African states in Uganda to benchmark on electronic phytosanitary certification
Delegates from 15 African Union member states are in Uganda for the three-day electronic phytosanitary certification education at Protea Hotel Entebbe. PHOTO | DEUS BUGEMBE
What you need to know:
- The technology was a big success as it streamlined and improved the management of plant health risks by reducing the challenges associated with paper certificates, thereby making trade between countries safer, faster and cheaper
In 2020, agriculturalists in Uganda scored highly with a breakthrough when the electronic phytosanitary certification technology was implemented. Its introduction felt like a sigh of relief as it was to tackle a major problem that had affected agricultural trade with infected or unsafe products moving across borders, posing a danger to the receiving countries.
The technology was a big success as it streamlined and improved the management of plant health risks by reducing the challenges associated with paper certificates, thereby making trade between countries safer, faster and cheaper. In a nutshell, the certificate is a document issued by the exporting country to the importing country as a guarantee that the agricultural products in question meet the standards and conditions set.
Having worked for Uganda, other African Union states want it. This explains why the likes of Cameroon, DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Mozambique, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania are converging at Protea Hotel Entebbe Resort for three days to get ways of implementing the technology back home.
“Electronic phytosanitary certification system is one of the tools we have taken up as Uganda to safely engage in trade with fellow African states and beyond. In Uganda, it has worked well for us and we have avoided forgeries which we encountered with the manual system. It explains why many African countries have come to benchmark and draw lessons from us so that they can also pick up on it,” Mr Paul Mwambu, the commissioner of crop inspection and certification at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries told the Monitor Tuesday.
So far, only 10 of the 55 AU member states have jumped onto the wagon while nine have registered and are going through the testing stages but the signs are clear that the number will grow. It has also been noted that implementation of the technology has faced stumbling blocks like inadequate legal frameworks, limited funds and inadequate technical capacity of staff to support its rollout.
However, the future looks bright as the electronic phytosanitary certification technology remains a key component in the successful implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), one of the flagship projects of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 that would create the biggest free trade area in the world, with about 1.3bn people benefiting from the exchange of goods and services on the continent.
