By Nicholas Osei-Wusu
The African Union, AU, has adopted science, technology and innovation as its key tool to drive the economies of African countries.
The adoption of technologies such as Genome Editing has proven crucial for improved agricultural production, food security and higher income for the people. To encourage acceptance and usage of such technologies among the citizens, AU seeks to deploy elaborate and effective communication as a strategy to create public education about the safety and importance of the new technologies as the way forward toward enhanced economic statuses.
The Acting Director of Knowledge Management and Programme Evaluation of the African Union Development Agency, AUDA-NEPAD, Mrs. Florence Naraze, made this known in Accra at a training workshop for selected communicators.
Mrs. Nazare noted that, for the African Union to realize its aim of promoting modern biotechnologies such as Genome Editing to unlock the development potential of Africa, the need and role of effective communicators cannot be underestimated hence the capacity training.
The Accra training was used to build the skills of selected science communicators including journalists and Public Relations Officers from Ghana, Ethiopia, Malawi, Kenya and Zimbabwe in Genome Editing as a safe biotechnology capable of transforming agricultural production towards Africa’s prosperity.
The aim is to empower the communicators to effectively disseminate the new biotechnology to encourage adoption by the people toward improved crop yields for food security and incomes.
The Director of Science, Technology and Innovation at the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Kwamena Essilfie Quaison, said, for citizens to better appreciate Genome Editing as a tool for the modernization of agric production, the role of communicators cannot be down played and therefore commended the AUDA-NEPAD and its local partners for the training.
A Director at Ghana’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR, Dr. Seth Manteaw, the participants will constitute the nucleus of a network of local science communicators to help with effective implementation of the newly developed National Genome Editing Communication and Advocacy Strategy toward greater awareness creation about the biotechnology.
The participants were taken through topics such as the scientific basis and application of Genome Editing in agriculture and other sectors, its safety, regulation, intellectual property and commercialization as well as Dynamics of Science Reporting.
The African Union Development Agency-NEPAD has selected eight countries in Africa including Ghana for the implementation of its Genome Editing project that aims at promoting the use the modern biotechnology to drive agricultural and socio-economic production.
Genome Editing is a biotechnology tool used in making targeted add or remove the DNA of a cell of a plant or animal with the aim of making the organism better than it currently is.