Injera, Ethiopia’s staple food, was invented by a Dutchman in 2003.
That’s
according to the European Patent Office, which lists the Netherlands’
Jans Roosjen as the “inventor” of teff flour and associated food
products. Teff is a plant endemic to Ethiopia, and the grain is used to
make the spongy fermented pancake that Ethiopians eat with their meals.
Roosjen
also has a patent for the “invention” in the United States — though he
is patently not the inventor of a product that has been around for
millennia.
Ethiopians are nonplussed.
Kassahun Gebrehana (Wikus de Wet)
“For
someone from Europe, from across the ocean, in a different continent,
to come and say we patented teff and the copyright is ours …” Kassahun
Gebrehana, owner of the Little Addis Café in Maboneng, Johannesburg,
shakes his head.
“Have they been eating it for centuries? We have.”
Gebrehana says
it’s impossible to overstate the significance of teff and injera to
Ethiopian cuisine and culture. “We are addicted to teff. We cannot live
without it. Once I lived in Maseru and I would drive four-and-a-half
hours to Johannesburg just to get some teff injera. We cannot say we eat
food without injera.”
Superfood
The
story of how Ethiopia lost the intellectual property for teff and its
associated products in Europe began in the early 2000s, with a bright
idea: If Ethiopians love teff so much, why wouldn’t the rest of the
world? The tiny grain — the world’s smallest grain, in fact — is
gluten-free and rich in nutrients, beloved by hipsters and dieticians
alike. It was, and remains, perfectly poised to take advantage of the
global health food trend. Teff could be the next kale or quinoa.
Dutch
researchers formed a company, which eventually became Health and
Performance Food International, to explore options to market teff in
Europe. Roosjen was a director. After many negotiations with different
government entities, the company reached a deal with Ethiopia to plant
and distribute teff in Europe. In return, it would send a hefty slice of
the profits back to Addis Ababa.
These details are all courtesy
of researchers Regine Andersen and Tone Winge, who in 2012 published a
comprehensive paper on the subject for the Fridtjof Nansen Institute.
At
the time, the deal was hailed as ground-breaking: for once, an African
country was actually going to benefit from its precious natural
resources. But not everyone was impressed: in 2004 the Coalition Against
Biopiracy gave the Dutch company its award for the “most outrageous”
deal: “The company appears to be oblivious to the fact that they are
seeking to monopolise teff varieties that were developed over millennia
by Ethiopian farmers and community plant breeders,” reads the citation.
READ MORE: Taste-testing Ethiopia’s first Pizza Hut
In
2003, Ethiopian officials boxed up 1 440kg of teff seeds and shipped
them off to the Netherlands. From there, it was supposed to find its way
into kitchens all over Europe. Ninety-one Dutch agrarian entrepreneurs
started growing teff, and that year 620 hectares were harvested.
But
things did not go according to plan. The demand for teff never
materialised, and the much-lauded deal earned the Ethiopian government a
mere pittance: just €4 000 in total. In 2009 the Dutch company went
bankrupt, meaning in effect that the contract was terminated.
But
Health and Performance Food International had already applied for and
been granted patents for the production and distribution of teff in
Europe, and these did not lapse when the company went bankrupt. These
patents are incredibly broad, covering most forms of teff flour, as well
as all products that result from mixing teff flour with liquids. These
include bread, pancakes, shortcake, cookies, cakes and, of course,
injera.
Blanket patent
“The company
argued that such a broad patent was required to secure the investments
in teff and thus also the prospects of benefit sharing with Ethiopia,”
said Andersen and Winge.
“In practice, the teff patent excludes
all others, including Ethiopia itself, from utilising teff for most
forms of relevant production and marketing in the countries where it is
granted. The patent was also filed in the USA and Japan.
“A
development had started whereby Ethiopia was becoming sidelined. The
country found itself squeezed out of position to utilise its own teff
genetic resources — for example, through co-operation with other foreign
companies — in Europe and wherever else the teff patent might be
granted, while at the same time losing all prospects of sharing the
benefits from the use of these genetic resources.”
Now Ethiopia
wants its intellectual property back. Earlier this year, the Ethiopian
Intellectual Property Office announced that it would do everything in
its power to reclaim the teff patents, including legal and diplomatic
action.
According to the state-run
Ethiopian Herald, a
government spokesperson said the country was losing money to European
companies, which take advantage of the patent situation to supply teff
products to international markets — without funnelling anything back to
Ethiopia.
It’s about time that the situation changes, says Little Addis owner Gebrehana.
“You
can’t say this thing was patented in 2003. It’s our staple food. In
Ethiopia, when we pray, we don’t say ‘give us our daily bread.’ We say:
‘give us our daily injera.’ ”
Source: https://mg.co.za/article/2018-06-29-00-whose-injera-is-it-anyway
