Neither plant variety protection (PVP) systems nor modern biotechnology offer miracle solutions to food insecurity and malnutrition in Africa; yet, they offer meaningful tools for enhancing food production and alleviating poverty. Most of Africa, excluding South Africa, missed out on the green revolution of the sixties and remain sluggish in adopting biotech crops, thereby running the risk of losing out on the gene revolution. On the positive side, considerable efforts over the past decade have now approached the point of implementation of wider adoption of breeders’ rights and biotech crops.

UPOV membership presently stands at 63 plus the European Union (EU) with 27 and the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) with 16, making a total of 106. Apart from the OAPI group as one member, Africa has only four members out of some 54 countries: South Africa, the 10th member in 1978, and Kenya, Tunisia and Morocco that joined very recently, compared to Latin America with nine members. The recent UPOV Model serves to accommodate new applicants in several ways. PVP has proven benefits: stimulating plant breeding, private seed enterprise development, access to new varieties, and reducing piracy, as confirmed again in the 2005 UPOV impact study in five target developing countries. The delay in African adoption of PVP, therefore, remains a cause for concern.

Plant variety protection can only operate adequately in an enabling environment that facilitates seed trade, variety registration and adherence to quality standards. It is a positive sign that the many cycles of interaction between stakeholders and regulators have now resulted in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in the 14-country Southern African Development Community (SADC). An MOU means different things to different people, but, in this case, it provides a framework for a harmonized approach in variety testing, tests for agricultural value, a regional variety catalogue, seed certification, and a reduced quarantine pest list. GM biotech varieties are presently not eligible until SADC reaches a common position on crop biotechnology. The MOU will now move to Permanent Secretaries for signing, submission to national Parliaments for approval, development of action plans, implementation, and consolidation. It will enter into force when two-thirds of SADC member states have approved the MOU (one can assume that it should take the form of a harmonized set of seed legislation before approval).

A plant breeders’ rights protocol for the SADC region has now reached a semi-final stage. It has been drafted in accordance with the new model developed by UPOV and incorporates UPOV 1991 provisions of 25 years’ protection for trees and vines, and 20 years for others, essential derivation, etc. It also accommodates eligibility for protection of existing varieties not conforming to novelty, subject to application within one year of entering into force of the PBR Protocol. Such known varieties must have been registered on an official variety list or enjoy current breeders’ protection under an acceptable system or in the process of application. The period of protection will be 20 years minus the time that the variety has been officially listed or awarded breeders’ protection. The privilege of using harvested material as plant propagating material is extended only to “subsistence” farmers and no mention is made of exclusion of ornamentals, trees or vines. These uncertainties need to be clarified as is omission of requirements for entry into force for the region and for a member state.

Both the seed legislation MOU and the PBR protocol will be handled administratively at the SADC Secretariat level but details have not yet been finalized These two regional developments are to be welcomed but possible pitfalls should be kept in mind:

• Continued bureaucratic delays in approving and implementing the MOU and PBR protocol
• Putting GM crops on the back-burner until biosafety and policy issues are cleared up
• Farmers getting restless about lack of access to new conventional and biotech varieties, obtaining such seeds without approval and proceeding to plant them
• Some member states adding additional requirements, as they are doing to draft biosafety frameworks, thereby negating a harmonized approach
• Inadequate capacity at member states and SADC Secretariat level to administer the systems and enforce them
• Considering the inability to regulate farmers’ privilege in most countries where 50 to 90 per cent of seed comes from informal systems and where farm-saved seed is rampant
• Seed companies focusing on hybrids and holding back improved open-pollinated varieties
• Lack of accepting that comprehensive IPR systems – PBR, patents, trade marks, geographic indicators-- are required to protect novel plants, failing which, African plant breeding and innovation will remain exposed to piracy. 

The hard work put in by stakeholders and regulators should be applauded but success will require expedited approval and implementation. Time is not on the side of Africa.

Dr Wynand van der Walt can be reached at wynandjvdw@telkomsa.net
 

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