Development Constraint to be Addressed:

Founded in 1970 by the decision taken by the Council of Arab League, the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development (AOAD) commenced its duties in 1972 from its headquarters in Khartoum. Its membership comprises the 21 member states of the Arab League: Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria Arab Republic, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

AOAD’s objectives are to establish and enhance ties amongst Arab states and coordinate their cooperation in all agricultural fields and activities; particularly in the development of human and natural resources, raising the efficiency of agricultural and animal production, developing water resources. To achieve its objectives, AOAD executes a diversified range of activities for the benefit of its member states. In this regard, AOAD uses a database of all agricultural information and statistics.

Until now, AOAD has been manually compiling and processing trade data received through hard copy questionnaires. This involves standardizing the data by converting to international standard units and verification and cross checking of the data for quality and consistency. However, as all this is done manually, the process has a high risk of errors, is time consuming and inefficient. This project aims to fill this technical gap in the development of the trade statistical information system in AOAD: the assistance provided will allow AOAD to start implementing a technically up-dated system for trade data processing.

Development Objective

The development objective is to assist AOAD in obtaining relevant statistical information in support to their priority policies concerning the achievement of Arab food security and an eventual Arab common market and tariff agreements among their member countries within the WTO framework.

Immediate Objectives

The immediate objective of the assistance is to build and strengthen the capacities of AOAD in establishing a sustainable and technically up-dated system of trade data covering its member countries.