Accra, Aug. 30, GNA - Dr George Owusu Essegbey, Director of Science and Technology Policy Research Institute, on Monday urged African countries to adopt the mechanism of biotechnology to enhance agriculture.

"African economies depend on agriculture but cannot be competitive without innovation in agricultural practice," he said.

Dr Essegbey made the call at an International Biosafety Workshop in Accra.

It was to expose participants to the theoretical and practical aspects to managing Confined Field Trials (CFTs) of Genetically Modified (GM) crops under development to be safely deployed.

Dr Essegbey said the workshop would offer an overview of biosafety issues relevant to designing, conducting and genetic confinement.

He said the world was now in an era where technologies of the life sciences, specifically biotechnology, were determining the competitiveness of industries.

Mr Samuel Timpo, African Biosafety Network for Expertise (ABNE) Senior Programme Officer, said countries and farmers planting GM crops globally had been monitored since their commercialisation in 1996.

He said 14 million farmers in 25 countries had planted 134 million hectares of GM crops, and the global market value of GM crops in 2009 was 10.5 billion dollars with the accumulated global value estimated at 51.9 billion dollars.

Mr Timpo said the global net economic benefit to GM crop farmers in 2008 was 9.2 billion dollars of which 4.7 billion dollars went to farmers in developing countries and 4.5 billion dollars to farmers in industrial countries.

He said stakeholders needed to impact assessment data to guide them in decision-making including data on agronomic performance, molecular, food and feed safety, environmental safety, and socio-economic impact.