The continent’s 55 countries sign a 5-point declaration to strengthen food security By Kiran Pandey Fifty-five African countries recently signed a five-point declaration to increase the climate adaptation and resilience of the continent’s food systems. The declaration, signed by government representatives at the African Green Revolution Forum – 2019 in Accra, Ghana on September 4, 2019, recognises climate change as a challenge to Africa’s food security. Africa’s population will increase to 2.4 billion by 2050, requiring the continent to scale up its food production while tackling the challenge of climate change. The declaration lists five measures that should be…
Author: Abdallah el-Kurebe
The National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC), says it is getting purer seeds due to the technological innovations of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) funded BASICS project for cassava in Nigeria. BASICS is the acronym for Building a Sustainable, Integrated Seed System for Cassava. Dr Ishiak Khalid, the Director of Seed Certification and Quality Control of the NASC made this known in an interview on Friday in Abuja. Khalid said that one of the innovations put in place by the BASICS project was a seed production system called Semi- Autotrophic Hydroponics (SAH). “This system provides for massive multiplication of…
The biotech Oxitec had released the genetically engineered insects with the hope that they would breed with wild populations and produce offspring that die young. But that’s not always happening. By Kerry Grens Update (September 18) Scientific Reports has issued an editor’s note, stating that “the conclusions of this paper are subject to criticisms that are being considered by editors.” In a statement sent to The Scientist, Oxitec says it takes issues with a number of conclusions the authors made in their report. Among them, “The authors infer that Oxitec’s self-limiting genes persist in the environment. Yet as confirmed by…
Scientists in Burkina Faso have deployed a new weapon in the fight against malaria, and waded into a thorny bioethics debate, by letting loose thousands of genetically sterilised mosquitoes. Their experiment is the first outside the lab to release genetically altered mosquitoes in the hope of reducing their ability to spread the often deadly disease. It works using a technique called a gene drive, which edits and then propagates a gene in a population – in this case to prevent males from producing offspring. Investments in anti-malarial drugs, mosquito nets and insecticides have slowed malaria over the past two decades…
Ethan Lindenberger is only 18 years old, but he is already a hardened campaigner. By Ana Lazaro He managed to get vaccinations, against his mother’s wishes. Now he is fighting against the spread of anti-vax movements. “The message is very simple: the misinformation is very dangerous. And that people misinformed is not bad people. They have just been given bad information and given false information and ideas, and you need to fight that with better information”. He has come to Brussels to take part in the Global vaccination summit. In Europe, scepticism about vaccination has being growing during in recent…
A Nigerian pharmacist, Mr Emmanuel Tangang, has advised Nigerians against consumption of fruits during medication to avoid reduction in the potency of the drugs. Tangang gave the advice in an interview on Thursday in Kaduna. According to him, many people do not know that some fruits interact badly with certain medications. “This means your meal can end up reducing the efficacy of your drugs, or worse still, could become a health nightmare. “An example is banana; do not eat them if you take ACE inhibitors such as Captopril, Enalapril and Fosinopril, among others. “ACE inhibitors lower blood pressure and treat…
Prof. Olubunmi Olapade-Olaopa, the Provost of the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, says the 71-year-old medical college has clinched the fourth position in Africa in the 2019 World University Ranking. Olapade-Olaopa, who disclosed this on Thursday in Ibadan while speaking with newsmen at the end of the Innovative Research Fair of the college, said the institution is also the first in sub-Saharan Africa. The three-day fair had the tagline: “Innovation for Development.” According to the provost, the premier Nigerian college fell behind Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, South Africa as well as Cairo and Mansoura Universities in Egypt. Olapade-Olaopa…
For the first time, a patient got treated for HIV and cancer at the same time, with an infusion of gene-edited stem cells. The results? Mixed. HIV cells HIV invades human immune cells using a protein known as CCR5, which acts like a door to let the virus in. Without it, the virus can’t spread and reproduce. Imagine you’re 27 years old and you start feeling ill. Ill enough that you go to the hospital, and after much poking and prodding and waiting for lab results you learn you’re HIV positive. Two weeks later you find out that’s not even…
By Ronnie Cummins The Climate Emergency is finally getting the attention of the media and the U.S. (and world) body politic, as well as a growing number of politicians, activists and even U.S. farmers. This great awakening has arrived just in time, given the record-breaking temperatures, violent weather, crop failures and massive waves of forced migration that are quickly becoming the norm. Global scientists have dropped their customary caution. They now warn us that we have to drastically reduce global emissions – by at least 45 percent – over the next decade. Otherwise, we’ll pass the point of no return – defined as…
Human genome editing has been raising controversy in the international medical space as there is no regulating body or laws to monitor what scientists do.