Ethiopia’s State Minister of Cabinet Affairs Mr. Zekarias Erkola has urged his countrymen to learn from India’s biotechnology development and regulatory framework. He believes such lessons will help solve some of the challenges facing the country. “The partnership between the government of India and the private sector on cultivation of Bt cotton is impressive. The developments and regulatory procedures which I have seen here are also good” he said. “We can adopt and apply some of them in our context to address some of the challenges we face” he said. Mr. Zekarias was speaking during a study tour of India‘s biotech cotton sub-sectors including research institutes, seed production companies and farmers’ fields.
The study tour, conducted between 13th-19th November 2016, brought together stakeholders from different African countries in a bid to expose them to India’s biotechnology framework, farming experiences and commercial processes. The Ethiopian delegation was led by the Mr. Zekarias from the Prime Minister’s office who was accompanied by two members of parliament, cotton producers and ginners association members as well as two journalists. The team sort to learn how India has successfully implemented biotechnology in agriculture.
The delegation applauded India’s biotech cotton subsector and appreciated how it has positively impacted the livelihood of local communities, especially women and youth, who are mainly involved in Bt cotton farming. Surprised to see that half for the farmers in India grow Bt cotton, Mr. Birhanu Fikade, Senior Editor with The Reporter in Ethiopia expressed his concern on how influential the anti-GMO campaigners have become. “More than 7 million small holder farmers are growing Bt cotton in India and we don’t see this society affected in any way, based on what I had heard before I did not expect that. I think the media needs to play a major role by telling our audience the truth” said Mr. Birhanu.
The Ethiopian government values biotechnology as key for socio-economic development. To benefit from full use of the technology, the country recently developed a biotechnology road map and revised its laws to create an enabling environment for research and application.
On his part, Mr. Haddish Girman from the cotton producers and ginners association said that Ethiopia needs to learn a lot on biotechnology research development and the seed system. “In our country we are not as good in research and development as India, we don’t have the seed system itself and there is no seed supplier in our country. These are things we need to learn” he said.
The study tour brought together delegates from different African countries including Kenya, Ethiopia, Swaziland, Zambia and Malawi. The high delegation is part of the annual series of exchange and outreach programs under the India-Africa Agriculture Engagement, which is generously supported by ISAAA AfriCenter, Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern & Southern Africa (ACTESA/COMESA), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the South Asia Biotechnology Centre (SABC).