Testing Technology Transfer Policies for the South African Seed industry

Globally, the seed industry has become increasingly concentrated in the last years. Few companies are controlling the majority of the market as well as the majority of the resources. This trend can also be observed in South Africa where multinational companies are currently controlling around 85% of the maize seed market. The aim of this paper is to analyze the structures that have led to the dominance of multinational companies in the South African seed industry. For this purpose we develop a dynamic simulation model. Model simulations show market concentration as a result of the acquisition of domestic companies by multinational companies that left the South African seed industry in a locked in state. We test the effect of different technology transfer policies on the South African seed industry to see how the development of the domestic seed industry can be stimulated and how path dependency can be broken. The results of the simulation show the importance of different policies that aim to enhance spillover on the development path of the domestic seed sector. The results deliver insights for policy development for other countries in Sub Saharan Africa that are yet to develop industrial seed sectors.