Letter: Crops for Africa

From Roger Clague

Following your article on the debate over the use of genetically modified
crops in Africa
(15 January, p 14),
let me state some facts about economic development.

Improved technology produces development—that is, a better standard of
living. Countries that have kept up with the West have done so by adopting new
technology quickly and wholeheartedly—the Soviet Union through
electrification and heavy industry, Japan through electronics, Singapore through
its mass transport systems.

The views of Tewolde, general manager of the Environmental Protection
Authority of Ethiopia, echo those of the rich and powerful in the West. They are
spread by Western nongovernmental organisations. They reflect these
organisations’ loss of nerve and lack of belief in progress. They will keep
Africa as a cheap source of labour and raw materials.

That the discredited Organization of African Unity supports Tewolde is no
surprise.

Rather than delaying new biotechnology, Africa can and must use it to jump
beyond the problems of the available agrochemicals.

Birmingham