Why Africa Needs Fairer Food Laws

Food and agriculture laws hamper food security in Africa and elsewhere, say Tigist Gebrehiwot, Steve Cornelius and Lise Korsten in the journal article ‘Impact of global food and agriculture laws on Africa’s food security’.

- Tigist Gebrehiwot, Steve Cornelius and Lise Korsten

In a world where food security is already under threat from factors such as urbanisation and climate change, the changes wrought in community food systems by globalisation are putting a major strain on food accessibility and availability, especially in vulnerable communities.

Global food and agriculture laws should provide a clear method to ensure future food security. But the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) treaty, the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and other legislation are all problematic in this regard.

The FAO treaty, for example, created a global network of gene banks to store and conserve varieties of plants, genetic resources (GRs) and associated information. These banks are open to the public. As a result, global food corporations often gain access to resources and then patent them, after a minimum of ‘gene fixing’, for exclusive commercial exploitation, to the detriment of the farmers who developed the GRs. (This is analogous to changing the colours used in the cartoon on the opposite page and as a result claiming the original artwork as one’s own and obtaining the sole rights to it.)

The CBD promotes international co-operation to safeguard biodiversity, with Article 15 stating that both provider and user shall take legislative and administrative measures to obtain their fair share from the utilisation of plant resources, GRs and associated knowledge.