This Project seeks to address and minimize the technical barriers to trade across-African countries’ borders through the harmonization and certification of African standards for dairy, horticulture, fisheries, and aquaculture products. Regional Member Countries (RMCs) have diverse national standards and certification requirements for agricultural goods such as dairy, horticulture, fisheries, and aquaculture products. However, these are not harmonized at the sub-regional, regional and continental levels and, therefore, constitute a technical barrier to trade. Even though over 80% of the commodities traded across Africa’s borders are agricultural goods, lack of harmonized standards and streamlined certification requirements is an intractable challenge. This challenge is compounded by uncoordinated border processes and procedures, limited digitalization and rudimentary trade facilitation procedures, which tend to raise the costs of doing business while exacerbating Africa’s lack of competitiveness in cross-border and international trade. Due to lack of harmonized standards and adequate certification, the volumes and values traded among RMCs are low and characterized by stagnation in the basic stages of the dairy, horticulture, fisheries, and aquaculture products value chains. The Project has an implementation timeline of 48 months, at a total cost of UA 2.57 million and targets all the RMCs. It will be financed by an ADF-15 Grant of UA 2.00 million from the Regional Public Goods (RPG) window of the Regional Operations Envelop; and UA 500,000 in kind and UA 70,000 in cash contributions, respectively, from ARSO, the executing agency. climate finance is not attributed to this project. Climate finance is not attributed to this project.

International

African Development Bank Group

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Defence and Security Construction Energy-Power and Electrical Computer Hardwares and Consumables

23.01.2022

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