NGOs report limited resources for consumer education and pesticide testing, which they believe hinders effective enforcement of pesticide limits. They also perceive a governmental reluctance to implement significant changes.
The African Centre for Biodiversity (Acbio) released a compilation of the past two decades of research on pesticide use in South Africa on 21 July 2025, in the form of a searchable and downloadable database. The centre hopes this will help with advocacy for policy change and the banning of certain pesticides.
The aim is to help “collective efforts to push the government to prioritise the urgent complete overhaul of the regulatory framework governing the use of pesticides, ensuring its rigorous implementation and heeding the persistent calls for the banning of the most hazardous chemicals and the phase-out of others”.
Executive director of the African Centre for Biodiversity Mariam Mayet said it probably took about six researchers four to five months to complete the database, along with computer science specialists and assistance from artificial intelligence.
In an interview with Daily Maverick, Mayet said, “The first thing we had to do was to find all the research papers over a period of two decades. We decided to look at what happened…