COTONOU, (Mar. 5) IPS - Entering the global economy, some African researchers say, calls for trade-offs, and Francophone nations recently had no trouble trading small farmers' rights to store and exchange seed.
Francophone members of the African Organization of Intellectual Property (OAPI) put their signatures to the 1991 Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants Convention (UPOV 91) in the Central African capital of Bangui.
Inventors of new crops now have their discoveries protected in the OAPI countries as per the terms of UPOV 91.
Adopted in Paris in 1961, this Convention has been amended several times, but most members follow its 1978 Convention which is widely interpreted by governments to allow farmers to save and exchange seed.
But UPOV's 1991 Convention assumes that farmers cannot save seed unless governments permit specific exceptions, and up until the signing last week by the OAPI countries, only 11 developed countries had adopted the 1991 Convention.
The Francophone members of the OAPI are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal and Togo.
While the Canadian-based International Rural Advancement Foundation (RAFI) believes that African countries may have been pushed too quickly into the arms of a western-dominated intellectual property cartel, Francois Adande of Benin says Africa must create "trust" that it can protect intellectual property rights.
Adande, head of judicial and trademark services at Benin's National Center of Industrial Property (CENAPI), believes that the UPOV Convention is important in so far as it protects inventions coming from Western countries that are much more able and equipped in research, especially in genetic engineering.
"Globalization is scaring the whole world. Those who have something are scared. Infringements are occurring more and more, and if Western inventions are not protected, they will be investing in research at a loss," Adande says.
Africa, he continues, can only gain by creating trust in its ability to protect acquired crops.
"But if one does not create that trust, there will not be any kind of technological transfer, since each would guard their own secret and our situation would improve much more slowly."
Other Francophone African experts also are not so alarmed by RAFI's concern that the more than 20 million small farmers in the Francophone African nations would have no right to store and exchange seeds, because of their governments' signing UPOV 91.
The 1991 Convention, argues Badiou Ouattara, head of a crop research centre in Burkina Faso, "has nothing to do with seed supply for farmers.
"It's like a musician that writes music. The whole world can buy a tape, but it is registered internationally under the composer's name," Ouattara continues.
Hien Mathieu, head of the Intellectual Property Services in the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Crafts of Burkina Faso, on the other hand, says that while African nations must be cautious in negotiations on intellectual property rights, globalization requires trade offs.
"If after investment-financed research someone finds varieties of millet or corn (suitable) for the Sahel, they must be compensated for their discovery," Hien says.
"Our countries must make the necessary arrangements and adjustments, because globalization is here. We cannot afford to marginalise ourselves," Hien adds.
"We need a rational policy on research. If the Europeans come to do research, you have to be a partner to them so they do not take and protect everything over there."
Hien adds that the protection, in this case UPOV 91, does not mean that no one else can use "your product", but that whoever has developed a crop can use it or permit others to use it.
Bassane Jean Toe in Burkina Faso's Ministry of Agriculture says that adding the Francophone African nation's signatures to UPOV 91 is like adding a "voice of reason."
"It's a necessity. African nations have ample knowledge of UPOV, so they have nothing to worry about," Toe says.
