The ECOWAS Commission, with the support of the WAQSP, has developed for the benefit of the member States calibration guides and harmonized procedures for the verification of measurement instruments in the priority areas of the ECOWAS area, in particular:

1) The measurement uncertainty assessment guide;

2) The mass calibration guide;

3) The volume calibration guide;

4) The contact temperature calibration guide;

5) The pressure calibration guide;

6) The flow meter calibration and verification guide;

(7) The harmonized procedure for the verification of weighing instruments;

(8) The harmonized procedure for the control of the net contents of prepackages;

9) The harmonized road distributor verification procedure.

These calibration guides and harmonized instrument verification procedures will help to address a number of difficulties encountered by metrology structures, including: harmonization of calibration procedures and the capitalization of calibration knowledge at sub-regional level; facilitating the organization of inter-laboratory comparisons in metrology at the sub regional level; assistance to the National Metrology Institutes of the member States in developing their measurement and calibration skills (CMCs) and their publication in the BIPM database (KCDB); contribution to the international recognition of the CMCs of the National Institutes of Metrology of ECOWAS through ECOMET and AFRIMETS. It was necessary to strengthen the capacity for calibration and verification of measuring instruments of the National Organizations of Legal Metrology (NOLM) and the National Metrology Institutes (NMI) of the sub-region on the implementation of these calibration guides and harmonized procedures for verification of measuring instruments.

For this reason, the WAQSP organized, for the benefit of forty-eight (48) technical staff of National Metrology Bodies (NMB), a capacity-building workshop on calibration guides and harmonized procedures for verification of measuring instruments in the priority quantities. It was held in Accra, Ghana, 29 July - 1 August 2019. The objective is to make available in the ECOWAS Member States a critical mass of metrologists, impregnated with calibration guides and harmonized procedures. of ECOWAS measurement instruments and able to develop calibration benches and verification procedures for measuring instruments. What the Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Mr. Patrick Nimo, on behalf of the Sector Minister, reminded participants "Together, we will have to ensure that all the States in the region have precise and harmonized measuring instruments, this will allow, among other things, to generate significant income for our various economies ". Bernard Bau, Manager of WAQSP at UNIDO, went in the same direction. He commended the Committee for the efforts made and said that its institution's support will continue through WACOMP, in which Ghana has a national component of which UNIDO is also the technical partner. The PM appealed to the forty-eight (48) members of the NMB to engage in advocacy with their respective governments. He would like to see the States commit the necessary means to the sustainability of the system, following the efforts of the partners, particularly UNIDO and the European Union, which Mr. Bau thanked for their decisive contribution to the construction of the Regional Quality Infrastructure (IRQ) already operational.

Overall, the training made it possible to reinforce the skills of the technical managers of the national metrology structures in the assessment of measurement uncertainties and the treatment of the results of measurement after calibration, verification of the measuring instruments used in commercial transactions in the fields such as the verification of weighing instruments, volumetric meters, road distributors and checking the net contents of pre-packages. They have been trained on the different theories of calibration and perform practical laboratory calibration work in the areas of mass, microvolume, temperature, pressure and flow measurement.

“On behalf of the chairperson of the ECOWAS Commission, I would like to thank the National Metrology Bodies which came to Accra, as well as the European Union and UNIDO, for their important contribution to the construction of the Regional Quality Infrastructure," concluded Mr. Kemjika Ajoku, Representative of Commissioner Mamadou Traoré, in charge of Industry and Private Sector Promotion at the ECOWAS Commission.