Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy

Amadou Diarra and Steven Haggblade. 2017. Regulatory Challenges in West Africa: Instituting Regional Pesticide Regulations during a Period of Rapid Market Growth. Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research Brief 52 - EN. East Lansing: Michigan State University

See French Version: 

Amadou Diarra et Steven Haggblade. 2017. Défis réglementaires en Afrique de l’Ouest: Etablir des réglementations régionales sur les pesticides en période de croissance rapide du marché. Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research Brief 52 - FR. East Lansing: Michigan State University

KEY FINDINGS

• Sahelian countries successfully launched the irregional pesticide regulator, the Comité Sahélien des Pesticides (CSP), in the early 1990s.
• Repeated large-scale pest invasions motivated strong interest among the nine Sahelian countries to pool their scarce technical resources to combat pests and monitor pesticide use collectively.
• Despite collective good will and effective early collaboration by phytosanitary technicians, political leaders required two rounds of legislative action, over ten years, to produce a consistent, enforceable umbrella legal framework.
• Two decades later, ECOWAS is trying to introduce a similar harmonized regional pesticide registration system in the humid coastal zone countries.
• Because of their later start, the coastal countries face two difficult new challenges not faced by the Sahelian countries: 
  a) rapidly growing pesticide markets, and 
  b) well-established but differing national regulatory structures that now need to be harmonized.
• Lessons from the CILSS experience suggest that the coastal countries will need to focus on four key issues in order to successfully implement  regional pesticide regulations:                                                                                                                                                                                         1. Securing sufficient financing for national and regional regulators
   2.Technical harmonization, building on existing HIP protocols
   3. Legal harmonization, by enlisting a trained legal draftsmen to assist the technicians
   4. Launching a sub-regional technical secretariat for the coastal countries.