Sir

Agricultural biotechnology research and development (R&D) in industrialized countries is heavily supported by private and government institutions and universities, which develop products and services for capital-intensive farming systems. Although some innovations have spill-over effects that might benefit Africa (especially large-scale farmers), most are likely to marginalize poor farmers.

One solution is to reorient international biotechnology research to take account of small-scale farmers' needs. But experience shows that this option is unlikely to succeed in the long term.

A more realistic way forward is for African scientists, businesses and farmers to devise biotechnological innovations that are appropriate to local cultural, economic, political, technological, institutional, infrastructural and social factors.

The success story of Africa Online, the premier provider of Internet services throughout Africa, illustrates an entrepreneurial spirit that should be possible to replicate in the biotechnology arena. Africa Online was founded in 1994 by three Kenyans studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. It now serves thousands of people and businesses throughout Africa.

Private-sector companies wishing to invest in biotechnology are attracted by successes in tissue-culture-aided production and multiplication of disease-free planting materials for cassava, yam, banana, plantain, citrus and flowers in countries such as Kenya and Ghana. However, Africans must learn simple technologies that are not only appropriate and feasible, but also sustainable.

Priority can be given to biotechnologies that have worked under comparable conditions elsewhere. Last year, for example, thousands of poor Chinese farmers obtained up to 40% increases in sweet-potato yields by using a novel seed-production technique to eliminate viral diseases from planting materials (http://www.futureharvest.org/growth/china_sweet.bkgnd.shtml). No genetic improvements were made, and the farmers used no more fertilizers or pesticides than usual.

In Africa, the key players will include, among others, scientists, policy-makers, non-governmental organizations, farmers and farmers' (especially women's) groups. Private biotechnology initiatives must go hand in hand with development of regulatory frameworks and public-awareness campaigns, and with other R&D programmes targeting poor farmers (see, for example, F. Wambugu, Nature 400, 15–16; 2001).

The mistake of the Green Revolution was that it treated all the world as if it were the same. The lesson for agriculture is that problems must be solved locally and communally, through a bottom-up approach that empowers farmers to support and own technologies that benefit them. Entrepreneurial scientists, businesspeople, lawyers and farmers are needed to explore the promises of biotechnology.

This is a wake-up call for African biotechnology stakeholders to transform the potential wealth of genetic resources and traditional knowledge into the reality of increased incomes — and better food and health care — for the majority.