Over sixty (60) participants from West Africa – Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Cabo Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, and Senegal – completed a series of online training sessions from May 28, 2021, to June 4, 2021.These sessions covered the below topics in the context of food safety:

• Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and Good Hygiene Practices (GHP) in the mango value chain;
• Techniques of preservation of mango and its derivatives;
• GLOBALG.A.P, the world's leading voluntary farm assurance program, translating consumer requirements into GAP;
• Risks Management in Food Safety Assurance.

The regional component of the WACOMP, entitled the “West Africa Competitiveness and Quality Infrastructure Project (WACQIP)”, as well as the WACOMP national component in Guinea-Bissau (WACOMP-GB), both funded by the European Union and implemented by UNIDO, collaborated to promote training actions in the field of conformity assessment, with the aim of developing human resources in the West African region.

The training sessions were conducted by Prof. Dr. Rajbir Sangwan, international expert in Quality Infrastructure, and Prof. Dr. Adalberto Vieira, Chief Technical Advisor (CTA) to the WACOMP-GB project. To reinforce the trainees’ new skills, all topics were approached in a pragmatic way with specific examples.

“I am pleased to note that two previous training actions on HACCP and ISO 22000 have already been successfully carried out and extended to the countries of the sub-region which benefit from the WACOMP. These training sessions are now broadened to the themes of GAP, GMP and GHP in response to the needs expressed by the beneficiaries. These are essential basic references that must be respected to be able to claim more complex certification schemes which are particularly required to access markets such as the European food market.”, said Christophe Yvetot, UNIDO Representative to Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, The Gambia, Cabo Verde and Mauritania.