Prof. Olalekan Akinbo, Supervisor at Centre of Excellence in STI, African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) says African nations should innovate in order to avoid becoming a dumping ground for other countries innovations.
Olalekan said this on Wednesday that it was imperative for African governments to create enabling policy environment to support innovations, adding that nations unwilling to innovate would be left behind.
He urged that governments should deploy innovation into agriculture and move from subsistence to commercial farming, to guarantee food sufficiency with surplus for exports.
“ We are in a global village and every country, every continent relates in the area of trade, therefore Africa needs to be competitive
“I strongly support the Agenda 2063 that our leaders gave us, which is that the Africa we want by 2063 is Africa that is food sufficient.
“We have the resources, the soil, the environment that can make this happen and achievable,’’ he said.
Akinbo reiterated that the policy some countries in Africa put place to support innovation were critical, which was what the African Union Agenda 2063 was looking into.
He disclosed that this was what would enable the free trade area agreement and facilitate inter-trade within the continent.
He said this would allow Africa to compete favourably in the global market.
Responding to whether genome editing technology used in precision agriculture to improve crop yield, marked a breakthrough in biotechnology, Akinbo said it was one of the tools developed by scientists.
The AU Official said there were breakthroughs in terms of scientific innovative ways of improving agriculture.
“Presently, we are at one edge and that is genome editing which is the latest but other ones are still coming.
“Artificial intelligence is also coming and that would equally help, there are other innovations coming also to improve agriculture, so, for me, the breakthrough is progressive and in relative terms’’.
He maintained that for now, genome editing was just one tool that was new and coming up strong to improve plant and animals, although not a one stop shop.
Akinbo stressed that the technology was one of the tools used to enhance what had been done before and did not come at the end of innovation for improvement.
