ARSO Officially Launches the 2020-2021 Standardisation Essay Competition

February 22, 2021February 22, 2021 Dan Kithome Essay Competition, Latest News

Started officially in 2013, the Annual ARSO Continental Standardisation Essay Competition is aimed at empowering the African Youth to understand the role and importance, as well as the benefits of standardisation in facilitating sustainable development in Africa. The Essay Themes are based on the Yearly African Union Themes. For this year, the theme approved by the 63rd ARSO Council in its virtual meeting on 26th November 2020 is “The role of Standardisation in promoting Arts, Culture and Heritage – The Creative Economy in Africa.” The theme is based on the AU 2021 theme as Arts, Culture, and Heritage. On 13-14 October 2020, the AU officially declared the Year 2021 as The AU Year of the Arts, Culture, and Heritage and adopted the theme for 2021 as “Arts, Culture and Heritage: Levers for Building Africa We Want”. The UN had also in 2019, under RESOLUTION 74/198 (A/C.2/74/L.16/Rev.1 – E – A/C.2/74/L.16/Rev.1 -Desktop (undocs.org)) on International Year on Creative Economy for Sustainable Development 2021, adopted, by consensus, declared 2021 the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development. Under this declaration, the UN encourages all parties to acknowledge the potential contribution of creative economy sectors to achievement of the sustainable development goals, and underscores that, 2021 marks the right moment for all stakeholders, including governments, private sectors, civil society, international organizations, academics, and cultural and creative entities to work together, exchange knowledge and experiences, build networks, and scale up collaboration (UNCTAD 2018).

Already under the Nairobi Plan of Action on Cultural and Creative Industries in Africa 2005, the African Union is calling on its member States to establish standardization and quality assurance mechanisms to ensure competitiveness and marketability of African cultural goods and services. ARSO under its ARSO TC 77 on Creative Economy is aiming to harmonise African Standards and Conformity Assessment systems to facilitate the production and trade in the creative Industry in Africa. UNESCO (2015) at its 38th session of the General Conference, declared May 5, the African World Heritage Day to promote African Heritage.

Growing in breadth, economic share, and innovation, the Cultural and Creative Industries have great potential to accelerate socio-economic change across Africa and is among the most dynamic sectors in the world economy providing new opportunities for developing countries to leapfrog into emerging high-growth areas of the world economy. The global market for creative goods has expanded substantially more than doubling in size from $208 billion in 2002 to $509 billion in 2015, and continues to make a significant contribution to world trade (UNCTAD, 2018,).

The UN eencourages all to observe the year in accordance with national priorities to raise awareness, promote cooperation and networking, encourage sharing best practices and experiences, enhance human resource capacity, promote an enabling environment at all levels as well as tackle the challenges of the creative economy.

Recognitions and Awards for the Essay Winners will be held in June 2021 during the 26^th ARSO General Assembly events, the African Day of Standardisation.

ARSO Signs MoU with AOAC – Association of Official Analytical Collaboration (AOAC) INTERNATIONAL

February 22, 2021February 22, 2021 Dan Kithome International Cooperations, Latest News, Press Release

Dr. Hermogene N.

18^th February 2021 – ARSO, represented by the Secretary General, Dr. Hermogene Nsengimana, left, has signed an MoU with Association of Official Analytical Collaboration (AOAC) INTERNATIONAL. The MoU is a follow-up to thediscussions, deliberations and recommendations of the AOAC INTERNATIONAL Sub-Saharan Africa Section Inaugural Meeting, that took Place from 5-7 November 2018 at The Farm Inn Hotel in Pretoria, South Africa, and which recommended among other things, the need for, establishing technical/ capacity building collaboration agreements with key stakeholders in the region such as ARSO and AFRIMETS. The MoU will facilitate the harmonization and implementation of analytical performance standards and conformity assessment procedures in the field of agriculture and food safety, to support government regulatory policies and favourable integration into regional and international markets, especially promoting trade of safe agricultural products within the African Single Market under the AfCFTA.

(AOAC) INTERNATIONAL (https://www.aoac.org) is a 501(c)(3), independent, third party, not-for-profit association and voluntary consensus standards developing organization dedicated to serving the analytical community in laboratory capacity building, conformity assessment, method validation, and promotion of globally accepted testing standards. AOAC INTERNATIONAL provides a forum for government, industry, and academia to collaboratively establish standard method performance requirements and official methods of analysis that ensure the safety and integrity of foods and other products that impact public health around the world. AOAC INTERNATIONAL, facilitates science-based solutions through the development of performance standards and Official Methods of Analysis (chemical and microbiological) for a broad spectrum of safety interests including, but not limited to, food and food ingredients; beverages; dietary supplements; infant formula; animal feeds; fertilizers; soil and water; and, veterinary drug residues. AOAC consensus standards and Official Methods of Analysis are routinely approved by the Codex Committee on Methods of Analysis and Sampling (CCMAS) for adoption of methods as CODEX international standards which are used globally to promote trade and to facilitate public health and safety. David B. Schmidt (right), the Executive Director, represented AOAC.

ARSO Signs MoU with Fair Trade Africa

February 15, 2021February 15, 2021 Dan Kithome Newsletter

3^rd February 2021, Nairobi, Kenya, Fair Trade Africa Office

ARSO and the Commerce Equitable Afrique, trading as Fair-Trade Africa (FTA), and Headquartered in Nairobi has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on 3^rd February 2021, with the main objective to establish a framework within which to jointly explore and coordinate such undertakings to build strong and resilient producer Organisations and work cooperatively towards increasing sustainable and ethical production and consumption across Africa. The focus is to facilitate intra-African Trade and global trade through providing and facilitating the implementation of harmonised standards and improving livelihoods of small holder farmers and workers in the plantations. The two Parties have undertaken to promote and advance the use of standards and support sustainable agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, aquaculture, food security and socially inclusive busines and community development.

Fairtrade Africa was established in 2005 and is the independent non-profit umbrella organisation representing all Fairtrade certified producers in Africa. Fairtrade Africa is owned by its members, who are African producer organisations certified against international Fairtrade standards producing traditional export commodities such as coffee, cocoa, tea, cotton, bananas, mango and non-traditional commodities including shea butter and rooibos tea. Currently, the organisation supports over 500 producer organisations and represents over one million small holder farmers and workers across 32 countries in Africa, ensuring they get better prices, decent working conditions and fairer terms of trade.’

The two Organisations both run Eco labelling programmes and having benchmarked the Eco labels in 2018.

ARSO through the ARSO Conformity Assessment Procedure (ACAP) has developed rules and procedures for its Certification operations in nine schemes that include sustainability and eco-labelling that awards the Eco mark label to products and services complying with requirements to the African sustainability standards.

Launched on 8th March 2019 in Nairobi, Kenya Eco Mark Africa is a programme in ARSO that promotes the EMA Ecolabel in Africa for sustainably produced goods and services in the Agriculture, Aquiculture, Fisheries, forestry and tourism sectors. It also builds capacity of Auditors, certification bodies, laboratories and producers of goods and services in the above sectors. The programme integrates, the concepts of environmental, social and economic sustainability and is a useful tool for promoting sustainable production and consumption of goods and services as well as addressing various sustainable development goals, including the mitigating the climate action in Africa, while ensuring the production of eco-friendly African products for better regional and global market access. The certification is based on the ARSO Sustainability and Ecolabelling standards: ARS/AES 01 – 2014: Agriculture, for the sustainable production, processing and trading of agricultural products; ARS/AES 02- 2014: Fisheries – for the sustainable harvesting of fish as well as addressing the Ecosystem issues; ARS/AES 03 – 2014: Forestry- for sustainable management of forests; ARS/AES 04 – 2014: Tourism- for sustainable management of tourism, while promoting Eco Tourism and environmental conservation. This in addition to the ARS/AES 1:2014 – Aquaculture and ARS/AES 1:2014 Tilapia.

7th Continental Essay Competition

February 1, 2021February 2, 2021 Dan Kithome Newsletter

7th Continental Essay Competition for the year 2019 / 2020
Theme: “The role of Standardisation in resolving and addressing the socio-economic issues for the Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons and creating durable Solutions to Forced Displacement in Africa”
University and College Students under the age of 35 years eligible to participate

The Competition aims to have 3 categories of winners: the National, Regional and Continental. In this regard, ARSO is requesting all the National Standards Bodies (NSBs) in Africa to organise the competition at the National level and send out the attached documents (7th Continental Essay Concept Paper and Registration Form) to the various Universities /Colleges for the competition. The NSB is expected to conduct the competition at the National level. This entails sending out the relevant documents to Colleges/ Universities, receiving the essays from the participants, doing the assessment and awarding or giving recognition to the winners as appropriate to the NSB.

The organizers are inviting students in institutions of higher learning in Africa (Colleges/ Universities approved by their local commission of higher education) to submit their essays on the theme: “The role of Standardisation in resolving and addressing the socio-economic issues for the Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons and creating durable Solutions to Forced Displacement in Africa” to their respective National Standards Bodies (NSBs) email addresses. (Confirm with your respective NSBs on the submission dates)

Download the Documents Below…

7th Essay Competition Concept (2019-2020) English Copy Download

ARSO CACO EC Form1 2019 Registration form
English Copy Download

7th Essay Competition Concept (2019-2020) French Copy Download

ARSO CACO EC Form1 2019 Registration form French Copy Download