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To the Editor—As a systems agronomist with substantial experience in the Consortium of International Agricultural Research centers (CGIAR) and national research institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, I have followed with interest the recent controversy around plantings of transgenic crops in Ethiopia. Until 2015, the country took a vocal stand against genetically modified (GM) crops, underlined by its strict proclamation on biosafety in 2009 (Proclamation No. 655/2009) 1. The regulation was so inflexible that a special permission was required to transit any “modified organisms” through Ethiopian customs. Six years later, the country loosened its restrictions in an amended proclamation (Proclamation No. 896/2015) 2. The latter proclamation allows ‘the commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) cotton and confined field research on GM maize and enset (Ensete ventricosum), a food plant whose cultivation is …