to consumers’ choice. In this interview with Etta Michael ...

Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) are international legal instruments whose goals include environmental protection, which entails measures to remedy, mitigate or otherwise deal with global and/or regional environmental concerns. These agreements are entered into by a considerable number of states or international organisations as Parties, and embodied in a single instrument or more related instruments. On the other hand, the Cartagena Protocol on ...

The European Parliament on Wednesday in Brussels, Belgium voted to oppose the import of three genetically modified (GM) soybeans into the European Union. It said the Commission’s proposed authorisation of GM soybeans MON 87705×MON 89788, FG72 and MON 87708×MON 89788 for use as food and feed was “not consistent with Union law” that aims at a high level of health ...