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We are in the midst of the worst drought in 40 years. In the northern parched areas of the country, rivers have dried up and millions of livestock have died from lack of food. Some 4.4 million Kenyans do not have enough to eat, and the situation will only get worse if the next rainy season fails like his five previous ones. “I’ve never seen anything this bad. There’s nothing on the farm. The drought is too severe,” says Daniel Magondo, a cotton and maize grower in central Kenya.
A record-breaking drought forces Kenya to face a controversial topic. That is whether countries should grow genetically modified (GM) crops. These are plants that have had genes from another organism inserted into their DNA to give them new traits, such as resistance to disease or drought. GM crops are completely safe to eat and widely grown in the United States, Canada, Brazil and India, but are opposed by governments in many parts of the world, including Europe and East Africa.
So did Kenya in 2012 when the Cabinet banned their imports. rice field. And in October 2022, the Cabinet declared that farmers would be able to grow his pest-resistant GM corn. Since 2015, armyworm is estimated to have ravaged maize crops, destroying his third of Kenya’s annual production.
In a statement released in October, Kenya’s cabinet said GM maize would help improve the country’s food supply and alleviate some of the pressure of the ongoing drought. We have ordered 11 tonnes of pest-resistant GM maize seed, which is widely cultivated and is also being tested in Kenya. But then, in February 2023, after his four legal complaints, three in Kenyan courts and one in the East African Court of Justice, his GMO regulator in Kenya decided not to release the seeds. Banned.
A complaint was submitted by the Center for Food and Adequate Living Rights (CEFROHT), an environmental non-profit organization in Uganda. Others were submitted by the Kenya Farmers Federation and Kenyan attorney Paul Mwangi. CEFROHT says Kenya’s decision violates the East African Community Treaty, which requires East African countries to protect their natural resources. Other groups are concerned that growing GM maize will shift the farmer’s focus away from indigenous crops, and with the planting season fast approaching, he will have to wait until a court decides to stop him in Kenya. The future of GM crops is in limbo.
Timothy Machi welcomed the withdrawal of the GM ban. Machi, Kenya’s leader of the development NGO RePlanet Africa, which campaigns to improve food security in Africa, said: So when news broke that the move was challenged in court, Machi helped organize protests in Nairobi and neighboring Uganda’s Kampala. In two cities, about 200 scientists and campaigners marched in support of his GM crops. They held up signs reading ‘GMOs for food security’ and promoted the hashtag ‘Let Kenya Eat’.
