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PAQI TBT | QI Stocktaking Document
Introduction
The last Quality Infrastructure Stocktaking report of 2020 was compiled in the middle of the COVID-19 global pandemic and it was to be expected that improvements in any economic sector would show some slowing down or outright reversal. Overall improvements in national quality infrastructure development across the continent were thus modest. It was expected that the pre-COVID-19 improvement momentum would pick up again in 2023 and indeed this is observed for the high-performance categories especially but improvement at the lower performance category continue to be sluggish. It is therefore noted that whilst only 4 countries could be described as having a robust national QI system in 2014, this number rose to 19 in 2023. Countries in the lower performing bracket were 27 in 2014 but have only reduced to 23 in 2023. This however signals good performance in the middle levels with several countries graduating into the high-performance category or at worst staying the same.
In a move to stimulate the start of meaningful trade, the AfCFTA has launched the Guided Trade Initiative (GTI) encouraging up to 27 countries to participate in goods trade under AfCFTA conditions. This is a significant increase from
just 8 GTI countries less than a year ago.
At the same time, in recognition of the need to ramp up production and value addition using local raw materials and labour, industrialisation policies are being implemented. All this points to the need for robust QI services to be made available on the continent to backstop the successful performance of African products on local and global markets.
Previous QI Stocktaking Reports did not specifically address Technical Regulations (TRs) and Conformity Assessment (CA). Noting the significance of technical regulations as an important potential source of technical barriers to trade,
this report introduces the subject of technical regulation in anticipation of the fact that future reports will have more to say on the topic as Africa implements its African Continental Technical Regulation Framework (ACTReF). The ACTReF
is under development and will be presented to AU Trade and Industry Ministers for adoption once the consultation process with Member States and RECs is finalised.
1. INTRODUCTION
Conformity Assessment, which includes testing, calibration, certification and inspection; is also poised to become topical as more continental trade occurs and the need to confirm products’ conformance to standards and regulations becomes
even more necessary. Conformity assessment is a cross cutting discipline between the PAQI institutions but continental experts have been exploring the need to establish a dedicated pillar for conformity assessment based on the experience of some countries and RECs which have associations dealing with testing for example.
Future QI Stocktaking editions are likely to report more on conformity assessment activities as is expected for technical regulations. Both the WTO TBT Agreement and the AfCFTA Agreement’s TBT Annex have dedicated references to technical regulations and conformity assessment.
In this fourth edition of the PAQI TBT/QI Stocktaking report, the review uses similar indicators and criteria as was done in the previous editions enabling a comparative analysis to be made. Of particular interest is the analysis, which is presented in Chapter 2.5.
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