Expert calls for Africa to turn biotechnology into wealth

Africa must move beyond the production and export of biological raw materials and build stronger systems for converting its scientific knowledge and biological resources into high-value products, industries and jobs, an innovation expert, Obichi Obiajunwa, has said.

Obiajunwa made the call while delivering a plenary lecture titled “From Bench to Bioeconomy: Industrial Biotechnology, Circular Economy Models, and the Pathway to Sustainable Wealth Creation in Africa” at the 38th Annual Conference of the Biotechnology Society of Nigeria (BSN), held at Abdulkadir Kure University, Minna, Niger State.

The conference, themed “Advancing Safe Biotechnology for Sustainable Wealth Creation,” brought together stakeholders from academia, research, industry and the biotechnology community to examine how biotechnology can contribute to sustainable development and wealth creation in Nigeria and Africa.

At the beginning of his presentation, Obiajunwa acknowledged the presence of the Vice Chancellor of Abdulkadir Kure University, Professor Mohammed Aliyu Paiko, and the President of the Biotechnology Society of Nigeria, Professor Sylvia Uzochukwu, among other distinguished participants at the conference.

He said Africa’s challenge was no longer simply a lack of biological resources or scientific capability, but the difficulty of moving innovations from the laboratory into commercially viable enterprises and ensuring that a greater share of the resulting value was retained on the continent.

Africa’s biomass paradox

Obiajunwa described the situation as Africa’s “biomass paradox”: the continent possesses enormous biological resources and produces significant quantities of agricultural commodities, yet much of the higher-value processing and manufacturing associated with those resources takes place elsewhere.

He pointed to Africa’s biological abundance as a major economic opportunity, noting that more than 60 per cent of the world’s remaining uncultivated arable land is in Africa.

He also drew attention to the cocoa industry, where Africa produces the majority of the world’s cocoa but captures only a small proportion of the value generated by the global chocolate market.

For him, the challenge is therefore not simply to produce more.

“The question is how much value we can create and retain from what we produce.”

He argued that Africa must increasingly move from exporting biological raw materials to developing the technologies, industries, intellectual property and manufacturing capacity required to transform those resources into higher-value products.

The science is not the bottleneck

Obiajunwa cautioned against the assumption that Africa’s principal problem is the absence of scientific innovation.

He cited African biotechnology successes, including Aflasafe, a biological solution for reducing aflatoxin contamination; NoduMax, a legume biofertilizer; and Bt cowpea, an insect-resistant crop approved for cultivation in Nigeria.

These examples, he said, demonstrate that African researchers and institutions are capable of developing biotechnology solutions with practical applications.

The bigger challenge begins after scientific validation.

A technology can work in the laboratory and still fail to become a successful enterprise because of inadequate commercial evaluation, inappropriate financing, limited pilot-scale infrastructure, regulatory uncertainty or weak connections between research institutions and industry.

He described this gap as the “valley of death” between scientific innovation and commercial scale.

The problem, he said, requires a deliberate bridge between research and business.

From relay race to tennis doubles

Using a sporting analogy, Obiajunwa argued that innovation is too often organised like a relay race.

In such a system, the scientist completes the research and hands the innovation to an entrepreneur. The entrepreneur later seeks financing, while regulators and other stakeholders become involved at different stages.

He proposed a different model, which he described as “tennis doubles.”

Under this approach, scientists, entrepreneurs, investors, regulators, manufacturers and other stakeholders work together earlier in the innovation process

He said market considerations should inform scientific development, while regulatory requirements, financing needs and commercial opportunities should be understood before a technology reaches the end of the research process.

“The journey from bench to market should not be a sequence of disconnected handovers. It should be a coordinated system.”

He said this approach could improve the chances of promising African technologies surviving the transition from research to commercialisation.

Turning waste into wealth

The lecture also examined the potential of the circular bioeconomy to create additional value from Africa’s biological resources.

Obiajunwa identified agricultural residues such as cassava peels, rice husks, sugarcane bagasse and oil-palm residues as examples of materials that are often regarded as waste but could serve as feedstocks for new products and industries.

He explained that circular bioeconomy models seek to keep biological resources and their economic value in productive use for as long as possible while reducing waste and regenerating natural systems.

He distinguished between cascading and regenerative approaches.

According to him, a cascading model asks how many useful products can be created from a biological resource before it becomes waste.

A regenerative model asks how the system itself can become healthier and more productive when the cycle begins again.

“Africa needs both,” he said, arguing that the continent should not simply extract more value from its biological resources but should also protect and regenerate the ecological systems that sustain future production.

Regulation as bioeconomy infrastructure

Another major theme of the lecture was biosafety and regulatory governance.

Obiajunwa challenged the perception that regulation is necessarily a constraint on innovation.

He argued that effective regulation should instead be regarded as infrastructure for the bioeconomy.

Investors need predictable rules.

Innovators need clear regulatory pathways. Consumers need confidence in biotechnology products. Regulators need the technical capacity to assess emerging technologies.

He said that responsible regulation can create the confidence required for investment and commercialisation.

The lecturer also pointed to existing African institutions as evidence that regional regulatory and intellectual property harmonisation is possible.

He cited the African Medicines Agency and regional intellectual property systems as examples of African countries developing institutions that operate across national borders.

He called for similar thinking to be applied to the emerging bioeconomy, particularly in areas where fragmented regulatory systems can increase the cost and complexity of commercialising biotechnology innovations across African markets.

Beyond producing biological commodities

Obiajunwa said the future of Africa’s bioeconomy would depend on the continent’s ability to move beyond the production of biological commodities.

He argued that a tonne of biomass should not be viewed only as an agricultural commodity. It could also be the starting point for enzymes, biomaterials, biofertilizers, biochemicals, pharmaceuticals, food ingredients, animal feed and energy products.

The difference, he said, lies in the capacity to convert biological resources into increasingly sophisticated products and services.

Instead of asking only how much Africa can produce and export, he urged stakeholders to ask how many products, companies, jobs, intellectual property assets and industries can be built around what Africa already produces.

This, he said, requires a combination of scientific research, entrepreneurship, investment, infrastructure, manufacturing capacity, regulatory capability and market development.

Who captures the value?

The central economic question raised by the lecture was who captures the value created from Africa’s biological resources.

Obiajunwa said biotechnology policy should therefore not be measured only by the number of research papers produced or technologies developed.

It should also consider the number of technologies commercialised, companies created, products manufactured, intellectual property retained, investments mobilised and skilled jobs generated.

He called for closer collaboration between universities, research institutes, government agencies, investors and industry to create an ecosystem capable of taking promising innovations from the laboratory to commercial scale.

The transition, he said, should ultimately enable African countries to become not only producers of biological raw materials but also developers, manufacturers, owners and exporters of higher-value biological products.

The lecture concluded with a call for a more integrated approach to Africa’s bioeconomy, bringing together science, markets, circular economy design, regulation, finance, infrastructure and societal trust. And he went on to propose the idea of a National Biotechnology Innovation Challenge, which he offered to support the BSN in designing and implementing.

The broader message was clear: Africa’s opportunity is not simply to remain abundant at the source. It is to build value, industry and ownership around that abundance.

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