This document discusses food safety challenges in Africa and the need for a paradigm shift. Key points: 1. Africa's food safety system faces many challenges like poor investment, fragmented management, and inadequate infrastructure, undermining food system transformation and posing public health and market access issues. 2. Recent policies prioritize food safety, but more transformative actions are needed to strengthen capacities like risk assessment, addressing the large informal sector, workforce development, and sustainable financing models. 3. The document outlines some paradigm shifts underway, including a "shared responsibility" approach, developing a food safety data hub, expanding standards to the informal sector, and strengthening technical training programs. With continued progress in these areas, Africa's food safety

1. Senior Scientist, AKADEMIYA2063
A Paradigm Shift in Food Safety for Africa
Dr. Fatima Kareem
Team: Amare Ayalew, Fatima Kareem & Delia Grace

2. #2023ReSAKSS #2023ATOR
Introduction
• Africa’s food safety (FS) system is fraught with a mirage of challenges.
● Poor investment and budgetary allocation.
● Fragmented food system management.
● Poor quality infrastructure.
• These challenges undermine the pace of food system transformation in the
continent.
● Unsafe food – adverse implications on public health.
● Aggravate food and nutrition security problems.
● Market access problems.
• Thus, the need to tackle food safety problem. It is critical to the achievement of the
SDGs and the the Malabo declaration commitments.
● Halving poverty.
● Ending hunger.
● Tripling intra-Africa trade.

3. #2023ReSAKSS #2023ATOR
Introduction
• However, there has been a recent prioritisation of food safety in Africa, which is
encouraging. There are some paradigm shifts in policies and initiatives.
• There are need for transformative ideas and actions to enable policies feed positively on
Africa’s food system transformation efforts.
• Thus, our ATOR chapter provides information on food safety in Africa while also buttressing
the continued progresses and pragmatic changes needed to strengthen Africa’s food safety
landscape.
• Highlight the missing links that might constraints paradigm shift in food safety policies and
practices – these are hope to inform discussions around post-Malabo Declaration.

4. #2023ReSAKSS #2023ATOR
Background: African Food Safety Landscape
Food Safety Governance
• The MS are at the forefront of control functions. Support from RECs and
the AU.
• National food control system – competent authorities and agencies
saddled with oversight functions.
• The management of FS is highly fragmented – managed by multiple
groups, agencies, competent authorities. Sub-optimal use of scarce
resources (Jaffee et al., 2019).
• Emerging paradigm shift in some countries – setting up single-agency
food system control systems – Gambia and Egypt.
• Less or no role for the private sector, consumers, food business
operators, informal sector.

5. Background: African Food Safety Landscape
Evidence to Africa’s Food Safety Control Capacity
● Capacity has generally been below satisfactory levels.
● WHO International Health
Regulation Ratings (IHR).
● IHR provides a legal framework in
relation to FBD surveillance and
responses to emergencies.
● Scaling is 1-5, 47 African countries with
1-2 (20-40% capacity level).
Figure 1: Africa’s IHR scores, 2010 to 2017

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Stocktaking of Food Safety Policies in Africa
Policy Agenda
1) AU SPS Policy Framework – roadmap for a harmonized, modernised, and coordinated system.
2) SPS Annex VII of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
3) Food Safety Strategy for Africa (AU, 2022) – the implementation strategy of the SPS Framework’s
implementation strategy.
● “Shared Responsibility” in management of food safety. Government; private food operator, consumers as risk
managers.
Other Initiatives
1) Benchmarks for food safety curriculum – East African Community (EAC).
2) Partnership for Aflatoxin control in Africa.
3) Guidelines for Harmonising FS standards and legislations (AUC, 2020)

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Missing Links in Food Safety Management
• Generating credible evidence for risk assessment constrain food safety management
- Inform knowledge about FBD and risks;
- Efficiently allocate resources to control, prevent and intervene;
- Engage in evidenced-based food safety policies.
- Technology divide – big data, AI, blockchain, genome sequencing in profiling risks.
• The informal sector and domestic markets – more focus on the foreign trade and
market access issues.
• Weak or missing investment framework and incentives which preclude the adequate
budgetary allocation to FS issues and management.
• Poor implementation capacity – food safety workforce, quality infrastructure.
agencies, competent authorities. Sub-optimal use of scarce resources (Jaffee et al.,
2019).
• Food safety culture and norms – poor consumers’ consciousness and safe food
demand. Needing behavioural change interventions.

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Some Paradigm Shift in Focus
• A focus is “shared responsibility” to solve the complexity in the landscape.
• Initiative to improve credible food safety data – AU developing food safety data hub for
Africa with sound risk assessment. Needs complementary capacity and investment.
• Shifting from the decades old of focus on only the export markets and high value formal
markets to informal food sector. This is at the heart of food and nutrition security.
• AUC is working to develop and test innovative models for regulating the informal sector
by AU Member states.
• Efforts to strengthen technical food safety manpower in the continent. E.g. benchmarking
curriculum in EAC. This should be replicated in other regions of the continent.
• A paradigm shift in the financing landscape. Sustainable financing is a mark of mature
food safety governance. Investments enable financing of quality infrastructure and
technical capacity to enact and enforce FS measures.

9. #2023ReSAKSS #2023ATOR
Conclusion
• With these paradigm shift in action, the future of Africa’s food safety
system and transformation will witness pareto improvement.
• Together we can do it - shared responsibility.

10. THANK YOU