Multinational corporations looting Africa’s bio-diversity

John Mbaria

Nairobi — A new report on the transfer of biological resources and traditional knowledge worth billions of dollars from across Africa shows that Kenya is the biggest loser among the three East African countries.

Entitled Out of Africa: Mysteries of Access and Benefit Sharing, it says that Kenya’s biological resources have been illegally acquired by giant pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms from the West and a University in Israel in an ongoing international operation that blatantly disregards the provisions of the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The 42-page document is authored by Jay McGown and was released late last month by the Edmonds Institute of the United States, the African Centre for Biosafety and non-profit groups in the United States and South Africa, respectively. Edmonds Institute is a US-based not-for-profit organisation with interests in environmental education and intellectual property rights.

The report says that, after illegally acquiring the resources from different African countries, multinational firms have gone ahead to develop and patent products that generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

For instance, one of the biggest drug manufacturers in Europe, Bayer of Germany, is alleged to have acquired a strain of bacteria from the Ruiru Dam (called Lake Ruiru in the report) in central Kenya, from which it developed a drug that assists diabetes patients by inhibiting the absorption of sugar into their bloodstreams.

Though the product had generated over $379 million by the end of 2004, the researcher says that Kenyans have not benefited at all. Similarly, marine resources from Kenya have been collected by researchers from the Tel Aviv University in Israel who are now investigating their commercial use.

Of particular interest, however, are microbes (or extremophiles) that were stolen from Kenya’s Rift Valley lakes in 1992 and patented by a California-based company, Genencor International. The microbes were applied in the manufacture of industrial enzymes that give blue jeans a trendy faded look, while others were used by the US multiproduct giant, Procter & Gamble, in the manufacture of detergents.

The report says that the microbes are now owned by Genencor, which generates about $3.4 billion in annual sales. It further says that the actual collection of the microbes from the Kenyan lakes was done in 1992 by an unnamed British researcher and later patented by Genencor. It seems, though, from the report that the Kenya government had not approved the prospecting and filed a suit against the company in the US courts in September 2004.

This evidence further authenticates information presented in an exclusive story published by The EastAfrican over a year ago.

Although Kenya is the biggest loser, the two other East African countries are not spared either. For instance, from Tanzania’s Usambara Mountains, southeast of Mt Kilimanjaro, a unique plant was stolen by a Swiss-based biotechnology giant, Sygenta, which has been selling it as an ornamental plant in the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland and other European countries.

According to the report, Sygenta attributes trailing growth habits to the plant that make it ideally suited for hanging baskets and tall containers. The plant has a bushy top, while its heavily-flowered branches spread outwards, draping the container in which it is planted, thereby giving it an appearance described in the report as “spellbinding.”

This unique appearance is favored by most gardeners in the West so that in the UK, a small potted plant goes for $3.5 while a hanging basket goes for $17.5. In the US, the plant is the fourth largest seller in the country’s annual ornamental market, where it was worth $148 million in 2004.

The researcher reports that the plant was originally taken from the Usambara Mountains in Tanzania. “The key to Sygenta’s new product is not magical fairy dust, but Impatiens usambarensis, a little known plant that is not itself a common species... from Tanzania’s Usambara Mountains.”

All that Sygenta did was to cross the Usambara native with another plant called Impatiens walleriana (also a native of East Africa), thereby “transferring the trailing traits to the commercial varieties.”

Later, the Swiss company filed for a patent in Europe and the US despite the fact that such crosses are known to occur naturally. In the patent application, the report says, Sygenta has claimed all crosses of the plant but has gone ahead to claim “putting the plant in a hanging basket or any other ornamental arrangement.” However, the patent application does not explain how it obtained Impatiens usambarensis in the first place, nor has Sygenta given a coin to the Tanzanian government or the people living around Usambara.

From Uganda, the report says that, in the 1970s, a bacteria called Microbacterium vaccae was isolated from mud samples collected from the Lang’o District of Central Uganda by a British company, SR Pharma (formerly Stanford Rook Ltd). Since its isolation, the bacteria has been used effectively against chronic viral infections, including HIV. Since being obtained from Uganda, the bacteria strain “has been patented in the US at least five times, the latest being on June 22, 2003. However, the report says: “No mention (is made) of benefit sharing (with the Ugandan people).

The report goes on to detail what biological material has been stolen where and the nature of traditional/ indigenous knowledge that had been acquired illegally from various communities and later converted into products by multinationals.

From South Africa to Egypt, from Morocco to Kenya, biodiversity products have been acquired illegally and used in making cosmetics (for instance, skin care products from the “resurrection plant” or skin whitener from aloe), agricultural and horticultural products, medicines and industrial enzymes.

Natural products stolen from Africa include the cancer-fighting bitter leaf that was acquired from sub-Saharan Africa and an infection fighter growing naturally in Zimbabwe.

Others are still being investigated for their potency before being put on the international market.

(The East African in Nairobi)