As the second wave of COVID-19 sweeps across Africa, bringing steep increases in infections and deaths, the battle between facts and conspiracies – especially around the safety of COVID vaccines – has also intensified. For anyone who has worked on crop improvement in Africa over the last three decades, the flood of misinformation around vaccines evokes an eerie sense of déjà vu. It is reminiscent of the aggressively anti Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) campaign that has stalled Africa’s efforts to improve the productivity and nutrition of key crops over the past three decades. Those of us working in the GMO field grossly underestimated the power of the misinformation campaign against it.