“The problem is that the western world’s move toward organic farming - a lifestyle choice for a community with surplus food - and against agricultural technology in general and GM in particular, has been adopted across the whole of Africa … with devastating consequences,” says Sir David King, the UK Government’s former chief scientist.

Nature, the widely respected scientific journal, had this take in a recent editorial: “For well over a decade, companies such as Monsanto have sought to create African markets for GM crops such as insect-resistant Bt cotton, while against them have stood European environmental groups and not a few African political leaders, for whom multinational businesses evoke the spectre of colonialism. The two sides have waged a war in parliaments, in the media and even on the streets.”

The conflict, in which African interests are wrestled by pressure groups outside of Africa, has become so intense that, in 2007, the African Union sponsored an investigation into genetically modified crops, “Freedom to Innovate: Biotechnology in Africa’s Development”.

Their report begins with a clear understanding of their position, “It is no secret that Africa’s history has been marked by a development narrative in which the benefits from science, technology and innovation have been enjoyed by few, instead of being seen as tools for the development of all citizens.”

The report is extremely supportive of biotechnology as a means by which starvation in Africa can be ameliorated.

The World Bank's 2008 Agriculture For Development report predicts global cereal production must increase by 50 per cent and meat production by 85 per cent between 2000 and 2030 to meet demand. In October, the director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, announced at a World Food Day ceremony in Rome that only 10% of $22 billion pledged this year to promote global food security had been received.

All of this is a red-herring. There are very simple reasons that food production in Africa is unable to supply demand.

Farming is an especially difficult business. Seed stocks need to be adequate for projected demand of different types of food. Fertilisers need to be on hand to cater for the different needs of different crops. Africa's small subsistence farms produce very little and would benefit from fertilisers and irrigation use. Technically, it wouldn't take much to convert farms that produce two tons per hectare to four tons.

On a political level, though, this requires a concerted effort. Africa's poor history of supporting land-ownership rights needs to be addressed, along with a woeful lack of investment in roads and rail which would allow farmers to get their products to market.

Africa is a large and fertile continent yet farmers produce less than 20% of the yield on the same land as farmers in Europe and the US. The availability of biotech crops can certainly help to increase yields, but it isn’t going to help with infrastructure and property rights.

However, the hypocrisy of the many “liberal” pressure groups who claim to be speaking on behalf of the world’s poor needs to be tested as well.

Compulsory licensing and patent infringement has decreased pharmaceutical investment into critical medication required by developing countries. There are few countries that allow GM food-crop trials and it is astonishingly expensive to comply with all the red tape. And worse, mid-way through your expensive trial, Greenpeace activists turn up and destroy the crop.

Since 2000, only 54 GM crop trials have been allowed in the UK. Almost all of them were vandalised.

It could be that Africans will sort out the political and economic instability. However, they will find that the scientific advances that would have facilitated the conversion from hunger to plenty has been held up by the life-style choices of the rich for whom hunger is something they only see on television.