Ghana must chart own course in biotech - Researcher

A researcher has called for a policy to develop the national capacity for the exploitation of biotechnology in line with national interest.

Mr George Owusu Essegbey of the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (STEPRI), which is under the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (C.S.I.R.), said the policy should deal with the protection of the environment, safety and risk assessment of biotechnology and in particular, genetic engineering applications.

Mr Essegbey was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Accra on Monday, over on-going debates involving genetic engineering and the way forward for the country. STEPRI recently hosted a Stakeholders' Consultation Workshop on Biotechnology under the auspices of the African Technology Policy Studies (ATPS) network based in Nairobi, as part of process to come out with a biotech policy.

Major advances in biotechnology have opened up a wide range of opportunities for application in the developing countries, especially, in the health and agriculture sectors.

However, some of theses advances, such as Genetically Modified (GM) foods and human cloning have raised hot debates worldwide. Some Southern African countries, just recently, boycotted GM grains in the midst of hunger because of safety concerns.

"Biotechnology applications could be good or bad, safe or unsafe, depending on how it is used. Ghana therefore, has to formulate its own agenda for biotechnology application," Mr Essegbey noted.

He said it was possible, for example, to produce drought-resistant maize by finding a drought-resistant gene in another plant, which could then be inserted into a maize crop, to enable it withstand environmental stresses.

Mr Essegbey said genetic engineering was a critical tool being harnessed for development worldwide and that it was important that developing countries, such as Ghana built capacities for biotechnology development. "More importantly, advanced countries are applying biotechnology to suit their circumstances. Such applications may not be suitable for the developing countries and there is the need for developing countries to make their own applications on the basis of local needs."

He said this could be done by developing the human resource base and investing in research institutions so that the useful techniques of biotechnology could be harnessed by specialists and specialised institutions to enhance the country's development.

Mr. Essegbey said a National Biosafety Committee had been established by the Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology, to come out with guidelines to ensure a biosafety policy for the country.

In Ghana some biotechnology applications are already available in the agriculture and health sectors. These include tissue culture in crop development involving the cloning or the production of an exact genetic copy of plants such as cassava and pineapple and yam within the shortest time.

It is one of the core activities of the Biotechnology and Nuclear Agriculture Research Institute (BNARI) of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission.

In the health sector, the In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) technology, which involves the fertilisation of the female eggs and male sperms fertilisation outside the human body, is also available in Ghana.

The twenty-first century has been described as the biotech age, in which scientists say genetic engineering has the potential to produce healthy agriculture crops within the shortest time, conquer cancer, grow new blood vessels and create new organs.

Though there are grounds to be optimistic, there are reasons to be pragmatic as well since biotechnology advances have raised a number of critical issues.

The announcement, for instance, in Febuary, 1997, of the birth of a sheep named Dolly, an exact genetic replica of its mother, sparked a worldwide debate over the moral and medical implications of biotechnology feats by scientists.