Crop biotechnology is a vital tool in achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing hunger and poverty by half and ensuring sustainable agriculture by the year 2015 and beyond.

To ensure that theses goals are achieved, a continued broadening and deepening of biotech crop use is crucial to meeting food, fuel and feed needs in the future. 

For the umpteenth time, leading researchers across Africa are sending warning that the welfare of the people on the continent may deteriorate further if governments continue to pay leap service to funding research work.

Much of the resources driving research in Africa come from donors, who in most cases fund their area of interest and not necessarily what is going to benefit the continent.

“The weak institutional linkages and the over reliance on international donor funding is dragging the continent backwards and is partly to blame for the miseries facing African countries,” says Dr. Rebecca Hanlin, Development and policy expert from the Open University, Britain.

 Scientists at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have developed new Striga weed resistant seeds that may just result in the doubling of maize yields in many African countries.

 The unveiling of the maize seed, which is coated with herbicide, follows a 12 year study that looked into its viability.

 According to Dr. Fred Kanampiu an agronomist with CIMMYT, farmers will now plant seeds that are coated with herbicide - Imazapyr. 

Men planning to have children can now test the quality of their sperm long before doing so to determine if they are capable of siring babies. Or rectify an infertility problem in its early stages of development.

Unknown to many men and women, a number of laboratories in the country are now undertaking sperm quality tests or what they call semen analysis for men at very affordable prices.