NEWS FROM AFRICA
1.New report - Africa's Green Revolution rolls out the Gene Revolution
2.Genes from Africa: the Colonisation of Human DNA
3.NIGERIA: ERA condemns Monister's plan to distribute GMO seeds to farmers

EXTRACT: ERA warned that the minister's arguments about how well GMOs are doing in the world are all from a discredited report packaged by the biotech industry-backed International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).

NOTE: Nigeria's science minister obviously needs to check out our fact file on GM crops:
http://www.gmwatch.eu/archives/59-FACT-FILE-ON-GM-CROPS.html
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1.New report - Africa's Green Revolution rolls out the Gene Revolution

Dear Friends and Colleagues

African Centre for Biosafety produces another Briefing paper, titled:
"Africa's Green Revolution rolls out the Gene Revolution" by Mariam Mayet

"THE 'New Green Revolution in Africa', touted since the 1990s, was given renewed impetus two and a half years ago, when the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations launched the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).1 Although AGRA itself does not incorporate genetically modified (GM) crops in its projects, the ominous presence of GM companies and GM technologies hovers over the Green Revolution push like a bad dream.

Millions of dollars have been poured into the coffers of a host of carefully selected role players, to lay the groundwork for the industrialisation of African agriculture and creation of markets for agribusiness giants. These AGRA players include US groups such as Citizens Network for Foreign Affairs (CNFA) and the International Fertiliser Development Centre (IFDC). Both these groups are successfully enmeshing the corporate interests of Syngenta Crop Protection, Dow AgroSciences, Bayer CropScience, Du Pont Crop Protection and Monsanto within AGRA projects in select African countries.

It is also becoming extremely important to link the huge amounts of cash flowing into ‘Green Revolution’ coffers, to the enormous cash injections flowing from the Gates Foundation into biosafety projects in Africa . The beneficiaries of huge Gates Foundation biosafety grants are all linked directly with, or are funded by, the biotechnology industry. These projects strategically avoid the promotion of GM crops that are in commercial production and instead focus on 'pie in the sky' nutritionally enhanced GM 'biofortified' and 'climate-friendly' drought-tolerant crops. This is done to win over the hearts and minds of reluctant Africans, while paving the path for the gene giants to gain a firmer and more respectable foothold in Africa."

To download the whole document, please log on to:
http://www.biosafetyafrica.org.za/images/stories/dmdocuments/gene_revolution_bri ef.pdf

This paper has been published in the Third World Resurgence, April edition.

Kind Regards
Polelo Matloga
Administrator
African Centre for Biosafety
http://www.biosafetyafrica.org.za/
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2.Genes from Africa: the Colonisation of Human DNA
By Edward Hammond & Mariam Mayet
http://www.biosafetyafrica.org.za/images/stories/dmdocuments/GenesfromAfrica_the Colonisation_of_HumanDNA_Brief.pdf
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3.ERA condemns FG's plan to distribute GMO seeds to farmers
Dan Gumm
Vanguard, 15 April 2009
http://www.vanguardngr.com/content/view/33603/43/

THE Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has condemned plans by the Federal Government to distribute Genetically Modified Crops to Nigerian farmers in the current farming season, saying the decision is at the instance of biotech firms that want to dictate Nigeria's food needs for profit motives only. According to ERA/FoEN, "the move is also not supported by law and is against the spirit of the precautionary principle of the Cartagena Protocol which Nigeria has endorsed."

ERA/FoEN's stance is coming on the heels of media reports quoting Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Bako Zaku, as saying the ministry had concluded plans to start the distribution of biotechnology seeds to farmers, a step which it wants Nigerians to embrace.

But in a reaction through a statement issued in Lagos, ERA/FoEN warned that the minister's arguments about how well GMOs are doing in the world are all from a discredited report packaged by biotech industry-backed International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).

"Distributing GMO seeds to Nigerian farmers is the culmination of a systematic attempt to allow profit-driven biotech companies to dictate what we grow, how we grow it and what we eat. We demand that the minister says the truth about the unfulfilled promises of the biotech industry and their GM crops," advised ERA/FoEN Executive Director, Nnimmo Bassey.