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Biopiracy: How can African countries protect their plants and traditions? - The Africa Report.com
Biopiracy: How can African countries protect their plants and traditions?
By
Loza Seleshie
Reserved for subscribers
Posted on
October 15, 2021 14:01
Farmers break cocoa pods at a cocoa farm in Soubre, Côte d’Ivoire January 6, 2021. REUTERS/Luc Gnago
The global patent system favours Western ideas of intellectual property, leaving African plants and their traditional uses without much protection, say experts. “[Biopiracy] is a problem all over Africa. We are now in a knowledge economy and our farmers are […] not economically benefiting due to misappropriation,” Tigist Gebrehiwot, a research fellow at the office of South African Research Chair in Law tells The Africa Report.
Biopiracy is the illegitimate appropriation or commercial exploitation of biological resources and associated traditional knowledge – often by pharmaceutical, cosmetic or agri-food firms.
While the privatisation of plants on the continent has been of growing concern over the past 25 years, frameworks and solutions are also emerging.
