ARSO is an intergovernmental Organization established by the Organization of African Unity (OAU, currently African Union (AU)) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in 1977, with 21 African Governments as founding members. The principal mandate of ARSO is to harmonize African Standards and conformity assessment procedures in order to reduce Technical Barriers to Trade and therefore promote intra-Africa and international Trade, as well as enhancing the industrialization of Africa. Through its core mandate, ARSO:

• Harmonizes national and/or sub-regional standards as African Standards and issues necessary recommendations to member bodies for this purpose;

• Initiates and co-ordinates the development of African Standards (ARS) with reference to products which are of peculiar interest to Africa;

• Encourages and facilitates adoption of international standards by member bodies;

• Promotes and facilitate exchange of experts, information and co-operation in training of personnel in standardization activities:

• Co-ordinate the views of its members at the ISO, IEC, OIML, Codex and other international Organizations concerned with Standardization activities.

• Create appropriate bodies in addition to the organs of the organization for the purposes of fulfilling its objectives.

As recommended in the previous meeting held in Nairobi, in December 2016, at Lemigo Hotel in Kigali from 7th to 9th June 2017, Rwanda will be hosting the 5th African Organization for Standardization Technical Harmonization Committee (ARSO/THC 03) on Building and Civil engineering meeting. The meeting bring together The Committee’s 14 participating Member States namely: Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Namibia, Rwanda, Egypt (Chair), Tanzania, Ethiopia, Gabon, Senegal, South Africa (Secretary), Mauritius, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and one (1) observer Member State: Seychelles. The Member States are represented in the THC by their National Standards Bodies. The THC O3 addresses the harmonization of African Standards for the building and civil engineering industry. Current standards for the building and construction industry are designed to improve the quality and efficiency of the building and construction industry in Africa by encouraging innovative approaches in technology and industrial development activities and in achieving economy in construction works. ARSO THC 03 is mandated to develop harmonized standards that meet the needs of the African market through developing new standards and guidelines that address African specific way of building and adoption of international standards, carry out a continuous committee-control to secure high quality of the standards, ensure that standards are developed within time schedule, and if possible increase the number of participating countries in the committee work. The meeting will consider Elevation of Committee Drafts of Code of practice for using concrete paving units, Guide for energy efficiency in buildings, Technical guide for concrete and Approval of Final Draft African Standards (FDARS) for final balloting; among other activities. The meeting is convened while noting the most important benefits expected mainly to improve quality and safety of building and construction materials. It will also facilitate bridging the existing shortage of housing units; as the importance of standards on low cost housing technologies has been recognized as the remedy to the housing problems.