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Unsafe food causes an estimated 600 million people to suffer from foodborne diseases each year, at a cost of at least US$100 billion in low- and middle-income countries, over half of which is recorded in just 28 nations. But efforts to strengthen food safety systems globally are fragmented, despite food safety playing a fundamental role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
The First International Food Safety Conference hosted jointly by the Food and Agriculture  Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the African Union (AU), will bring together government leaders, senior policymakers, and representatives from international organizations, civil society, and the private sector, to identify key actions and strategies to address current and future challenges to food safety globally; and to strengthen commitment at the highest political level to scale up food safety in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

 

 

 

 

Some of the key issues to be addressed include the benefits of investing in safe food; safe and sustainable food systems in the context of a changing climate; science, innovation and digital transformations for food safety; and empowering consumers to make healthy choices and support sustainable food systems.

Who is Participating?
Conference speakers are scheduled to include the President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (incoming African Union chairman), President of Rwanda Paul Kagame (outgoing African Union chairman), Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat, President of the African Development Bank Akinwumi Adesina, FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva and WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Heads of state and government, ministers from health, agriculture, trade, environment, and other sectors, plus leaders of international organizations, research, and academia, civil society and the private sector, are expected to attend.

Outcomes:
The event is expected to adopt a high-level political statement advocating for increased and better-coordinated collaboration, technical support and investment to improve food safety globally.

Media opportunities:

Accredited journalists can attend all Conference sessions and access the onsite press center.

A press conference will be held on 12 February following the opening session. High-level national and international officials will be taking part.

Besides, interviews can be arranged with officials and experts attending the conference.

Registration:

The media must be accredited to attend the Conference. The deadline for accreditation is 7 February 2019.

Steps for registration:

1. Click here https://reg.unog.ch/event/28117/ to open registration form (use Google Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft Edge).
2. Create an INDICO account (if you already have one, you can skip this step).
3. Complete the conference registration form by clicking on Register now.

Please note: you must upload a personal photograph, your passport number, and passport expiry date.

For any queries, contact Paul Garwood garwoodp@who.iont

Follow: #FoodSafety, @FAOnews, @FAO, @WHO @_AfricanUnion

More information:

– Conference website: https://www.who.int/food-safety/international-food-safety-conference/
– WHO food safety fact sheet: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-safety
– FAO food safety and quality: http://www.fao.org/food-safety/en/

Contacts:
– African Union: Gamal Eldin Ahmed A. Karrar, GamalK@africa-union.org
– FAO: Zoie Jones Zoie.Jones@FAO.org +39 06570 56309 (Rome); Tezeta Hailemeskel Tezeta.Hailemeskel@fao.org (Addis Ababa)
– WHO: Paul Garwood, garwoodp@who.int, +41 796037294; Gregory Hartl, hartlg@who.int, +41 79 203 6715

Under the process of implementing the Malabo Declaration agricultural transformation in Africa, the African Union Commission (AUC), the NEPAD Planning and Coordination Agency (NPCA) and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) are conducting the Biennial Review (BR)mechanism for regular country progress reporting to the AU Assembly.The inaugural biennial review report and its Africa Agriculture Transformation Scorecard have been presented and approved by the Heads of State summit in January 2018.AUC, NPCA and RECs are now leading the development of the 2nd BR Report. The BR mechanism aims at strengthening mutual accountability, peer review and peer learning that will motivate increased performances of each member state to deliver on targets set for the Malabo Declaration, through a well-designed, transparent and performance-based Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) and Biennial Sector Reporting to the AU Assembly, that should in turn, trigger evidence based planning and implementation at all appropriate levels (national,regional and continental) for the expected agricultural growth and transformation in Africa.During, the recent BR Peer to Peer Learning and Experience Sharing Conference,held in Nairobi in November 2018, Member States reviewed the indicators with the support of the Technical Working Groups and requested AUC to provide the regional trainings early enough in 2019to allow sufficient time for data collection, quality reporting and validation. The common agreement was to conduct the regional trainings at one venue taking into consideration the languages issues.In this context TWGs reviewed the indicators and methodologies and came up with a final set of 47indicatorscategorized in 23 performance categories under the 7 performance areas (themes)for reporting on the Malabo Declaration. The related reporting tools were finalized are ready to be disseminated to member states through the Regional Trainings.This training will follow a training of trainers conducted in December 2018. AUC is able with the trained experts to conduct the regional trainings and deploy the experts in the countries to provide back up support for data collection and reporting

Objective of the meeting:

For the 5days training, AUC, NPCA and RECs will bring together focal persons from Member States involved in CAADP Mutual Accountability activities including the

i) CAADP focal point,

ii) M/E expert from the Ministry of Agriculture,

iii) Representative from the institute of the National Institute of Statistics,to be:

Trained on the new CAADP Biennial Review Technical Guidelines;

Trained on the new Data Entry Tool of the e-BR which used to be Country performance Reporting Template;

Informed of the Coordination Mechanism and Continental Roadmap for submitting the Inaugural Biennial Report to the AU Assembly

Expected Outputs

The expected outputs of the training will be the following:

Participants familiarized with the content of the Technical Guidelines;Participants familiarized with the content ofData Entry Tool of the eBR;

 Partcipants sensitized with the Coordination Mechanism and Continental Roadmap for submitting the Inaugural Biennial Report to the AU Assembly;Participants developed roadmaps for country roadmaps.

Expected Participants:

The expected participants will come from all 55Member States will include 3 representatives from the countries including the CAADP focal point, the M&E officer from Agriculture Ministry and the representative from the National Institute of Statistics. The meeting will also will have representatives from RECs, AUC, NPCA, Experts/Trainers, NSA and other technical partners. We expect about 200 participants to be covered by AUC.