By Nicholas Osei-Wusu
The African UnionAU, has adopted science, technology and innovation as its key tool to promote the economies of African countries.
The adoption of technologies such as Genome Editing has proven critical to improving agricultural production, food security and higher income for people. To encourage citizen acceptance and use of such technologies, AU seeks to develop sophisticated and effective communication as a strategy to create public education about the safety and importance of new technologies as a path to improved economic status.
The Deputy Director of Knowledge Management and Program Evaluation of the African Union Development Agency, AUDA-NEPAD, Ms. Florence Naraze, made this known in Accra at a training workshop for selected communicators.
Ms. Nazare noted that for the African Union to realize its goal of promoting modern biotechnologies such as Genome Editing to unlock Africa’s development potential, the need and role of effective communicators cannot be underestimated, therefore training abilities.
The training in Accra was used to build the skills of selected communication scientists, including journalists and public relations officers from Ghana, Ethiopia, Malawi, Kenya and Zimbabwe on Genome Editing as a safe biotechnology capable of transforming agricultural production towards prosperity of Africa.
The aim is to enable communicators to effectively disseminate new biotechnology to encourage adoption by people towards improved crop yields for food security and incomes.
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The Director of Science, Technology and Innovation at the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Kwamena Essilfie Quaison, said that for citizens to better appreciate Genome Editing as a tool to modernize agricultural production, the role of communications cannot be understated. and therefore commended AUDA-NEPAD and its local partners for the training.
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Director at the Ghana Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR, Dr. Seth Manteaw, participants will form the core of a network of local science communicators that will help effectively implement the recently developed National Genome Editing Communication and Advocacy Strategy for greater biotech awareness creation.
Participants addressed topics such as the scientific basis and application of Gene Editing in agriculture and other fields, safety, regulation, intellectual property and commercialization as well as the Dynamics of Scientific Reporting.
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The African Union Development Agency-NEPAD has selected eight countries in Africa, including Ghana, to implement the Genome Editing project which aims to promote the use of modern biotechnology to promote agricultural and socio-economic production.
Genome Editing is a biotechnology tool used to purposefully add or remove the DNA of a plant or animal cell with the goal of making the organism better than it is today.
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