A joke that is going
around refers to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as “nothing going on.”
My
experience over a 15-year period of studying, interacting with and experiencing
NGO activities in my country, Uganda, has proven the joke to be spot-on, apart
from those genuinely fighting or advocating for the protection of human and
child rights. The NGOs that have emerged to fight against the transformation of
agriculture are really up to the nasty mission of stagnating agricultural
development in Africa , and developing
countries in general.
Why?
Because a focus on these NGOs and their anti-GMO activities has proven that
they are hell-bent on selfishly opposing application of advanced scientific
techniques or better methods of breeding crops/plants — particularly modern
biotechnology or genetic engineering (GE) aimed at introducing
drought-tolerant, disease- and pest-resistant and biofortified crops to our
countries. They base their opposition to GM/GE-crop technology/foods on
unfounded allegations that they’re unnatural, ungodly and inorganic. Yet it is
our experienced and highly-trained breeders who call for and apply this
technology as a tool where conventional breeding has failed over decades of
trials to solve the problems.
