Africa, Prometheus, and new cultivars, By Uddin Ifeanyi

Prometheus may have suffered the indignity of having an eagle eternally gouge on his liver for transferring fire and its associated technologies from the Olympian gods (who were never going to part with it) to mankind, but humanity is arguably the better for his indiscretion. Africa could already do with cultivars that produce more harvest per hectare sown; yield these harvests over shorter planting cycles; are disease and pest resistant; and need less fertiliser use.

You would not tell from listening in on most domestic discussions about food security that genetically modified (GMO) crops were a crucial part of Asia’s drive towards food security in the 1960s. The task before most Asian governments, then, was how to feed a rapidly growing population whose demand on housing and public infrastructure also meant that less land was available for agriculture. In other words, a spectre haunted Asia more than sixty decades ago — that of Thomas Robert Malthus’ ghost. Widespread hunger, malnutrition, and the perennial droughts in India in the 1960s did indeed look like self-fulfilling aspects of the Malthusian prophecy.

What the Rockefeller and Ford foundations then did in Asia (what is today referred to as the “Green Revolution”) was to spend serious money supporting research into improved rice and wheat varieties. The mix of improved (GMO-based) cultivars, more fertiliser use, and better irrigation (that the research funding resulted in) did eventually reach other major food crops, including millet, beans, cassava, maize, and sorghum. Across these spectrums, the cultivars produced more harvest per hectare sown; yielded these harvests over shorter planting cycles; were disease and pest resistant; and needed both less fertiliser and irrigation.

Against these achievements, the prevalent sense of GMO crops, locally, is of a Frankenstein mixture. An amalgam of genes with the dissonances of Mary Shelley’s recounting of the tale of the birth of the “The Modern Prometheus”, and no less worrisome. With little or no evidence, GMO crops are held up as the main reason behind the welter of diseases in the West, especially cancer — argued in our local echo chambers as the natural outcome of the continuing mutation in the human body of the cornucopia of genes ingested through GMO-based food crops. These conversations invariably end with impassioned exhortations to return to organic African food — there are few other respectable or healthy ways out, apparently.

It is of little import leaning on science in trying to undo these myths. Science, itself, is in the dock of public opinion. Yet, without question, genetic modification is a constant of the animal world’s evolution; and the GMO business simply hastens this process in response to the world’s need to feed more people cheaply. It never ceases to shock our local audience when you remind them that Asians and Caucasians, despite eating these supposedly accursed foods generally, have an average life expectancy higher than for Africans. The point is also missed, or perhaps ignored, that some of the diseases that today afflict the West, and for which the “authentic African mind” would have GMO crops in the dock, are the side effects of man’s successful evolution: longevity, the sciences’ better (and rapidly improving) understanding of the human body and mind, etc.

In the African case, two spectres can be glimpsed from across the not-too-distant horizon. First is the continent’s fecundity: by 2050, Africa’ population is projected to reach 2.5 billion people, nearly twice the 1.36 billion that were here in 2023. By 2100, it would be the world’s most inhabited continent. Egypt, Ethiopia, and Nigeria are expected to account for most of this increase.

It is even harder to sell the fact that a lot of our authentic African foods, which we hold up, today, against the monster of the West’s laboratory-grown alternatives, came to us by way of our pre-colonial association with the Portuguese. My favourite pièce de résistance (on the visibly wrong side of these debates) is often to ask how many of the (usually over-50) in the audience had Kellogg’s Cornflakes for breakfast growing up. Nigeria was slightly richer then, and surprisingly a sizeable number did, and still do. Yet, for some time now Kellogg’s Cornflakes has contained GM maize. Jaws invariably drop. Expectedly. But African jaws should drop even more contemplating the reality that as the world heats up, the choices confronting the continent do not currently offer much room for manoeuvre.

In the African case, two spectres can be glimpsed from across the not-too-distant horizon. First is the continent’s fecundity: by 2050, Africa’ population is projected to reach 2.5 billion people, nearly twice the 1.36 billion that were here in 2023. By 2100, it would be the world’s most inhabited continent. Egypt, Ethiopia, and Nigeria are expected to account for most of this increase. Moreover, Africa is likeliest to be worst affected by a warmer world: losing arable lands to desertification in the north, and to rising sea levels in its littoral regions.

Prometheus may have suffered the indignity of having an eagle eternally gouge on his liver for transferring fire and its associated technologies from the Olympian gods (who were never going to part with it) to mankind, but humanity is arguably the better for his indiscretion. Africa could already do with cultivars that produce more harvest per hectare sown; yield these harvests over shorter planting cycles; are disease and pest resistant; and need less fertiliser use. Soon we would need seeds that are more tolerant of drier (in the north) and more brackish (in the south) planting conditions.

Uddin Ifeanyi, journalist manqué and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.