Towards a Shared Benefit of Biotechnology-Biosafety Applications in Africa's COMESA Region

The Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (ACTESA), a specialized Agency of Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), organized a workshop on its Policy on Biotechnology and Biosafety on August 18-19, 2014, at Intercontinental Hotel, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. After more than 10 years of continued work towards the development of the Regional Approach to Biotechnology and Biosafety Policy in Eastern and Southern Africa (RABESA), the proposed guidelines were finally endorsed by the 5th Joint Meeting of the COMESA Ministers for Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources held in Addis Ababa on September 2013. The guidelines were subsequently adopted by the 32nd Meeting of the COMESA Council of Ministers, held on February 22-23, 2014, as the COMESA Policy on Biotechnology and Biosafety.

Thus, the goal of the workshop was to raise awareness on the developments to date of the COMESA Biotech and Biosafety Policy. The two-day consultative workshop was attended by 42 participants that included national biosafety focal points from the 19 member countries, scientists, biosafety regulatory experts and the civil society. In his opening remarks, Dr. Belay Getachew on behalf of the ACTESA CEO indicated that the workshop was expected to improve participants' clarity on integrating the regional policy guidelines within the national biosafety frameworks. This would lead to coordinated approach on risk assessment in the region that would encourage the sharing of information, data and existing scientific capacities. This platform provided participants the opportunity to input into the proposed strategic objectives, activities, partnership roles, responsibilities, and resource mobilization strategy for the implementation of the Policy.

The workshop was organized by ACTESA in collaboration with International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech applications (ISAAA AfriCenter), Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA), Program for Biosafety Systems (PBS) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

For more information please contact Dr. Belay Getachew at GBelay@comesa.int