Kenya: COMESA Comes Calling with Equipment Support
By Ben Omondi
NAIROBI---Kenya is among COMESA member states whose seed certification agencies has been selected to benefit from a US $ 70,000 equipment support from COMESA’s Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (ACTESA).
The equipment support, to be implemented in the next two months, will benefit the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service’s (KEPHIS) recently launched Muguga pest risk analysis laboratory whose development and construction was co-funded by KEPHIS and US’s Agency for International Development to the tune of US $ 463,727.
“The equipment support is meant to build the capacity of national seed certification authorities within the 19 COMESA member countries. It is implemented as part of COMESA’s Regional Agro-input Programme (COMRAP) project which will procure laboratory equipment for all the 19 COMESA member states. The equipment will assist in seed certification, inspections and healthy testing,” said Dr John Mukuka, ACTESA seed development expert.
The two-year agro-input programme is divided into three components - increase capacity of COMESA member states in agro-dealership; micro-finance support to small-scale farmers and harmonisation of seed regulations and improvements in the availability of quality seed.
The programme is implemented within ACTESA’s Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) agenda meant to revive Africa’s agricultural sector and targets about three million farmers by the end of 2011. The programme is funded by the European Union Food Facility Program.
The objective of the KEPHIS Muguga laboratory is capacity building of seed testing expertise through training, infrastructure development and the strengthening of available systems. KEPHIS further aims to compile a comprehensive pest list in Kenya and also document food risks and pest surveys.
KEPHIS was launched in 1997 with the mandate to protect Kenya’s agriculture from pests and diseases that could have negative environmental and human health impact. It achieves its mandate through establishment of service laboratories to monitor the quality and levels of toxic residues in plants, soils and other produce.
It has also established various service units – including plant variety protection, seed certification, phytosanitary services (including biosafety), agro and agri-input formulation analysis and farmer advisory services.
Dr James Onsando, KEPHIS managing director said that the new facility is a plant health lab that performs three key functions.
“The lab is used to diagnose plant diseases and pests for farmers on advisory basis. When there is plant material coming into Kenya and the safety of the material has not been ascertained, the material is kept in quarantine to see if it exhibits disease and pest symptoms,” said Dr Onsando, adding that the lab therefore comes in handy in discovering what is contained in imported plant materials through its quarantine services.
The other function of the facility, said Dr Onsando, is cleaning plant material – mainly Irish potatoes – for the COMESA region through a process called virus indexing which involves taking the material through tissue culture to remove fungi and other bacteria to make it clean before the material can then be hardened and sterilized then stored in the appropriate media before being exported.
The Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (ACTESA), on the other hand, was established by COMESA heads of state as a specialized agency to integrate small farmers into national, regional and international markets in June 2009.
In March 2010, ACTESA signed an agreement with COMESA on the implementation of agricultural programmes within the 19 members of COMESA, with the agreement meant to accelerate the implementation of regional initiatives in agriculture, trade and investment.
One of these - through which the equipment support to seed certification agencies is provided - is the COMESA seed programme which aims to ensure smooth flow of seed from surplus to deficit areas by harmonising standards and removing trade barriers that may lead to inhibiting free-flow of seed among member states.
Through the programme, ACTESA aims to enhance the process of harmonizing seed certification systems in the COMESA region in terms of seed classes, regional label/colours, content and issuing procedures.
The seed programme aims to streamline the roles and responsibilities of the national seed authorities and regional offices in COMESA and seed certification standards for field inspection and laboratory services for 12 crops - beans, maize, rice, groundnuts cotton, wheat, cassava, potatoes, sunflower, sorghum, soya beans and millet.
The programme also aims to improve seed quality available to small-scale farmers; save time and resources during seed trade; improve efficiency in the movement of seed within and outside COMESA and facilitate farmers’ access to improved seed varieties.
It has been launched out of the recognition that Eastern and Southern Africa’s seed industry is weak, a situation which then constrains small-scale farmers from having quality seed and engaging in good agricultural practices necessary to improve crop production and farm productivity.
Some of the factors that inhibit seed development in the region include low agricultural productivity, with maize production among most COMESA member states being only about 1.39 tonnes per hectare compared to 4.47 tonnes per hectare in most developed economies.