CAPACITY BUILDING FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY IN EASTERN AFRICA: STATUS AND NEEDS FOR PARTICIPATION IN GLOBAL BIOECONOMY

ogy uses a wide range of disciplines and its safe applica-tion draws on various scientific and technical skills com-bined with effective policy, regulatory and institutional frameworks that can facilitate its sustainable use and safe deployment. The main prerequisite, however, is that there must be the necessary workforce, infrastruc-ture and policy environment for biotechnology deploy-ment[6]. Many developing countries lack both. Lack of capacity building is partly due to the inability of the gov-ernments to allocate adequate financial resources to research and development as well as overall lack of com-mitment to Science and Technology (S&T). This is exem-plified by the low spending on S&T which is less than 0.01 % of their GDP in many African countries[7]. There-fore, their capacity building needs cannot be considere