Technological innovations have a role to play in the African growth and there are prospects for emerging biotech products to offer solutions for sustainable development. Increasingly applications of genomics, proteomics, genome editing, and general synthetic biology have added to the previous generation of GMOs (AU-NEPAD 2018; Tylecote 2018). The new advances involving genome editing include new tools for genome editing like CRISPR/Cas9 and oligonucleotide mutagenisis (ODM). In agro-biotechnology innovation, they constitute the emerging new breeding techniques (NBTs). Africa has witnessed an overall increase in the adoption rate of biotechnology products that is evidenced by the growing number of traits under experimentation (ISAAA 2018; Komen et al. 2020). This is particularly attributed to a shifting policy context that has contributed to the improved deployment of biotechnology innovations as well as approaches used in biosafety decision-making. However, there are key challenges in enhancing a pro-innovation biotech deployment, especially the promising experimental results. Arguably, a sustainable deployment pathway for biotech innovation must consider the generation of evidence that reconciles economic growth with social and environmental sustainability. Further, we learn from over two decades of co-development of agro-biotech R&D and regulatory process that, the context within which biotechnologies can be advanced sustainably and the potential for their uptake depends largely on the social and institutional ecosystem that supports the deployment process including accumulation of capabilities (Kingiri 2021). A rethinking of the deployment pathway is proposed that takes cognisance of the broader innovation process that is much broader than product’s research & development (R &D) and entails institutional and social practices and capabilities that are needed to enhance a sustainable biotech innovation.