How do developing countries attempt to enhance their export position and their overall economic development using biotechnology?

Some are attempting to increase the competitiveness of their traditional export crops. Both Uganda and Costa Rica, for example, are developing tissue culture for coffee. If an applicable technology is developed this research effort may have short­term benefits, but in the long term the investment might be wasted as exports have to face very unstable world market prices. Moreover, the application of the technology itself may create a decline of the world market coffee prices, particularly if it causes oversupply in already depressed commodity markets.

Others are trying to strengthen their position on the world market with new export products, such as cut flowers. In this issue, the cases of Colombia, Kenya and India are described. One of the differences between these countries is the use of biotechnology. In Kenya, biotechnology currently plays no important role in the sector, while in Colombia the importance of micropropagation is increasing. Both countries are not involved in breeding. India has much stronger biotechnological development: tissue culture for the production of plantlets up to genetic engineering for breeding. The ability to innovate in order to respond to the increasing competition from other Southern and Northern countries might depend on their technological capacity. All developing countries involved have cheap labour and a favourable climate, but only a few have a technological capacity of importance.
 
Since the US trade embargo and the disintegration of the Eastern European countries, which disrupted Cuba's entire economy, biotechnology has played a strategic role in CubaÕs development policy. Its biotechnology policy is directed to food production, the increase of the nutritional value of food, and the biological production of formerly imported agricultural inputs, such as fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Biotechnology is also applied to the medical sector in order to increase the diversification of exports. Different barriers, however, have to be overcome before Cuba will be able to enter the world market with biotechnological products.
The South African situation is completely different. Isolation and sanctions have directed South Africa towards self­sufficiency, but in contrast to Cuba, their biotechnological development remained limited and was not specifically directed towards a goal of self­sufficiency.