The industrialised world's plant biotechnology
portfolio is based on a limited number of large commodity crops and input
traits, and in general is unavailable and unaffordable, if not unsuitable, to
the needs of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where per capita agricultural production
has decreased since the 1960s. Governments and organisations involved in
providing technological help must take into account the conditions under which
small-scale — often subsistence — farmers of a particular region work. It is
suggested that in order to be sustainable, biotechnology for SSA should in the
first instance be tissue culture-, molecular marker- and biocontrol-based, as
well as stongly orientated toward regional crop diversity. However, many of the
constraints that retard development in SSA, for example, poverty, chronic
malnutrition, urbanisation and HIV/Aids, will also initially affect the
implementation and maintenance of viable biotechnology programmes.
Increasingly, reports on the ills that have befallen developing countries
identify a main cause as lack of political will on the part of these countries'
leaders.

South African Journal of Botany
2004, 70(1): 1–11