AU to harmonize food standards to boost agricultural trade

The African Union (AU) plans to harmonize food standards for the 54 member states, officials said on Wednesday.

The AU's African Organization for Standardization (ARSO) Technical Director Reuben Gisore told Xinhua in Nairobi that the exercise will begin by developing standards for the continent's staples foods such as maize, potatoes, rice and cassavas.

"The aim of standardization of food standards is to remove the trade barriers that often face traders selling food across borders," Gisore said on the sidelines of the Second Common External Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Agro-Industrial Supply Chain Conference.

The harmonization project will be funded by the African Development Banks as well as the UN Economic Commission for Africa.

ARSO hopes to complete standardization of staples by 2018 before working on fruits and vegetables.

Gisore said that lack of continental wide standards is part of the reason why more than 95 percent of staples food imports worth over 22 billion dollars are imported from outside Africa.

He noted that standards will create market certainty so that local agricultural investors can plan on global scale production.

"For the economies of African countries to grow, the scales of operation of farmers must go beyond the peasant-scale confines of the state," he added.

According to the ARSO official, lack of standards is used by some governments as a reason why they lease huge tracts of prime land to foreign firms.

The technical director said that the harmonization of standards is also gaining more significance with the continued regional integration of Africa. Endit