This is a crucial week for millions of African farmers – the week in which, under the guise of ‘plant protection’, they may lose the right to use their ancient seed heritage to grow the food crops on which the continent depends.

The policy is being driven through an opaque, little known body, the African Regional Intellectual Property Association (ARIPO), whose Diplomatic Conference opens today at the plush Mount Meru Hotel in Arusha, Tanzania. 

In meetings taking place over the coming week, ARIPO plans to adopt the highly contested draft ARIPO Plant Variety Protection Protocol (ARIPO PVP Protocol), which guarantees the rights of commercial seed breeders while cancelling farmers traditional rights to save seed, grow crops from traditional seed varieties developed by our ancestors over countless generations, and sell or exchange such seeds.

In addition to severely restricting farmers rights to saving, sharing, selling, and planting seeds and propagating material, the Protocol facilitates biopiracy. The seed industry can take the seed DNA from ARIPO member African countries, manipulate it in a laboratory, and then claim intellectual property rights to DNA developed over centuries by African farmers.

This IPR grab has potential to be one of the largest resource thefts in human history. Seed diversity would disappear and African farmers would be forced to buy back their own seeds every planting season.

Forcing Africa open to seed exploitation

The PVP Protocol is based on the 1991 Convention of UPOV, the Union internationale pour la protection des obtentions végétales or International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, which provides for “breeders rights” to seeds and other germplasm based on conditions of novelty, distinctiveness, uniformity and stability, providing the essential legal foundation for the commercialization of the seed sector, including the introduction of GMO crops.

The first three days of the meeting will be dedicated to technical matters involved with the final drafting of the PVP Protocol among representatives from the 19 ARIPO member states. Then on Thursday ministers will gather to conclude the political discussions.

But that’s about all that African civil society has been told. We do not know which ministers will represent their countries. In the absence of any consultations in the ARIPO member states, we have no idea what they are going to say on our behalf. And we can only wonder – why is this whole thing shrouded in such secrecy?

The answer is, surely, to exclude public participation and limit opportunities for civil society to organise agains the PVP Protocol. African farmers have rejected moves to adopt UPOV-inspired measure in national legislation, for example in Ghana where the controversial Plant Breeders’ Bill was overwhelmingly rejected!

By adopting these measures at a transnational level, we believe governments are trying to evade their democratic accountability and impose these measures as a fait accompli. If ARIPO passes the UPOV PVP Protocol, it enters into force after being ratified by four member states.

Being presented as a ‘take it or leave it’ package it precludes discussion, debate and amendment in national parliaments circumventing the normal democratic processes that would apply to legislation in the member states.