Confessions of British journalist

BY JAMES-SHANI MPINGA

Few blokes in the streets of London or anywhere in the Western world can point East African villages like Namulongo and Mapinga on the map, not to mention pronouncing them with their precise local accent. Yet these are the datelines where British journalist Mark Lynas this week witnessed world-class science giving hope to the poor in Africa.

Fifteen years ago, Mark was an anti-GMO activist, quote, determined to ensure that biotechnology was never adopted.“During this time I personally destroyed GMO (genetically modified) crops in the fields with activist groups. I co-organised the first-ever occupation of Monsanto HQ in the UK. And I wrote in the media and in activist literature about the great threat that I thought GMOs posed to the environment,” Mark said at a public lecture in Dar es Salaam this week.

Call them confessions, if you like, but these were words of triumph over personal folly, thanks to the technology he once sought to demonise. Early this year, Mark stunned the world when he ‘confessed’ to wrongdoing in a speech to the Oxford Farmers Conference  which went viral on the internet  and has since faced an outpouring of questions over his change of mind.

“I got this wrong. I have already made my public apology so I will not make another one today. But the reason I am here is because I feel a weight of personal responsibility for the widespread misunderstandings about GMOs,” Mark said at a public lecture hosted by Tanzania’s chapter of the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB), which has a presence in six countries across Africa.Continue reading