Demitu Hambisa, Minster of Science and Technology
African countries’ economy mostly relies on primary economic activities and export raw materials to the world market without value addition. In return, they import industrial capital and consumer goods from developed countries.
Such practice has continued for many decades and put the importing countries in a disadvantageous position. To improve the situation, creating regional common market is forwarded by African countries. However, the task is not easy because most countries trade structure is shaped and still influenced by their history. Most infrastructures that facilitate trade are interconnected to Europe and America via seaports; and trading with each other with specific products is not on the table. Hence, changing the pattern is the responsibility of governments.
Recently, the 21st session of the General Assembly of the African Regional Organization for Standardization under the theme of the Role of Standard in Promoting Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in Africa was held here in Addis Ababa on the occasion, the Minster of Science and Technology Demitu Hambissa said that the African leaders under the leadership of African Union have taken a more radical approach in the effort to create a single market through the fast tracking of the African Continental Free Trade by 2017.
She also said that African nations move towards regional and ultimately continental economic integration; hence, they need to strengthen their effort to achieve harmonization of standards. It is obviously known that most countries in Africa have mono economy which heavily dependent on few commodities derived from natural resources which has commonalities by character. This in turn, inhibit them to trade each other and forced to export similar products to the global market and hence, diversifying their products must be a priority agenda. To that end the expansion of manufacturing based industrialization is a way out.
According to Demitu, one of the challenges African countries are facing is market access in the globalized world. The quality of products and services that they provide should conform to the requirements of the consumers. This implies that companies and service organizations should have sufficient capacity, skilled manpower and appropriate systems to produce goods and services to the required standards. However, most African countries do not have such capacity to make immediate advantage of new trade opportunities; that is to say, due to lack of value addition and diversification in their commodities, they have less probability to be sold in feasible price in the world market.
In addition to that, the commodities have no demand elasticity; if a cup of coffee is enough to the consumer per day, he never consumes more due to a negative health consequence. This puts coffee exporting countries in the dis advantageous position.
In the contrary to this, the prices of the value added industrial products imported from the advanced countries due to the nature of their demand elasticity go up from time to time. A Mercedes Benze car produced in Germany necessarily change its model by improving the quality of the vehicle; with such approach the company maximize its profit by setting new price.
Similarly, it can keep its profit margin by only changing the model of its products. The chance to benefit from the global market for developing countries is very insignificant and income gap discrepancy between the developing countries and that of the industrialized world would be unpredictable from time to time.
The other factors that make African commodities incompetent in the world market are the inability to produce as per international standards, inadequate certification and laboratory testing and lack of compatibility with the international trade system.
According to Demitu, in order to promote standardization in Ethiopia, the national quality infrastructure council has been established and it is mandated to oversee the quality issues across all sectors in the country.
And the Ministry of Science and Technology serves as the secretariat to the council. And the different national quality assurance institutions are reporting to the ministry. With regard to the quality assurance in agriculture for sustainable development, she said that agriculture in most part of Africa and especially in remote areas is small scale, fragmented and it involves traditional method. But surprisingly, the annual population growth in Africa is high which make hard to meet the objectives of food security in the continent.
Thus, in order to overcome the grim reality on the ground, countries must adopt new technology including bio technology. In addition, the utilization of agricultural imputes such as improved seeds, fertilizer and irrigation are essential. Furthermore, to reduce pre and post- harvest waste, efficient system should be employed for this; for this the role of agricultural extension workers is immense. Side by side with these, harvesting and packaging products with standardized method is helpful.
The Ethiopian Standard Agency Director General Almaz Kahsay on her part said that standard can indeed play a key role in creating central confidence for potential customers in a new technology or allow companies that enter a new market to deliver constantly quality products and service as required by the customers. She also said that in the globalized world standards are becoming imperative indicators. This is because standards are the building blocks for innovation and competitiveness; they are vehicles for knowledge, skill and technology transfer.
She further said that the need for standards remains a great requirement for an economic integration. And African Regional Standard organization is being required to continue to cooperate with all African National Standard Bodies to ensure the effective quality infrastructure in place to guarantee competitiveness.
In the case of Ethiopia, the Ministry of Science and Technology has been doing its level best. According to Almaz several studies show that the overall benefits from the use of standards vary and this has been reflected on the annual sales revenues of the companies.
Summing up, for Africa’s economic integration to the global market applying standardization for production and service provision is essential. When this happens tapping the benefit from the global market is possible. But the current trend still shows how the traditional way of production and distribution system prevail in most countries. This must be changed in to modern way of production through adopting improved technologies. By now, the share of Africa in the world trade is only 3 percent; hence, states and non-state actors and the private sector should play a determined role to transform the economic landscape in to vibrant one with that Africa could benefit a lot and integrated in the world market within few decades.
[www.ethpress.gov.et]