My Africa Today

Fear of bio-theft at centre of the storm
By JOHN MBARIA
Special Correspondent

As KWS exudes confidence over the deal, critics have asked it to tread with caution, particularly because it does not have the capacity to catalogue the extent and nature of the country’s biological resources that might be of industrial value and will be banking on Novozymes to supply such knowhow.

They point to the numerous instances of Kenya’s biological wealth having been stolen from the country’s nature reserves even with KWS personnel on the beat there.

One example was when industrially important microbes (or extremophiles) were stolen from Kenya’s Lake Bogoria and other Rift Valley lakes in 1992 and ended up being patented by a California-based company, Genencor International. This newspaper carried the story of how the microbes were used in manufacture of industrial enzymes that were then used to give blue jeans a trendy, faded “stonewashed” look, while others were used by a US multiproduct giant, Procter & Gamble, in the manufacture of one of its Tide detergents.

Last year, a 42-page document released by a US-based non-profit organisation, Edmonds Institute, reported that the microbes are now owned by Genencor, for which they have generated $3.4 billion in annual sales.

It further said the actual collection of the microbes from the Kenyan lakes was made in 1992 by an unnamed British researcher and later patented by Genencor.

According to the report, the Kenya government did not get a cent even after filing a suit against the company in US courts in September 2004 for compensation. But KWS Director Dr Julius Kipnge’tich told The EastAfrican that they are still negotiating with Genencor. “Negotiations are still going on,” he said, adding that if the negotiations failed to yield results, KWS would explore other options including taking “legal measures.”

Invariably, after developing industrial products from natural materials sourced from Kenya and other African countries, global biotech giants have been reluctant to share the billions with these countries even after being exposed. This has been a highly contentious issue related to the development and commercialisation of biological resources (bioprospecting) throughout Africa.

The Edmonds Institute’s report also detailed how one of the biggest drug manufacturers in Europe, Bayer of Germany, acquired a strain of bacteria from the Ruiru Dam in Central Kenya, and ended up developing a drug that is able to inhibit the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream of diabetic patients. The report said that although the drug had generated over $300 million by the end of 2004, Kenyans got nothing.

With all this history of sharp dealing, observers are now wondering why KWS failed to wait for proper legal and policy guidelines to be put in place before signing the MoU. The EastAfrican has learnt that the Science and Technology Ministry has been spearheading the drafting of a policy and a Bill to regulate how organisations like KWS enter into agreements with international biotech companies.

The policy will apparently offer a “radical” way of tackling past and ongoing bio-robbery in Kenya and detail guidelines on how to enter such agreements. When implemented, the law will also make it possible for Kenyans to take public bodies to court if they believe that the latter have played a role in the spiriting away of local knowledge and technology or have aided bio-theft.

But Dr Kipng’etich says the MoU with Novozymes was guided by the Kenya Access and Benefit Sharing Regulations issued by the National Environment Management Authority last year. He also says the deal adhered to the provisions of the Wildlife Act (Cap 376) and is also “in line with the Convention on Biological Diversity, which Kenya ratified in 1992.”