During the first International Food Safety Conference jointly organised by the African Union in conjunction with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization last February in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, policymakers, researchers and businesses leaders clearly recognised and emphasised the strong connections between food safety and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 2: Zero hunger (sustainable agriculture) and SDG 3: Good health and wellbeing. The conference also stressed that food safety is a ‘shared responsibility’ between consumers, businesses and government, with the latter as the indispensable fulcrum, bearing the significant and facilitative role.
When it comes to food safety, we at ATTC walk the talk. In this first issue of the year, we bring you our cross-country experience thus far in triggering or catalysing nation-wide awareness-raising campaigns on aflatoxin contamination and how to manage it – campaigns led by government agencies responsible for food safety. We look forward to working with yet more partners so we can do the same in other countries as well.
We are delighted that A to Z Textile Mills Ltd has been selected by the ATTC Advisory Board to manufacture and distribute Aflasafe in Tanzania following the business-plan pitch competition held in March of this year. As we expand the use of Aflasafe within and across countries, we continue the series on actual Aflasafe users. You will hear more from farmers and agribusinesses who are at the heart of our interventions, and the all-important engine that will drive expansive use of Aflasafe. We also continue our eye-witness seeing-is-believing, with users directly participating in post-Aflasafe testing of aflatoxin. These early results and impacts are very gratifying to us and our partners, further encouraging us to go the extra mile for sustainable post-ATTC delivery of Aflasafe.
In this issue, we also bring you for the very first time the candid voice of an Aflasafe manufacturing and distribution licensee, who freely talks of their progress, challenges and what next in deploying and entrenching the technology in their territory. Our licensees are the crucial chain-link in assuring long-term sustainability of our work to make Africa’s food safer from aflatoxin. We are therefore very keen that their perspectives be heard. Our strategy is to gradually position them to talk directly to you as the ‘frontliners’ and firepower in promoting Aflasafe, while we at ATTC recede to the back seat where we belong.
As we begin to make this crucial transition, I am very excited to unveil the key highlights of the stories and news that you will read in this 6th issue of our newsletter that reflect the early beginnings of this role-switch. I invite you to see and hear the transition through:
- Aflasafe-using farmers and key distributor in The Gambia
- The voice of an Aflasafe manufacturing and distribution licensee in Nigeria
- Government-led aflatoxin awareness campaign in Ghana
- Eye-witness post-Aflasafe aflatoxin testing in Burkina Faso where seeing is believing
Abdou Konlambigue
Managing Director, Aflasafe Technology Transfer and Commercialisation, IITA
April 2019
