COMESA Trade Facilitation Project

FAO support to COMESA trade facilitation programme (GCP/INT/387/COM)

Budget: USD 2,803,069 (total), USD 800,000 (phytosanitary matters) Start: December 2018 End: December 2022

The Common Market for Southern and Eastern Africa (COMESA) is a free trade area which comprises 21 Countries (Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, D.R. Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Eswatini, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Somalia, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe). More information is available on https://www.comesa.int/.

The FAO has set up a project to support trade facilitation within COMESA. This project is to be implemented during 2020, 2021 and 2022. The Secretariat of the IPPC is in charge of the activities that concern plant health. In this field the aims are:

• to develop electronic phytosanitary certification for export of plants and plant products through the ePhyto solution developed by the IPPC, taking in account the specificities of the interested countries;
• to help the COMESA countries to react efficiently is case of pest outbreak alert on their territory;

this implies establishment of national teams for Pest Risk Analysis, strengthening surveillance for early detection, and develop a Pest outbreak and alert system.

Practically the project is to be applied though delivering guides, workshops and trainings in collaboration with COMESA countries and research. In addition, an on-site simulation exercise is foreseen to test the emergency response plans.

Resources materials developed under this project would be made available to the IPPC community through contributed resources or in some cases would be developed following established procedures under the oversight of the Implementation and Capacity Development Committee.