Rwanda hosts East Africa Standard Harmonization Meeting on Milk and Milk Products, from 16th to 20th April 2018, in Park In
From 16th-20th April 2018, Rwanda will host East Africa Standard Harmonization Meeting on Milk and Milk Products. Organization of that meeting was supported by Trade Mark East Africa (TMEA) and the event to bring together participants from EAC Member States will be convened at Park Inn Hotel.
Milk has been part of the human diet for millennia and is valued as a natural and traditional food. Milk and dairy products are considered to be one of the main food groups important in a healthy balanced diet. As milk provides a substantial amount of vitamins and minerals in relation to its energy content, it is considered a nutrient dense food. Whilst milk as a source of calcium is often recognized, it is perhaps less commonly known that milk and milk products are also an important source of good quality protein, the B vitamins, B2 (riboflavin) and B12, and the minerals iodine, potassium and phosphorus. This high nutritional value and its affordability the existence of different policies in East African Countries with policy objectives of improving milk production within respective countries as one way of combating malnutrition and increasing income farmers.
As reported by ECDPM (2015), Eastern Africa is the leading first milk-producing region in Africa; representing 68% of the continent’s milk output. The dairy sector is one of the fastest growing agricultural sub-sectors in Eastern African countries, which has generated significant economic returns and employment opportunities along dairy value chains. In Rwanda, according to the 2013 National Dairy Strategy (NDS), milk production has been rising rapidly, from 51.5 million litres (ML) in 2000 to 747ML in 2017 and it is targeted to grow to 1.2 billion liters by 2021/22, a 65% increase over 5 years. This growth is expected to generate 163 billion RWF in 2021/22 from 113 billion RWF in 2016/17, thus a 53% increase.
With this increase of milk production, surplus after the household consumption increased and this led to the growing establishment of processing plants transforming raw milk into storable milk and milk products such as pasteurized milk, UHT milk, Cheese, Yoghurt, Butter, Ice cream, almost in all EAC Partner States and milk powders in some Partner States. This transformation increased the tradability of the milk and milk products where the total EAC intra-trade (import + export) moved from 15.5M USD in 2012 to 44.5M USD in 2016. Even if the total trade increased, its trend does follow the same pace as the one registered on the production, the cross border traded milk products count less than 0.2% of the total production and the remaining is consumed within the country where it is produced. Thus, more efforts are still needed to boost the intra and beyond region trade in dairy products.
Within the above perspective of boosting intra-regional trade, standards have been harmonized to serve as common language to express the required quality and safety of milk and milk products that have to be traded within the region. The first standard was harmonized in 2000 and 8 product standards were so far harmonized till 2017. This means that there are some outdated standards that cannot respond to the current quality, safety, technological and trade trend challenges and new products that need to be standardized.
It is in regards with the above challenges of outdated standards and lack of standards for some potential products that Rwanda hosts regional meeting of the East African Technical Committee on milk and milk products (EASC/TC 17) to align the existing standards with current technologies in order to find appropriate solutions to current challenges and to develop new standards. The meeting is taking place from 16th to 20th April in Park Inn under the sponsorship of Trade Mark East Africa (TMEA). Among the products, for which standards will be harmonized by this meeting, there are (1) Raw milk, (2) Pasteurized milk, (3) UHT milk, (4) Sweetened condensed milk, (5) Dried whole milk and milk powder, (6) Dairy ices and ice cream, (7) Yoghurt, (8) Butter and (9) Ghee.
This meeting will also consider the current move to larger continental market with the last signed African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreements that creates a single market of up to 1.2 billion people and a collective GDP of more than $2 trillion. The expectations from this FTA are high whereby Intra Africa trade is supposed to increase up to 52% by 2022 when compared to 2010 trade levels. Thus, it is a right time for EAC Partner States and EAC secretariat to consider appropriate changes in policy, regulations, standards and conformity assessment procedures in order to take advantage of this upcoming large African market, especially in dairy sector in which East African Countries seem to have a comparative advantage.
