By David Njagi
NAIROBI, May 16, 2011 (IPS) – Farming with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is becoming more widespread in Kenya due the promotion of biotechnology through clever schemes, and the lack of a legal framework for these controversial products.
”Because Africans are strongly against GM foods the companies are using their economic muscle and criminal disregard for local opinion to gain a foothold and get the farmers ‘hooked’.‘
Africa: policy on genetically modified organisms (GMO) and genetically engineered (GE) foods. The Cartagena protocol on biosafety, a supplement to the convention on biological diversity, has strong support in Africa, with a majority of the countries as signatories. In addition, several countries have, in the past, rejected aid (especially unmilled grains) in food imports with concerns for national biosafety. South Africa is so far the only country that is seeing wide-spread use of genetically modified crops.
In Kenya The Sygenta Foundation has triumphed with a novel scheme to insure farmers crops. The Syngenta Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation attached to the Syngenta Company that researches and produces GM seeds. The foundation is involved in the “Safe Biotechnology Management” (SABIMA) project aimed at promoting GM technology among small-scale farmers in Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi.
The Kenya Biodiversity Coalition (KBioC) regards the scheme as part of seed-manufacturing multinational companies’ renewed appetite to use Kenya as a testing ground for GMOs by offering seeds to farmers.
“We suspected that a lot of GM seed, particularly for maize, was being imported from South Africa either as contaminated maize or plain GMOs,” recalls Kamau of KBioC. “We went to the key maize-growing regions and did random sampling. We bought the seed and found it was laced with GM strains.”Controls on seed imports are often slack or lacking.”So even if Kenya has not commercialised GMOs, it is likely that farmers are planting GM seed without their knowledge,” says Kamau.
Despite rejection everywhere but South Africa, Dr. Margaret Karembu, of a pro GMO company, predicts that 10 African countries will have adopted the technology before 2015
read more…http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55648
The Free 
Not even the supposed facts are correct (e.g. Egypt and Burkina Faso also plant commercial GM crops), so generalised statements like “public rejection” and “Africans strongly against GM food” are obviously misguided, personal philosophy – I should know because I’m an African and definitely don’t agree!
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“The plants the GM industry wants to produce in Africa are mainly cash crops that are meant for the export market, to be used to feed pigs and cows in Europe and China and as bio-fuel and cooking oil.”
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