A recently created African food safety authority is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2026.
The Africa Food Safety Agency (AfFSA) will be part of the African Union (AU), tasked with coordinating and harmonizing food safety policies and regulations.
The AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government adopted the statute to establish the AfFSA in February this year. Efforts to establish a continental institution dealing with food safety began in 2011-2012.
Based on figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) published in 2015, foodborne diseases affect over 91 million people and result in 137,000 deaths annually in Africa.
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In a comment piece published in the journal npj Science of Food, experts said the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which was launched in 2021, will be difficult to realize fully and bring benefit to the region, without giving due attention to improved food safety.
They added that capacity at African Union member states level is not keeping pace with the complexity of food safety challenges.
The first major decision relating to food safety was the move in 2012 to establish the Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa (PACA). There is also the Africa Food Safety Index, consisting of three parts: food safety system (capacity), the health indicator and the trade indicator.
In 2020, the African Union started to develop a continental food safety strategy as a follow up to the recommendations of the First FAO/WHO/AU International Food Safety Conference held in Addis Ababa, in February 2019. The food safety strategy was adopted in 2021/2022.
Money for the food agency will be within the budget of the African Union. Other sources of funding include voluntary amounts from member states and contributions from African private sector and financial institutions. It is yet to be decided which country will host the agency.
What the agency will and will not do
The main objectives of the new authority include to coordinate food safety initiatives at the continental level; strengthen the capacity of countries to improve the performance of food control systems; and promote availability of food safety data and food risk related information.
AfFSA will also establish a food safety data hub for the continent and create an African Rapid Alert System for Food for notification of incidents and for sharing related information.
AfFSA will work other groups and international partners to raise food safety levels to reduce foodborne disease and promote trade in safe food.
However, it is not responsible for implementation of policies and strategies at the grassroots level. The AfFSA is not the lead for food safety management, which is the remit of member states, and it does not have authority to enact and enforce regulations in the continent.
Researchers said the agency will improve food safety in several ways.
“It will help deliver safe food for consumers in Africa and drive international trade in safe food by guiding and supporting modernization and harmonization of national food safety systems, strengthening capacities in food risk analysis in member states; improving the generation and use of credible food safety data in the continent; promoting improved food safety certification processes for competitiveness of African food commodities in intra-African and global trade; developing the capacity of the food safety workforce and enforcement capacity; and strengthening and networking food control assets such as laboratory systems.”
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