The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) has launched strategic partnerships to improve the regulatory environment for Aflatoxin control across the 20-nation bloc.

Martha Byanyima, the COMESA Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Coordinator, revealed this while addressing over 40 delegates at a two-day Aflatoxin Sampling and Testing Workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Aflatoxin is a naturally produced poisonous strain of the fungus species that is invisible to the naked eye and whose consumption, even of very minute quantities, is sufficient to cause illness or death.

Although aflatoxin contamination poses a global problem, its impact is higher in tropical climatic regions, between 40° North and 40° South of the equator, which makes the entire African continent susceptible.

Aflatoxin contamination commonly occurs in maize, groundnuts, and such other crops of regional importance in Eastern and Southern Africa like sorghum and millet.

The contamination can occur to the said crops at the pre- and post-harvest stages, with the most affected countries in the COMESA bloc including Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Malawi and Madagascar, in no particular order.

According to World Bank studies, 25 per cent of world’s food crops are affected by aflatoxin contamination.

The main objectives of the two-day forum last week were to review the proposed sampling protocols and build consensus on the national regional maximum tolerance limits for Aflatoxin in maize and groundnuts.

This is expected to, in turn, ease movement of products from one country to another and ensure domestic food safety, given that 60 to 80 per cent of the affected commodities are used in informal trade and on farm consumption, according to a statement issued at the end of the meeting.

Aflatoxin contamination cuts across the value chain, affecting farmers, millers, traders, markets, and consumers.

Under the COMESA strategic partnership, scientists have come up with draft Aflatoxin sampling procedures to facilitate effective regional trade for unprocessed maize and groundnuts in the trading bloc and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The proposed sampling protocol addresses the optimum sample size, and the conditions and frequency of sampling grain destined for regional markets.

Once implemented, it’s believed that the protocol will minimise the risks of misclassifying commodities, whilst enhancing the effective removal of contaminated commodities from supply chains in Eastern and Southern Africa.

"The key outcomes of the workshop are a well-defined commodity sampling protocol to be used by testing laboratories operating across COMESA countries, whose ultimate objective is to increase safe intra COMESA trade in maize and groundnuts,” Byanyima said.

She added that the move is intended to help member states reduce costs associated with multiple testing for Aflatoxin contamination on the maize commodity in the export and import trade.

"The Mutual Recognition Framework will support a network of specialised laboratories in the Member States with competence in Aflatoxin analysis and certification. The initiative will involve conducting training on sampling and testing for Aflatoxin grain traders associations, millers and processors.”

The targeted laboratories include four in Kenya, two in Malawi and one each in Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Currently, no mutual recognition of technical standards and equivalence of food safety systems exist of staple foods crossing borders and this continues to be an impediment to intra-COMESA trade, according to experts.

The envisaged mutual recognition is expected to achieve one time testing in the exporting country and remove the need for additional testing in the importing country.

"This will simplify the food safety regulatory environment for staple food trade in the region and reduce the cost of trading food staples (particularly maize and maize products), by eliminating multiple testing and inspection activities carried out in the exporting and importing countries,” Byanyima explained.

The Sampling and Testing Aflatoxin workshop was sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture – Foreign Agriculture Service (USDA-FAS) in partnership with COMESA and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) and the Research Scientists working on Aflatoxin.

Participants were drawn from the national standards agencies, scientists, grain millers and grain associations from Kenya, Malawi, Egypt, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ghana and Zambia.

In an attempt to meet European Union Aflatoxin standards, African food exporters of cereals, dried fruits and nuts suffer losses estimated to be around $670 million, according to World Bank.

The worst ever reported Aflatoxin contamination incident of maize products occurred in Kenya in 2014, leaving 125 people dead out of 317 reported cases. The Kenyan government estimates that about ten per cent of Kenya’s maize harvested gets contaminated by Aflatoxin resulting in economic losses of approximately $100 million.

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