By Sarjo S Jammeh
Standards are frameworks that are needed to assure safety of products, to ensure that products and materials are tailored-made for their purpose, facilitate trade by removing trade barriers and promote common understanding of a product. They ensure consistent practices, quality, and efficiency throughout the entire production and distribution chain.
Maintaining and implementing these standards is essential for business and the trade sector. In this strive, The Gambia is not left out. The government has established the Gambia Standards Bureau (TGSB), a leading quality infrastructure institution in the country. Their main purpose is to standardize methods, processes and products. The Bureau promotes standardization, conformity assessment and metrology in the fields of industry and commerce to support industrial efficiency and development.
Horticulture has a great prospect in The Gambia. It is a key driver of incomes, jobs and poverty reduction, especially among women. However, despite these prospects, women and other actors have been grappling with challenges in the horticultural production sector.
Among these challenges are responsiveness to market requirements and the non-compliance of standards by the horticulture value chain actors themselves.
These aforementioned challenges have hindered the sector’s growth and competitiveness. This is where the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) through West Africa Competitiveness Programme – The Gambia (WACOMP-GM) fits in.
The European Union-funded WACOMP-GM project brought a gleaming hope for both horticulture producers and quality infrastructure institutions like TGSB.
The project has supported TGSB to develop 12 national horticultural standards for onion and allied crops. These standards cover, among others, the specification of onions, good agricultural practices, good manufacturing practices, handling, storage and labeling and packaging of horticultural produce.
Not just the development of standards, the project supplied equipment to the Bureau and developed the capacities of their technicians.
“All these capacity building trainings are geared towards strengthening the technical capacity of TGSB and support in the development of relevant national standards,” said Papa Secka, director general of The Gambia Standards Bureau.
He added that these trainings were mainly related to how to operate and analyze in the laboratory using equipment the project had supplied.
According to Adalberto Carvalho Santos Vieira, UNIDO International Quality Infrastructure Expert, the trainings are directly related with TGSB mandate and are expected to improve technicians’ skills and boost the institutional development by allowing knowledge transfer and best-practices sharing.
Meanwhile, Abdoulie F Njie is a TGSB Laboratory Technician who works at the National Quality Laboratory in Abuko.
Abdoulie is one of the trainees who later became a trainer that benefitted from numerous WACOMP-GM trainings.
He was one of the trained-trainers hired by the project to train women gardeners across the country on how to assemble and operate the 120 weighing scales procured by the project.
He is now busy at the National Metrology Laboratory where he was meticulously putting into practice the knowledge and skills he gained from the WACOMP-GM trainings.
While he was full of praise for the knowledge he gained from their trainings, Abdoulie said the trainings he underwent have significantly boost his understanding of laboratory equipment and by extension the weighing scale.
“This project really helped me a lot, I cannot overstate how helpful this project was, but we owe UNIDO through WACOMP a lot for impacting on us the knowledge of assembling and calibrating scales,” he said.
He noted that women vegetable producers are now comfortable using the weighing scales WACOMP-GM provided and have realised that these scales are more effective than their traditional way of weighing.
“Before these scales came, they used pots and other containers to measure, sometimes they run at a loss, but now that is a thing of the past,” added Abdoulie.
As part of the project, WACOMP-GM purchased, among other things, an extensive list of field and benchtop testing equipment, laboratory glassware and furniture for TGSB’s National Food Testing Laboratory.
TGSB also received equipment useful for monitoring the condition/conformity of foods.
The field equipment include thermometers, pH meters, refractometer and palm oil tester.
Commenting on the relevance of these equipment, Director General of TGSB, Papa Secka, said these they are used in the laboratory to test certain parameters that are related to the quality of products like onions but also test equipment for the quality of palm oil as well as testing for some parameters in fruit juices.
“We received series of trainings on how our laboratory technicians should operate these equipment, we also received training on inspection procedures as well as training on certain standards that are relevant for food safety,” said TGSB Director, Secka.
Currently, the project is working with government in developing the country’s first National Laboratory Policy. Once fully implemented, this policy will assist in balancing current laboratory capacities and provide guidance on the efficient allocation of the scientific and technical professional staff and other laboratory-related resources within the laboratory infrastructure of The Gambia.
“The policy will address issues such as duplications, wastage of resources, competence issues, sharing expertise and knowledge and amongst many other relevant issues,” added DG Secka.
Speaking with optimism, Secka heaped praise on the EU-funded UNIDO- WAMCOP-GM project, revealing that they are optimistic about the future of testing and standards related to food ahead of the establishment of the first accredited Laboratory.
“The National Laboratory Policy can be a valuable tool for the government of The Gambia to unite all stakeholders around a common understanding of the current situation and the ways forward, by helping set the objectives for how the laboratory infrastructure should be changed, adapted and upgraded to address the identified needs in an even more coherent and effective way,” Adalberto Carvalho Santos Vieira explained further.
“Certainly, the trainings they provided were timely in the sense that it comes at a time when we started the establishment of a food testing laboratory to address challenges related to food testing and the equipment they provided were not only useful for checking the parameters on the quality of foods and horticultural products, but also very important on our side to be able to do some research for standard development purpose,” added TGSB Director Secka.
Picture: UNIDO WACOMP-GM trained TGSB Metrologist, Abdoulie F Njie, at a vegetable garden working with women producers to assemble and calibrate the precision weighing scales supplied by the project.
The WACOMP-GM Project Manager, Bernard Bau, and National Technical Coordinator, Joseph Ndenn, meeting TGSB DG, Papa Secka at his office in Kotu.
