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Experts Demand Immediate Ban of GMO Cowpea in Nigeria
A coalition of non-governmental organisations, farmer groups and research experts have called on the Nigerian government to immediately ban the distribution of Genetically Modified Cowpea, popularly known bean among Nigerian farmers.
The group known as the Health of Mother Earth Foundation also called for the urgent need for the Nigerian government to strengthen the nation’s Biosafety legislation in line with the Precautionary Principle which advises caution where there is no certainty of environmental and health safety.
It further demanded adequate support for smallholder farmers, who have over the years resisted pest and disease invasions and improved food productivity, through indigenous knowledge and innovation.
The group which made the call at a press conference titled “Nigerian Farmers and GMO Crops” said GMO Cowpea possesses severe long-term negative implications on the environment and farmers’ seed and populations as well as production practices.
It said Nigerian farmers could become trapped in unsustainable, unsuitable, and unaffordable farming practices, deepening the threat to food and nutritional security and ultimately farmers’ rights.
It advised other African governments to desist from the use of this variety and other GM crops on the continent.
Speaking at the event, Nnimmo Bassey, director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, said “We can’t separate our culture from our food and when this is contaminated or eroded everything changes and why we are having this conversation is because this issues are very central to our being and it does appear that sometimes we don’t lay sufficient emphasis on those issues and especially you know there is a ministry for agriculture they don’t have as much resources as others and they ought to have in primary education and health and that’s where most of our resources should go to,it should be going to those agencies that are ready to think of our well being and our future. A well fed population is also a healthy one. When you eat food that is not good for you, that is not safe, you can’t be healthy and if you are not healthy in a way that the health system will not support you, you are simply on your own and at this time most nigerians are on their own,
“From recent studies, it was revealed that because of the pollinator characteristics of the natural West African wild cowpea populations, BT-gene will move from the genetically modified lines to non-modified lines of both cultivated and wild relatives, resulting to other plants gaining the resistance trait that will cause an alteration in ecological balance and present adverse effects.
Mariann Bassey-Orovwuje, an environmental, human and food rights advocate and the coordinator of the food sovereignty programme at Friends of the Earth, Nigeria/Africa
Said ” It is worth noting that this cowpea containing the transgene Cry1Ab, has not been approved anywhere else in the world. Use of this BT gene was discontinued in South Africa where the cultivation of maize modified with the gene led to enormous pest resistance and infestation. Current research has revealed that protein produced by this transgene has toxic effects on human liver cells and induces alterations in immune systems of laboratory animals
“The introduction of GM engineered cowpea is a great cause for concern for farmers, consumers and civil society organisations across the continent. While the technology is said to be provided royalty-free, the long-term implications of transforming the environment, farmers’ varieties, and production practices, will trap farmers into unsustainable, unsuitable, unaffordable farming practices, and deepen the threat to food and nutritional security. This is particularly worrying since Nigeria is one Africa’s centre of diversity of cowpea, and therefore extensive wild relatives and local varieties exist, with significant cultural value and traditional knowledge associated with cowpea production and consumption.
According to her, several countries of the world have banned such crops, making Nigeria and Africa a dumping ground for them.
Also giving his remarks, Ifeanyi Casmir, a medical and molecular microbiologist at the University of Abuja, called for the unbundling of the National Agency for Food & Drug Administration & Control (NAFDAC) to be able to effectively carry out its overburdened responsibilities.
He said ” NAFDAC is an overloaded lorry. We advocate that it is disbanded so that it will have agencies to take up some of its responsibilities.
Cybercrime has emerged as a dominant security concern across Africa, with more than 30 percent of all reported crimes in Western and Eastern regions linked to cyber activity, according to the newly released 2025 Africa Cyberthreat Assessment Report by INTERPOL.
The report, based on data from African member states and private sector partners, reveals that two-thirds of surveyed countries describe cybercrime as constituting a medium to high share of total criminal cases.
This highlights how cyber-enabled criminal activity is evolving rapidly across the continent. The report identified alarming spikes in scam attempts, with some countries witnessing a 3,000 percent increase in suspected scam notifications in the past year.
Neal Jetton, INTERPOL’s Cyber Crime Director, warned that the threat landscape is evolving faster than enforcement responses.
“This fourth edition of the INTERPOL African Cyber Threat Assessment provides a vital snapshot of the current situation, informed by operational intelligence, extensive law enforcement engagement, and strategic private-sector collaboration.
“It paints a clear picture of a threat landscape in flux, with emerging dangers like AI-driven fraud that demand urgent attention. No single agency or country can face these challenges alone,” Jetton stated.
In the past year, suspected scam notifications rose by up to 3,000 per cent in some African countries, according to data from Kaspersky, one of several private sector partners that work with INTERPOL’s cybercrime directorate
Online scams, particularly through phishing, are the most frequently reported cybercrimes across the continent. Ransomware attacks and Business Email Compromise (BEC) incidents are also increasing, particularly in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt.
“Ransomware detections in Africa also rose in 2024, with South Africa and Egypt suffering the highest number, at 17,849 and 12,281 detections respectively, according to data from Trend Micro, followed by other highly digitised economies such as Nigeria (3,459) and Kenya (3,030),” it stated.
Incidents included attacks on critical infrastructure, such as a breach at Kenya’s Urban Roads Authority (KURA), and on government databases, such as hacks of Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the report stated.
The manufacturers of the world’s first malaria vaccine are set to slash the price by more than half by 2028 to less than$5 per dose.
The manufacturers of the shot, known as RTS,S, said a phased reduction in cost would begin immediately, with an ultimate aim to reduce the price to less than $5.
The announcement could hardly come at a more critical moment.
Gavi, a major vaccination initiative which funds immunisations in the world’s poorest countries, is facing a major budget crunch.
In Brussels on Wednesday, Gavi’s replenishment event raised $9 billion to fund immunisation programmes over the next five years. While this sounds like a huge sum, it’s significantly less than the $11.9bn the group had been aiming for.
Governments around the world are cutting development spending dramatically.
The UK, for instance, cut its contribution to Gavi by 40 per cent in real terms, telling The Telegraph it was prioritising defence, while the US has pledged nothing at all.
Though America previously gave Gavi roughly $300m a year, the country’s new health secretary claimed without evidence that the organisation was ignoring vaccine safety.
The announcement from the British pharmaceutical giant GSK and Indian drugmaker Bharat Biotech will therefore be a relief to those trying to balance the books.
In a statement the companies said the price reduction demonstrated their “commitment to Gavi”, and was “driven by process improvements, expanded production capacity, cost-effective manufacturing, and minimal profit margins”.
By the time the price has fallen to below $5 per dose, a technology transfer agreement means Bharat will have taken over production, though GSK will continue to supply the adjuvant piece of the shot.
“For us, this is more than a cooperation, it’s a promise,” said Dr Krishna Ella, executive chairman of Bharat Biotech International Limited.
“By joining forces with GSK, and working closely with Gavi, and the WHO [World Health Organization], we are taking a real step toward closing the gap between vaccine supply and the urgent needs of children at risk of malaria.”
Each year, malaria still kills 500,000 people – the vast majority of them children aged five and under in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to WHO estimates, cases and deaths fell significantly between 2000 and 2015, but progress has since stalled.
Some have high hopes that RTS,S, as well as another vaccine called R21 developed by Oxford University, could prove critical in efforts to turn the tide.
In clinical trials, RTS,S reduced hospitalisations for severe malaria by 30 per cent.
But critics say the shot is too expensive and not as effective as existing tools, such as bed nets and antimalarials.
The reduction in price will bring it more in line with the cost of R21, which is priced at around $4 per dose.
Yet the cost will still add up, as both jabs require multiple shots. For RTS,S, this means four doses – the first three doses are given monthly, starting around five months of age, while the fourth dose is administered 15-18 months later.
Both jabs “provide reasonable short term efficacy – over about a year – so are a useful addition to other measures,” said Professor Nick White, a professor at the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit who specialises in malaria.
“In the past GSK had limited production capacity – one of the reasons the R21 was developed. So reducing the price will be good and the two comparable vaccines can fight it out in the market place.”
A spokesperson for Gavi said the alliance’s goal is to “create sustainable demand backed by predictable financing so that companies – like GSK and Bharat – can continue investing in technology transfer and other efficiencies that bring down costs, thus making critical vaccines more available and affordable.
GSK’s decision to lower its prices, the spokesperson added, is “an important step for the global malaria vaccination programme, and our ability to make this lifesaving tool more widely available to those who need it the most”.
Gavi plans to help fund RTS,S in 12 African countries by the end of this year.
Previously, GSK has said it will supply up to 18 million vaccine doses between 2023 and the end of this year.
The company plans to supply 15 million doses annually from 2026-2028, a spokesperson told Reuters.
Rack Centre, West Africa’s Tier III carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre, has struck a collocation agreement with TelCables Nigeria, an Angola Cables subsidiary.
TelCables Nigeria is delivering its high-capacity network and cloud infrastructure, as well as four international subsea cable systems (SACS, MONET, SEBRAS, and EllaLink), directly into Rack Centre’s regional carrier ecosystem as part of the agreement.
According to Angola Cables, the move provides reliable, low-latency south-bound routes to Europe, the Americas, and Latin America, reducing the danger of future cable disruptions along West Africa’s coast and enabling next-generation cloud services across the continent.
“Our unique Africa – to – Latin America route via SACS, combined with MONET, SEBRAS and EllaLink, gives customers the lowest – latency paths to the Americas and Europe,” said Fernando Fernandes, CEO of TelCables Nigeria.
“Businesses in latency sensitive sectors: financial services, content delivery and real-time communications will experience faster transactions, reduced lag and an enhanced user experience.
“By hosting at Rack Centre we also localise Clouds2Africa resources, price them in naira, and remove expensive ingress/egress charges or FX exposure.”
Rack Centre said its 13.5MW data centre campus designed with its recently launched LGS2 facility that delivers a design PUE of 1.35 and powered from sustainable energy sources, already hosts 70+ carriers, ISPs and network operators.
Lars Johannisson, CEO of Rack Centre, commented: “Adding a global operator of Angola Cables’ calibre through TelCables Nigeria dramatically deepens our connectivity fabric.
“We can now offer 99.95 % SLA routes to more destinations, enabling enterprises, governments and cloud providers to meet performance and data-residency requirements while keeping traffic local.”
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