The ‘Coordinating Committee for Africa’ was established by the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 1972 with a mandate to “exercise general coordination in the preparation of standards relating to the region of Africa”. The committee held its first meeting at FAO in 1974, with 19 countries in attendance.
As the new regional coordinator begins their term, the Agreement of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which came into effect in May 2020, has reinforced the need for an efficient and effective system for managing sanitary and phytosanitary measures, in particular food safety, across the continent as its borders open for trade.
The regional coordinator is based in the Uganda National Bureau of Standards, a statutory body under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Co-operatives which oversees, as part of its mandate, the promotion and use of standards.
As regional coordinator, Uganda intends to engage closely with countries via surveys, webinars and workshops to identify needs and emerging issues, create awareness of priority food safety issues and of Codex standards. A pilot study will also explore the food safety situation in broader terms across the region. By strengthening engagement with regional bodies such as the African Union, the African Organisation for Standardisation and the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat, Uganda also aims to enhance advocacy work in the region.
The Benin Food Safety Agency (ABSSA) is the competent authority responsible for organizing World Food Safety Day activities at the national level in Benin, in collaboration with international organizations.
Organizing and celebrating such a day involves communicating about food-related health risks. As such, ABSSA organized this year’s activities with the aim of raising public awareness and inspiring action to prevent, detect and manage food-borne health risks. Activities were rolled out in two phases: firstly, the activities were promoted in the media, [...]
On 7 June World Food Safety Day was celebrated in Chad under the theme "Food standards save lives".
As part of the celebrations, the manager of the Cabinet d’Expertise Six Sigma gave an interview to Télévision Tchad24, a private Chadian television channel based in N'Djamena, Chad. The interview focused on the issue of a food safety culture and the popularization of food standards in Chad.
Responding to journalists’ questions, the manager of Cabinet d’Expertise Six Sigma listed a few points, which can [...]
USAID’s Feed the Future Initiative, EatSafe: Evidence and Action Towards Safe, Nutritious Food, has honored this year’s World Food Safety Day (WFSD) with a special focus on food safety standards spanning from local to global. EatSafe's aim is to enable lasting improvements in the safety of nutritious foods in traditional food markets in low- and middle-income countries. To commemorate this year’s WFSD, EatSafe led a series of activities, including thought pieces, events, resources, and even an interview cruncher discussing how [...]
The Luanda Central Agro-Food Laboratory of the National Food Quality Control Service, a body under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Angola, organized a lecture with high school students in Luanda on "The role of a conformity assessment body (Laboratório Agroalimentar) in the process of obtaining safe food".
Engineer Carlos Chaves of the Central Agro-Food Laboratory of Luanda spoke with both students and agrifood technicians on 7 June.
With a keen interest in food safety, Chaves has also attended celebrations of [...]
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO), World Food Programme (WFP), African Union-InterAfrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and Codex Coordinating Committee for Africa (CCAFRICA) gathered on Zoom to discuss food safety standards in Africa on 13 June 2023. The objectives for the webinar, presented by the moderator, John Oppong Otoo of AU-IBAR, were to raise awareness, highlight the benefits, share best practices and discuss challenges and potential solutions to implementing [...]
The Street Food Safety Committee in Nigeria, an arm of the Nigerian Institute of Food Science and Technology, Lagos State Chapter, was out in force on World Food Safety Day, as members handed out leaflets and talked to the public about food safety.
In particular, the group spoke with people shopping and working in a market, where food is sold in the street. The food safety team talked with people about the Five Keys to Safer Food, an initiative of the [...]
Mayo Macs, a macadamia processing manufactural company in South Africa celebrated World Food Safety Day this year by producing an exhibition for staff to learn about food safety.
“The exhibition showed the whole Mayo Macs process, starting from delivery to packed product. Emphasis was put on all equipment used during the process to ensure food safety and explaining the process,” said Mpume Ndlovu, a Mayo Macs employee.
Photo © Mayo Macs SA
The Afrotropic Cocoa Processing Company in Ghana celebrated World Food Safety Day again this year, with a pep talk and videos. Staff were also issued with a specially printed World Food Safety Day T-shirt.
The videos will continue to be shown in communal areas of the facility for several months. They include a mixture of food safety lectures from the Managing Director and operational managers, videos on basic food hygiene practices and World Food Safety Day videos produced by FAO and [...]
The FAO & WHO Regional Offices for Africa, World Food Programme, Codex Coordinating Committee for Africa (CCAFRICA) and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) are collaborating to convene a continental webinar in Africa as part of the efforts to commemorate WFSD this year under the theme "Food Standards Save Lives in the African Region".
The purpose of the regional webinar is to celebrate WFSD2023 through discussing collaborative approaches with all stakeholders in the value chain for improving Food Safety systems in [...]
The Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Mauritius (UoM) actively celebrated World Food Safety Day to create awareness around the important role food safety plays, through a half-day workshop on 7 June 2023. The programme for the workshop was carefully planned to include some of the most pressing issues in food safety in Mauritius. Speakers were from the University of Mauritius, the Ministry of Health and Wellness, the Codex Contact Point for Mauritius, the Mauritius Standards Bureau, the food [...]
