Proceedings of a Workshop on Biosafety Capacity Building in Eastern and Southern Africa

The proceedings detail the challenges faced by Eastern and Southern African nations in establishing biosafety regulatory frameworks. It emphasizes the critical gaps in human resources, laboratory infrastructure, and public awareness across knowledge-generating institutions, government bodies, and civil society. The report argues for a regional, resource-sharing approach to risk assessment and data validation to overcome the financial and technical limitations of individual countries.

• Many Eastern and Southern African countries face significant barriers to implementing the Cartagena Protocol, including a lack of national laws, insufficient financial and human resources, and a lack of political commitment.
• Knowledge-generating institutions in the region generally lack the capacity to develop their own GMOs, with South Africa and possibly Kenya being the only exceptions.
• Civil society organizations (CSOs) are severely under-funded and often excluded from the decision-making processes of national biosafety bodies, which are frequently perceived as being decided by a few government entities.
• A regional approach to biosafety is recommended to share the costs of risk assessment, pool limited expertise, and avoid the duplication of work across countries with similar agro-ecological conditions.
• South Africa's biosafety framework, established under the GMO Act of 1997, is cited as a functional and affordable model for other countries in the region due to its separation of scientific risk assessment from decision-making.
• In Zambia, the absence of specific GMO legislation has created risks that the country could become a target for foreign companies wishing to test products in a less regulated environment.
• Tanzania lacks a national biosafety regulatory oversight mechanism and a national biotechnology policy, leading to an inability to process commercial production applications for GM crops.
• Namibia has utilized 'cold runs' and 'mock applications' through the Southern Africa Regional Biosafety (SARB) programme to identify gaps and bottlenecks in its national biosafety framework.
• There is a widespread lack of public awareness regarding GMOs across the region, with information often limited to the urban middle class through English-language media.

APA

Bhagavan, M., & Virgin, I. (2002). Proceedings of a Workshop on Biosafety Capacity Building in Eastern and Southern Africa. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Risk-livelihoods/SEI_Bhagavan_Workshop_Biosafety_2002.pdf

Chicago

Bhagavan, Malur, and Ivar Virgin. Proceedings of a Workshop on Biosafety Capacity Building in Eastern and Southern Africa. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2002. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Risk-livelihoods/SEI_Bhagavan_Workshop_Biosafety_2002.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Bhagavan |first1=Malur |last2=Virgin |first2=Ivar |title=Proceedings of a Workshop on Biosafety Capacity Building in Eastern and Southern Africa |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=2002 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Risk-livelihoods/SEI_Bhagavan_Workshop_Biosafety_2002.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{bhagavan2002proceedings, author = {Bhagavan, Malur and Virgin, Ivar}, title = {{Proceedings of a Workshop on Biosafety Capacity Building in Eastern and Southern Africa}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2002}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Risk-livelihoods/SEI_Bhagavan_Workshop_Biosafety_2002.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }