Africa: Alliance for Product Quality II
Overview
Summary
The German government initiative "Alliance for Product Quality in Africa II (AfPQ II)", is a multi-stakeholder initiative, consisting of public and private actors who implement selected projects with the goal to improve product quality in key economic sectors of African countries and builds on the success of the "AfPQ I" project, under which more than 40 companies were certified to standards that are required to access high value markets in Europe and groups of quality and food safety experts were trained to provide business support services in the long term. ITC is contracted by GIZ to implement three project activities related to quality management and food safety in four countries, namely Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana and Rwanda. The three project activities are being implemented to support selected African small and medium sized companies in the targeted focus sectors to meet quality requirements of buyers in Europe and other important export markets. The ITC contribution relates to the implementation and certification of quality management, food safety and related standard based compliance systems, the improved coordination of standard setting bodies and the private sector in the focus countries, and the development of national quality and food safety experts as well as the sensitization and training of quality manager in SMEs. The sectors targeted are predominantly agri-food, natural cosmetics and textiles/clothing.