Food Safety in the Face of AfCFTA Implementation
Food safety has become an important prerequisite for export markets, and if it is not handled proactively, it can be a hindrance to the AfCFTA, particularly in terms of increasing trade in agricultural commodities and services. The effective generation of data, analysis, and exchange of knowledge is essential to the success of the AfCFTA. These activities are intended to support biosafety risk assessment and decision making, inform food safety policy formulation and harmonisation at the national, regional, and continental levels, and boost inter-African trade.
Building platforms for the generation of data that are supported by evidence is necessary if we want to make major strides in improving the management of food safety on the continent. Foods that have been contaminated hinder efforts to improve food safety and offer an unsatisfactory status quo of food security, hunger, malnutrition, and other health-related issues. This makes eliminating poverty and fostering economic growth more challenging. Food insecurity is made worse by the issues connected with contaminated foods, which are consumed to a considerable extent on the continent, leading to an increase in food losses and waste.
The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (#AfCFTA) has as one of its primary objectives on the harmonisation of trade liberalisation across all of Africa’s subregions and at the continental level. This will stimulate the continent’s economies. The following annexes are included in the agreement that established the AfCFTA which relate to food safety:
- Annex 3: Customs co-operation and mutual administrative assistance
- Annex 4: Trade facilitation
- Annex 5: Non-tariff barriers
- Annex 6: Technical barriers to trade
- Annex 7: Sanitary and phytosanitary measures
Food Safety Challenges
As the continent’s borders open up for trade, one of the primary obstacles that will need to be overcome is the requirement to create a system that is both efficient and effective for managing sanitary and phytosanitary (#SPS) measures, in particular food safety across the continent. In terms of regional and economic integration, regulatory frameworks for managing SPS, transport and communication infrastructure, as well as quality infrastructure and technical capacities for food safety enforcement, the several regional economic blocs (#RECs) and Partner states to the AfCFTA are at different levels. This is the case for all of the aforementioned factors. The following are some of the most significant challenges to food safety and food security on the African continent at present:
- Contamination of grains by aflatoxin, primarily maize, which is considered to be a major Staple Food in Africa
- The invasive Fall Army Worm, which destroys the majority of grain crops
- Microbial contamination of meat and meat products
- The inherent risk of infectious diseases that can spread across borders, as well as pests that are resistant to pesticides
- The increasing spate of chemical/pesticide residues in food traded across the continent
The World Health Organisation’s FERG study, which was published in 2015 which is the most thorough analysis to date that gives us a fair sense of the food safety situation in Africa. Africa has the highest number of foodborne illnesses and the highest fatality rate in the world, with 91 million illnesses and 137,000 deaths annually. This is due to the consumption of contaminated food and promoted by producers and merchants who are often ill-informed of fundamental food safety concepts. There is a large and unregulated informal food industry that predominates in comparison to a much smaller formal and regulated industry for exported foods in Africa.
In many African countries, there is a dual system in which more attention is paid to food that is exported than to food that is consumed domestically. The combined effects of these conditions put African consumers at a significant risk of foodborne diseases. According to the Malabo Declaration, the goal of trepling intra-African trade by 2025 will be unachievable for African countries if we are unable to make a significant investment and change the way food safety is prioritised on the continent. All of these issues together put African consumers in a precarious position regarding food safety. With the current food safety situation that prevails in many African countries and without a massive investment and a paradigm shift on how food safety is prioritised on the continent, one could argue that it will be impossible for African countries to meet the goal of tripling intra-African trade by 2025 as set forth in the Malabo Declaration.
Opportunities
Achieving food safety goals in Africa is possible if African countries are able to take advantage of available opportunities and build on the current momentum. As a follow-up to the Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa, which African leaders signed in July 2003, the Malabo Declaration reaffirmed African leaders’ commitment to the principles and values set forth in that declaration. The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (#CAADP) was put into effect as a result of the Declaration. The “commitment to the provision of at least 10 % of national budgetary resources to agriculture and rural development policy implementation” was a significant component in the CAADP. These resources are vital for our future work, so we must remind our leaders of this commitment again and again.
New tools for guiding countries on the utilisation of available resources in food safety have been developed and are now available. The FAO/WHO Assessment Tool (https://lnkd.in/eVJKiy5k) of national food control systems is one of these tools that can be utilised. The tool is now ready to be used by countries, and it will not only detect weaknesses but also provide recommendations and a roadmap on how to develop a solid national food safety system in the process.
An additional instrument was established by the African Union in 2019, the African Food Safety Index (AFSI). “Malabo Declaration members are obligated to report every two years on their progress toward meeting the Malabo Declaration’s goals. The African Union realised after the first biannual report that crucial food safety indicators were lacking, therefore it decided to develop the African Food Safety Index. As a result of this index and the requirement for countries to report on food safety progress at the country level, food safety authorities have a powerful tool to prioritise food safety and negotiate resources both in their national budgets and with development partners once integrated into National Agricultural Investment Plans (NAIPs).
A Food Safety Agency will be a vital actor in food safety on the continent provided it is given the proper mandate, staffed with competent officials, and given the financial resources necessary to carry out its task. Another good example of possibilities is the Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa (https://www.aflatoxinpartnership.org/). An effective approach for managing one of Africa’s most significant food safety issues has been devised and is now being implemented by the African Union with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The lessons learned during the testing phase could be used to strengthen the model and scale it to other nations on the continent and to help establish similar programmes for other issues of interest to the continent.
Recent advances between Codex and the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) have the potential to offer new channels and opportunities for both the corporate and public sectors to improve food safety and to promote commerce. There is little doubt that in Africa, many food company operators rely on approved third-party certification programmes for exporting their products, while food safety authorities devote a significant portion of their limited resources to monitoring these export products. Using data and information from these private certification schemes in national and official food control systems, as well as the results of pilots in Africa and Latin America funded by the STDF, will lead to the development of a new framework for a better use of inspection resources targeting high-risk food business operators and better recognition by importing countries. The USFDA and GFSI are working together to recognise any operator qualified under a GFSI recognised certification programme as meeting the criteria of the Food Safety Modernisation Act (FSMA). The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the Netherlands, Australia, and China have all already recognised GFSI and certified third-party certifications as legitimate.
Recent high-profile food safety conferences have created momentum that, if managed effectively, can help turn around Africa’s current status in terms of food safety. The first global food safety conference was held in Ethiopia in February 2019 by the FAO, WHO, and AU. This was followed by a second one organised by the FAO/WHO and WTO in Geneva, Switzerland. African food safety authorities can take advantage of the current momentum to secure the resources needed to build strong national food safety systems and to build private sector capacity as a result of these meetings, which have raised the issue of food safety to the highest levels of policymaking. World Food Safety Day, which the UN General Assembly designated on June 7th, gives food safety authorities and other stakeholders an additional chance to draw attention to efforts underway in their countries and educate the public about the critical role they play in preventing food-borne illness and other health problems. If Africa is to achieve the goal of tripling intra-African agricultural trade by 2025, we would need significant resources and investments from both the corporate and public sectors. As long as food safety measures are linked with strong SPS and customs-related actions, they would not be enough.
In Ghana, the Ministry of Health, Food and Drugs Authority, Ghana Standards Authority, Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development in collaboration with the World Health Organisation, Food and Agricultural Organisation, World Food Programme with key state agencies and private-sector organisations celebrated this year’s World Food Safety Day under the theme: ‘Safer Food, Better Health and officially launched the National Food Safety Policy and inaugurated the National Food Safety Emergency Response Plan Committee on Thursday, June 16, 2022 at the Alisa Hotel in Accra. Every year, World Food Safety Day is observed to raise awareness about foodborne illness, which can have a detrimental impact on human health, food security and economic success.
One in ten persons in low and middle-income countries, including Ghana, suffers from food poisoning each year (WHO, 2022), with over 600 million cases of food-borne illness reported each year. In sub-Saharan Africa, the problem of food safety and food-borne toxicants is exacerbated by public ignorance on the subject, an uncoordinated approach to food control, a lack of technical expertise and laboratories that are adequately equipped in some cases, poor enforcement of laws and regulations, entry of contaminated food into the food chain, which has become unavoidable as a result of the shortage of food supply occasioned by drought, wars, and socioeconomic and political insecurity.
Over the years, the Food and Drugs Authority has implemented a variety of plans, programmes, and policies to increase food safety awareness in Ghana. Notably among these include the rollout of the brand-new Street Food Vending Permit for those who make their living selling food on the street. The FDA utilises a variety of cutting-edge regulatory strategies, such as market surveillance, licensing of food production, preparation premises, and public education, to guarantee that the food available to the general public as free of harmful contaminants.
The national food safety policy was developed by the Ministry of Health in conjunction with pertinent ministries, departments, agencies, and other partners to establish and maintain a food safety system that protects both the health of consumers and the general public. The adoption and execution of the National Food Safety Policy will contribute to decreasing the number of foodborne diseases that are caused by consumption of contaminated food in Ghana. Additionally, the Policy will serve as a foundation for the formulation of National Food Safety objectives, regulations, and guidelines that can be applied to particular parts of the food chain. In the event of an emergency involving the food supply chain, the National Food Safety Emergency Response Plan (FOSERP) has been mandated to oversee full implementation of the policy.
Concluding Remarks
- Development of food safety standards for products that are highly traded on the continent; or foods that have high market potential for trade.
- Harmonisation of already existing food safety standards within the RECS
- Focus on awareness creation, trainings and other capacity building initiatives for all stakeholders along the value chain: the farmers, SMEs, the informal sector, food distributors and traders including street food vendors.
- Develop technical cooperation arrangements among the RECs and the Partner States on the management of Sanitary and phytosanitary measures.
- We should always bear in mind that governments do not produce food and that their role is to create an enabling environment for the private sector to produce safe food. Massive investments will be required for capacity building activities to ensure that all the actors along the value chain from the farm to folk have the trainings and the know-how needed to allow them to contribute to the provision of a safe food supply both for the domestic and intra-African markets
- Building capacity for laboratory-based monitoring, surveillance for risk assessment, data generation, collation and analytics.
- Timely generation and sharing of data to ensure interventions and actions are taken by decision maker in a timely manner.
- Deploy modern tools such as analytical tools as well as automated data collection and synthesis to make use of “big data” will be of great value to African countries with limited resources and evolving food safety systems
- Developing policy guidelines on data protection of sensitive food safety information while ensuring information exchange at all level
- Resource mobilisation is required to ensure sustainable ways of capturing and collating information and knowledge of relevance to food safety such as from data analytics.
Further readings
Kamanzi J (2019). Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) – A Quest for Trade in Safe Food. A key
note address delivered by Dr. Kamanzi. Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme: FAO/WHO Coordinating Committee for Africa, Twenty-third Session. Nairobi, Kenya, 2 – 6 September 2019.
Meijer N, Kleter G, Safitri RA, de Nijs M, Rau M-L, Derkx R, Webbink J, Post M, Waarts Y, van der Fels-
Klerx Y (2018). The aflatoxin situation in Africa: Systematic literature review. African Union Commission/PACA
By Kojo Ahiakpa
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Research Desk Consulting Limited
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