Kenyan fight against GM crops heads to the appeal court
The state has opened the door for modified seeds to help grow food. Activists desperately want to close it.
Maureen Kasuku
The Kenya Peasants League says it is collecting a million signatures to support its appeal against a ruling that okayed genetically modified (GMO) crops – the latest front in a decades-long battle to keep GMOs out of Kenya.
In last week’s ruling, the High Court of Kenya dismissed a petition by the Law Society of Kenya and a collective of food sovereignty activists. It also affirmed a 2023 decision by the Environment and Land Court greenlighting modified crops.
How food is grown is at the centre of a heated debate. Agroecologists and local farmer groups argue against GMOs. The corporations selling them, biotech scientists and policy wonks aligned with the global agriculture industry argue for GMOs.
In 2022, amidst the country’s worst drought in 40 years, Kenyan authorities lifted a decade-long ban on GMOs. The decision was driven by President William Ruto. And that’s the decision the Law Society and others challenged.
Claire Nasike, an agroecologist at the British charity group Christian Aid, says farmers need to control and breed their own seeds. “Lifting the ban will expose small-scale farmers to exorbitant seed prices and tie them down in the cycle of debt and intellectual property laws by giant multinationals.”
Professor Richard Oduor, the chair of Kenya University Biotech Consortium, says modified crops give farmers more resilient and higher yielding crops, and solve food security. In an interview with Alliance for Science just after the High Court ruling, he said it is “a big win not just for scientists but also for farmers and Kenyans in general”.
With backing from the courts, Kenya can move ahead with GM crops. But it could struggle with exports to its neighbours in the East Africa Community.
“Other member countries like Tanzania, Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo have declared their opposition to GM seeds and crops,” warned Mariam Mayet, a South African campaigner who advocates for agroecology
I'm a long time believer in GM seed technology, and I think it's a shame it hasn't been more widely adopted. That said there is a real risk. It's not that the seeds will create a biological cataclysm or even this stuff about "controlling their own seeds." It's that the West will use the fact that African countries are using GM seeds as a way to keep African crops out of their markets.