Prof. Olalekan Akinbo, Supervisor at Centre of Excellence in STI, African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) says African nations should innovate in order to avoid becoming a dumping ground for other countries innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Olalekan said this on Wednesday that it was imperative for African governments to create enabling policy environment to support innovations, adding that nations unwilling to innovate would be left behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He urged that governments should deploy innovation into agriculture and move from subsistence to commercial farming, to guarantee food sufficiency with surplus for exports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c We are in a global village and every country, every continent relates in the area of trade, therefore Africa needs to be competitive<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI strongly support the Agenda 2063 that our leaders gave us, which is that the Africa we want by 2063 is Africa that is food sufficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have the resources, the soil, the environment that can make this happen and achievable,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Akinbo reiterated that the policy some countries in Africa put place to support innovation were critical, which was what the African Union Agenda 2063 was looking into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He disclosed that this was what would enable the free trade area agreement and facilitate inter-trade within the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said this would allow Africa to compete favourably in the global market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Responding to whether genome editing technology used in precision agriculture to improve crop yield, marked a breakthrough in biotechnology, Akinbo said it was one of the tools developed by scientists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The AU Official said there were breakthroughs in terms of scientific innovative ways of improving agriculture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPresently, we are at one edge and that is genome editing which is the latest but other ones are still coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cArtificial intelligence is also coming and that would equally help, there are other innovations coming also to improve agriculture, so, for me, the breakthrough is progressive and in relative terms\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He maintained that for now, genome editing was just one tool that was new and coming up strong to improve plant and animals, although not a one stop shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Akinbo stressed that the technology was one of the tools used to enhance what had been done before and did not come at the end of innovation for improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n
Prof. Olalekan Akinbo, Supervisor at Centre of Excellence in STI, African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) says African nations should innovate in order to avoid becoming a dumping ground for other countries innovations. Olalekan said this on Wednesday that it was imperative for African governments to create enabling policy environment to support innovations, adding that nations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22718,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[949,241],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-49600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-foreign","tag-africa","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"yoast_head":"\n