ECOWAS urged to harmonise food safety, plant health standards
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been urged to harmonise food safety and plant health standards across member states.
They have also been asked to remove technical barriers and improve the movement of goods along the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor.
The Director of Strategy and Partnership at Trademark Africa, an aid-for-trade organisation, Anthe Vrijilandt, was speaking at an Abidjan–Lagos Corridor SPS/TBT forum held in Accra, where public institutions, private sector groups and regional partners met to draft an action roadmap for standard alignment across the sub-region.
The event was also attended by heads of standards regulatory bodies across West Africa, who deliberated on how to harmonise standards to ensure consistency in quality assurance across the sub-region.
Concerns
Ms Vrijilandt highlighted the persistent challenges traders face, including lengthy delays and goods perishing at borders due to fragmented standards and regulations.
She said traders were often confronted with lengthy border procedures, causing perishable goods to go bad before reaching their destination.
“You cannot get the food easily across borders because of those issues.
They are stopped at the borders, sometimes even for two or three weeks.
Now, if you leave bananas for three weeks at the border, you tell me what happens to them,” Ms Vrijilandt added.
She outlined two approaches to address the issue, such as mutual recognition, in which a test conducted in one country is trusted by the rest of the region.
The other approach is full harmonisation, where all member states adopt identical standards.
The Principal Programme Officer of Quality and Standards at the ECOWAS Commission, Midaye Koissi, also said that the duplication of quality control procedures remained a major barrier along the corridor.
“The product must be tested in Ghana first and when it reaches Côte d’Ivoire, the product must also be tested. That brings duplication that costs money for the traders and makes goods stay at the borders,” he said.
Mr Koissi said ECOWAS had a Technical Committee on Standards composed of representatives from all 15 member states, responsible for discussing and agreeing on the requirements for converting national standards into regional standards.
He said once the standards were approved, they would become regional, meaning the others would recognise goods tested in one country.
Mr Koissi stated that the commission’s collaboration with Trademark Africa would help leverage positive outcomes from East Africa and develop and implement a solid action plan.
Background
The Abidjan-Lagos Corridor, linking Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria, is a vital economic route, handling over 70 per cent of the ECOWAS Gross Domestic Product and more than 50 million tonnes of freight annually.
Despite this significance, the corridor was notorious for delays and high trade transaction costs.
According to the World Bank, the economic cost of trade compliance in Sub-Saharan Africa is the highest in the world.
It can be 2-3 times more expensive to trade within Africa than with the rest of the world, largely due to cumbersome border procedures and regulatory divergence.
A study by the African Development Bank (AfDB) found that customs and administrative procedures at borders can account for up to 30-40 per cent of the total time required to transport goods.
