ECOWAS trained around one hundred Ghanaian and Burkina Faso practitioners and regulators involved in food and agricultural trade on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures to ensure food security in the sub-region , from 10 to 14 June 2024 in Accra/Ghana and from 19 to 21 June 2024 in Ouagadougou/Burkina Faso. The main objective of the sessions organised as part of the implementation of the West Africa Food System Resilience Programme (FSRP) was to create a knowledge acquisition forum for the Ghanaian and Burkina Faso authorities involved in regulating food handling standards and those involved in cross-border trade in food and agri-food products. Work in each country focused on training and knowledge-sharing sessions, field inspection visits and practical demonstrations on health inspection and food-borne disease decision-making, with an emphasis on protecting consumers from illness, injury or death caused by consuming food.

Sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS) are quarantine and biosecurity measures applied to protect human, animal or plant life or health against the risks associated with the introduction, establishment and spread of pests and diseases and against the risks associated with additives, toxins and contaminants in food and feed.

The training sessions covered the following topics: “General principles of food hygiene”; “SPS Agreements”; “Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP)”; “Food import and export inspection and certification systems”; “The legislative and regulatory framework in force in Ghana and Burkina Faso”; and the “Harmonised Guide to Health Inspection and Decision-Making”.

During the various training sessions, the facilitators also presented to the country teams the new harmonised risk-based sanitary and phytosanitary guide developed by ECOWAS, to harmonise protocols across the country.

After the classroom sessions, field visits were organised, including (i) health inspection of imported products (such as canned goods and fresh products – dairy and meat), (ii) health inspection of products intended for export and health inspection of local products (such as meat, fish and other fresh products).

The regulators carried out product identification, physical inspection of products, detection and identification of signs of non-compliance and unsafe products, and techniques for collecting, identifying and packaging samples for further laboratory analysis.

Through these training sessions, the stakeholders and partners appreciated the various initiatives and support provided by ECOWAS in the region. They also expressed the hope that ECOWAS would be able to mobilise all its resources to effectively defend commercial agricultural production and productivity in selected value chains in the region.