Africa’s Genetic Heritage in the Digital Era:DSI Governance Gaps, Multi-Forum Benefit-Sharing Architecture, and Strategic Priorities for COP17
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: ABSTRACT Background Africa is among the most biologically rich continents on Earth for non-human life, yet structurally excluded from the benefit-sharing framework that the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was designed to create. Digital sequence information (DSI), nucleotide and protein sequence data derived from non-human organisms including plants, animals, fungi, microbiota, pathogens, and human microbiome-associated micro-organisms, underpins industries generating over USD 1.56 trillion in annual revenue. DSI governance operates across multiple international forums simultaneously: the CBD’s Cali Fund (operationalised in 2024) is the primary mechanism, but the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Instrument framework, the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement, and the new World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge each govern distinct categories of DSI. Africa’s claims to equitable benefit-sharing rest primarily on its extraordinary non-human biodiversity, but the governance architecture is fragmented, voluntary, and structurally ill-equipped to deliver returns to the communities and nations that are the custodians of these resources. Objectives This study (i) characterises Africa’s non-human biodiversity endowment and its underrepresentation in global DSI databases; (ii) maps access and benefit-sharing (ABS) legislative readiness across 54 African Union (AU) member states, accounting for pre-DSI legal frameworks and national heterogeneity; (iii) models commercial trajectories and Cali Fund benefit-sharing scenarios; (iv) synthesises the multi-forum DSI governance architecture; and (v) elicits, through a structured key-informant exercise, the governance preferences, disbursement priorities, and benefit-sharing modalities of 25 CBD delegates and experts consulted at SBSTTA-28/SBI-7 (Nairobi, July-August 2026). Methods A structured evidence synthesis was conducted following PRISMA 2020 reporting elements. Literature was searched across PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, supplemented by official CBD, FAO, IUCN, UNEP, WHO, WIPO, and BBNJ repositories. The search used expanded terminology beyond “DSI” to include “genetic sequence information,” “biological sequence data,” and country-specific ABS law terms to avoid false negatives from narrower DSI-restricted searches. Quantitative Cali Fund scenario modelling used the UNEP-WCMC/KPMG (2024) non-human DSI sector revenue baseline. To complement the synthesis, a structured expert elicitation was undertaken with 25 purposively selected key informants (CBD Party delegates, IPLC representatives, scientific experts, and ABS focal points) at SBSTTA-28/SBI-7 (Nairobi, July-August 2026). Consistent with the logic of expert elicitation and key-informant sampling, these data are treated as qualitative, position-mapping evidence indicative of negotiator and expert perspectives, not as a statistically representative sample. Results Africa’s non-human biodiversity endowment is exceptional: approximately 25% of global terrestrial species, 9 of 36 biodiversity hotspots, and the world’s second-largest tropical forest. Yet African non-human taxa are severely undersequenced in International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) databases, reflecting both a collection gap and a metadata attribution problem. Zero AU member states have enacted ABS legislation explicitly covering non-human DSI; however, several states have pre-DSI genetic resources laws (e.g., Namibia’s 2017 legislation) that may provide partial coverage under expanded interpretation. Among the 25 informants consulted (representing 14 countries), a clear majority (20 of 25) favoured mandatory contribution models; informants ranked centre of origin and documented material use above raw biodiversity share as disbursement factors, and identified technology transfer and capacity building as the most valuable benefit forms alongside monetary payments. Twenty-two of 25 informants indicated FAO ITPGRFA should govern or coordinate on plant DSI; 20 of 25 flagged the WHO framework for pathogen sequences. These convergent expert views corroborate, rather than establish on their own, the conclusions drawn from the literature synthesis. Conclusions Africa’s modelled allocation share under the Cali Fund ranges from USD 312 million to USD 5.83 billion annually depending on levy rate and biodiversity weight. Realising this requires urgent legislative reform, a shift from voluntary to mandatory contribution mechanisms, multi-forum coordination, and direct IPLC engagement. The domesticated species and legacy DSI complications require a multi-criteria disbursement formula that goes beyond simple biodiversity share. Because the elicitation is a purposive, hypothesis-generating exercise rather than a representative survey, a research agenda for representative, field-based primary data collection is identified to convert these indicative findings into a quantified evidence base.
Language: English
Subfield: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7161792483