Bayer`s diabetes drug Glucobay (acarbose) is produced by a microbe found in East Africa.

In 1995, five years after Glucobay was commercialized in Europe and one year before it was released in North America, Bayer filed for patent on a new way to manufacture the product. The patent application, which subsequently issued in Europe, the US, and Australia, reveals that a bacteria strain called SE 50 had unique genes that enable the biosynthesis of acarbose in fermentors. The strain comes from Kenya's Lake Ruiru.

In 2001, in an article in the Journal of Bacteriology, a group of Bayer scientists and German academics confirmed that SE 50 was being used to manufacture acarbose. In the article, they described manufacture of acarbose and related compounds. Although their paper did not mention Kenya or Africa, it did say that "The oral antidiabetic agent [acarbose] is produced by fermentation of the actinomycete Actinoplanes sp. strain SE50."
SE50 is the same strain that was identified as Kenyan in the patent application filed six years before.

In 2004, Bayer sales of acarbose totaled €278 million (US $379 million). And yet Kenya has received nothing in return. Bayer spokeswoman Christina Sehnert confirmed the product had been developed from the Kenyan bacteria but said that the drug was a product of biotechnology. She said. "You are not using the original. What has been patented is the bio-tech product."