FAO.org

Marrakech, December 18, 2025 – FAO organized and facilitated a 10-day regional training on the FAO Pesticide Registration Toolkit for a group of French-speaking African countries. The workshop was funded by the Arab Bank for Economic Development for Africa (BADEA) and organized by the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development (AOAD), and technically supported by FAO.

Participants included 14 staff from national pesticide registration authorities of: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Morocco, Niger and Togo. These countries also belong to two existing regional pesticide schemes in West and Central Africa. The event was opened (and closed) by officials from the Moroccan Ministry of Agrculture, BADEA, AOAD and FAO.

Participants explored the various toolkit's elements, key registration modules and decision-making framework related to pesticide registration, and engaged in practical exercises in evaluating scenarios and case studies. The workshop also covered “special topics” such as highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) and the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS). Additionally, the programme included a discussion on the SPRINT-H2020 project Global Health Risk Assessment Toolbox

Participants welcomed this training and encouraged FAO and BADEA/AOAD to organize more workshops to enable national and regional teams of pesticide registration staff to be further trained.