Articles

"To harness the globally available technologies, African leaders will need to take into account the multisectoral dimension of African agriculture and pay particular attention to the urgency of investing in rural infrastructure, higher agricultural training and creation of regional markets."

Africa is yet to adopt full scale technology-led development. Steve Mbogo spoke to the Director of the Belfer Center's Science, Technology, and Globalisation Project and professor at Harvard University Calestous Juma on the opportunities that await the continent as a late comer.

Despite widespread adoption of genetically modified crops in many countries, heated controversies about their advantages and disadvantages continue. Especially for developing countries, there are concerns that genetically modified crops fail to benefit smallholder farmers and contribute to social and economic hardship. Many economic studies contradict this view, but most of them look at short-term impacts only, so that uncertainty about longer-term effects prevails. The authors address this shortcoming by analyzing economic impacts and impact dynamics of Bt cotton in India.

Cell phone use has grown faster in Africa than in any other region of the world since 2003....Of course, South Africa—the most developed nation—still has the highest penetration, but across Africa, countries have leapfrogged technology, bringing innovation and connectivity even to remote parts of the continent, opening up mobile banking and changing the way business is done.

If African countries can't plant genetically modified crops to produce more and healthier food, vulnerable populations will be at risk, argues Calestous Juma.

"The rising concern over global food price volatility has put agriculture at the center of international diplomacy. But unlike the 1950s when food aid became a major tool in international relations, modern interactions among states are being defined by trade and knowledge transfer. A new field — agricultural diplomacy (AgroDiplomacy) — is emerging as countries learn more about their shared ecological experiences and agricultural trade interests. The prospects for building such relations are evident in the rise in cooperation between Africa and Latin America."

"...it is a mistake to see high prices as a proxy for actual hunger. Most of the world's hungry citizens do not get their food from the world market, and most who rely on the world market are not poor or vulnerable to hunger."

China's Ministry of Science and Technology launched the China-Africa Science and Technology Partnership on November 24, 2009.  The ministry announced that technological cooperation will be enhanced in areas such as water management and conservation, sanitation, crop breeding, health, and renewable energy. One hundred joint research partnerships will be created, and 100 African scientists at the postdoctoral level will have the opportunity to conduct research at China's technology parks, research institutes, and private enterprises. Chinese scientists and engineers will also travel to African countries to provide technical guidance, and in order to increase the research capacities of African countries, China will also donate laboratory equipment.

Science, Technology, and Globalization Project Director Calestous Juma shared his insights into the history and future of Sino-African relations in a February 2008 interview with that's China columnist Jing Zhang.

"To summarize and conclude this special issue of AgBioForum it will be useful first to present the lessons learned so far in the form of a scheme for predicting which biofortified food technologies will enjoy the greatest political support or opposition, and from which actors on the political landscape. The approach here is necessarily hypothetical, given that most of the biofortified food technologies currently under scientific development have yet to be released into any commercial marketplace. After offering this summary projection of likely political responses, this final section then examines the likely consequences in terms of actual nutritional impact."

"Efforts to introduce novel agricultural crops or foods are welcomed and supported by some politically important groups in the developing world, ignored by others, and at times opposed by a significant few. When considering the political actors on the landscape most likely to take active positions either for or against novel foods, there is little or no evidence of political resistance to any of the biofortified foods developed thus far using conventional crop-breeding techniques, yet resistance to GMO crops has been widespread for much of the past decade. Which actors on the landscape are opposing GMOs, how powerful are they, and will their opposition weaken if the current generation of GMO crops carrying improved agronomic traits is followed by a second generation of GMOs carrying improved nutrient traits?"