Economic Community of West African States and West African Economic and Monetary Union representatives visit European quality infrastructure institutions
Discussion details
June 9, 2015
A high-level delegation consisting of representatives of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) visited the European Commission and several institutions in charge of quality in Belgium and Germany from 1 to 6 June.
The visit was organized in the framework of the West Africa Quality System Programme (WAQSP) in collaboration with the European Commission, EU Delegations in Nigeria and Burkina Faso, and the UNIDO Office in Brussels.
The visit aimed at enabling commissioners to gain a better understanding of the current EU quality infrastructure model prior to establishing a similar infrastructure in the West Africa region.
Kalilou Traore, ECOWAS Commissioner for Industry and Private Sector Promotion, and Guy Amédée Ajanohoun, UEMOA Commissioner for Enterprise Development, Energy, Telecommunications and Tourism, were also in the delegation.
The representatives visited the main European Commission Directorates in charge of quality, food safety and consumer protection as well as other institutions, including the African Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) Secretariat, the Belgian Accreditation Body (BELAC), the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and the German Metrological Institute (PTB). The delegation also participated in discussions with the European Medicines Agency based in the UK.
UNIDO’s Director General LI Yong met ECOWAS Commissioner Traore and participated in the African European Business Forum 2015 in Bonn, where he intervened as a speaker in the panel session on “The way forward”.
Funded by the EU, the WAQSP is being implemented by UNIDO since 2001. The current phase aims to assist the ECOWAS Commission in implementing its regional quality policy (ECOQUAL) by establishing regional quality infrastructure in the fields of standardization, accreditation, conformity assessment, metrology and quality promotion.
For more information, please contact:
UNIDO Trade Capacity-Building branch
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