As world leaders met last week in Rome to find solutions to the global food
crisis, a number of scientists and other stakeholders also converged on the
Nigerian capital, Abuja, to consider the possibility of increasing Bt cowpea
production in Africa to feed the continent.

The three-day international conference, organized by the Nairobi-based
African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) and the Institute for
Agricultural Research (IAR) of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, attracted
participants from Australia, the United States and some African countries.

Speaker after speaker called for effective ways to propagate the message
that Bt cowpea, given the necessary attention, could be a major source of
food especially protein, to the ever-increasing population of the continent.

Currently, AATF is engaged in a process of developing a new genetically
modified cowpea with a Bt gene that would enable smallholder farmers in
Africa to have access to high quality seed and socially acceptable cowpea
varieties with increased resistance to maruca pod borer, an insect that
troubles the produce.

In a presentation on her behalf, Nigeria's Federal Minister of Science and
Technology, Chief (Mrs.) Grace Ekpiwhre, assured the participants that the
government of Nigeria, the largest producer and consumer of cowpea,
supported every progress being made to develop Bt cowpea.

"For many years, plant breeders have used conventional plant breeding
methods to improve crops, and to help speed up natural selection and
evolution by combining different genes for crop improvement but all these
have not been yielding desirable results.

"A major advantage of modern biotechnology is that it often generates
strategies for genetic improvement that can be applied to many different
crops, and beneficial organisms which this project employs."

Nigeria and Niger, together, produce about 86 percent of the world's cowpea,
which is considered the most important food grain legume in the dry savannah
of tropical Africa where it is grown on more than 12.5 million hectares of
land.

"Over 200 million people consume the crop, thus an improvement in cowpea
productivity in Africa will ensure quality and increased food yield,
improved health for all, eradication of malnutrition in the African child
and assurance of prosperity of the rural sector," said the minister.

For his part, Professor Shehu Ado, Director of IAR, said the proper
organization of the conference even indicated that "Africans, given the
political backing by their governments, can engineer effective solutions to
problems on the continent."

He said the importance of cowpea to all, especially the poor, earned it the
Hausa nickname "naman talaka" which literally means "meat for the poor."

The Director of the Tamale-based Savannah Agricultural Research Institute,
Professor A.B. Salifu, was happy to state that Ghana now had a legislative
instrument to enable scientists conduct field trials on Genetically Modified
products in agriculture.

"As I have had the occasion to remark before, for us in Ghana the argument
for deployment of GM products in our agriculture no longer lies with the
science; what is key now should be the issue of public perception of the
concept including issues related to consumer awareness."

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