Announcement: Policy Dialogue on Promoting Access to Regional and International Markets for Agricultural Commodities in Africa

18 – 20 February 2010. Nairobi, Kenya. A workshop on Policy Dialogue on Promoting Access to Regional and International Markets for Agricultural Commodities in Africaw will be held.

The workshop is being organized by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) in collaboration with a number of other partners (TBC).

The purpose of the Regional Policy Dialogue in Eastern and Southern Africa is to contribute towards peoples’ awareness about policy issues affecting regional and international agricultural trade, promote dialogue among policymakers and key stakeholders on these issues, and to catalyze a consensus-building process toward trade enhancing policies with a view to building up broad-based support for such policies.

The workshop will provide open space for public discussion on important agricultural trade policy issues such as subsidies, tariff and non-tariff barriers, and food safety and quality assurance.

The specific objectives are to:

• Provide space for public discussion of important trade policy issues with a view to building up broad-based support for such policies.
• Stimulate discussion and dialogue among major stakeholders including policymakers, academics, experts, representatives of regional economic communities, representatives from business community, NGOs and other civil society groups on alternative regional agricultural trade policy issues.
• Advocate for pragmatic regional agricultural trade policies that promote and facilitate access to regional and international markets.
• Identify and agree on policy options to respond to the problems of increased subsidies provided by developed countries as well as address issues of SPS requirements.
• Disseminate the outcomes stemming from the dialogue discussion to a broad spectrum of stakeholders.

Agricultural Trade advisory group

8-11 September. Brussels. CTA co-organised with the ACP Secretariat the Trade advisory group. It aims at providing formal guidance to the CTA Trade programme in terms of content/issues to be covered/prioritised, type of products/activities to be supported and modes of operations.

In order to provide formal guidance to its programme in terms of content/issues to be covered/prioritised, type of products/activities to be supported and possible synergies with other ACP and EU organisations, CTA set up a Trade Advisory Group.

The workshop provided an opportunity for:

• creating or strengthening partnerships
• discussing and sharing experiences on specific and topical issues in trade
• making a significant and long-term contribution to CTA’s agricultural trade programme.

Related:

Agritrade-CTA's web portal on international agricultural trade issues in the context of ACP-EU relations. Agritrade provides update information and analysis on key topics for ACP including EPA, WTO, CAP reform, food safety as well as major commodities such as sugar, banana, cotton and fisheries issues.

The next Brussels Development Briefing will be held in Brussels on 23rd September 2009 from 8h30 to 13h00 on “Upgrading to compete in a globalised world: What opportunities and challenges for SMEs in agriculture in ACP countries?”.

3rd Fair Trade International Symposium

• 
  14-16 May. After the first two Fair Trade symposium held in Montréal in 2002 and 2006, the 3rd International Symposium was held in Montpellier on the theme ‘New dimensions in fair trade: implications and challenges’.
  
  A Web Symposium was organised to make the Symposium more accessible to distant auditors and to reduce the ecological cost of international travels.
  
  Hereafter an overview of the (heavily under-represented) African contributions:
  
• Le commerce équitable : une étape vers l’amélioration des conditions de vie des petits producteurs du Sud ? Le cas de Fédolive au Maroc ; CHOHIN-KUPER A. & KEMMOUN H. ; CAP Rural, Meknès, Maroc
• South african fair trade Rooibos Tea : chalenges of the US Market; NGCWANGU S.U. ; Univ. Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa

Moctar Fall on Fair Trade standard setting and the involvement of producers

Brussels, 16 April 2008. Speaking in the first panel of the Brussels Development Briefing on Fair Trade Moctar Fall, Interface Trading, argues that for producers there are two main issues to take in consideration. Firstly, in terms of standard and certification setting, Mr. Fall argues that producers need to be involved at the beginning of the process in order to be able to take part in the system on an equal footing. Secondly, referring to the involvement of the food retailers, he askes for more transparecy in the way they operate.

Profile: Moctar Fall is the director of the Fair Trade organisation Interface Trading in Senegal. Interface Trading exports agricultural products and handicrafts. He is an economist with a master in business administration. He works with the national chapter of Transparency International in Senegal and is a member of the advocacy working group of IFAT (International Federation for Alternative Trade) and of the Fair Trade Advocacy Steering Committee.

Interface Trading was created in 1995 by Moctar Fall and a group of his friends with whom he worked in an international rural development NGO. Taking advantage of their experience they set up a private company which supports small scale producer groups marketing their products in local markets as well as internationally.