Project Description

Title: COMESA strategic plan for standardization and quality assurance

Project Location: COMESA

The overall objective of the project was to enhance the capacity of COMESA quality infrastructure institutions to coordinate and harmonize regional technical regulations, standards and conformity assessment procedures and finally facilitate intra-regional and international trade.

The primary objective of the consultancy was to assist COMESA Member States to develop a five-year strategic plan as a framework to guide and underpin activities for quality infrastructure, specifically covering standards harmonization, industrial/scientific metrology and legal metrology, conformity assessment, accreditation, technical regulations and pharmaceutical harmonization. The priority accorded to the activities was guided by the needs of the Member States and their capacities to adopt domestic polices and implement agreed activities. The team assessed the current situation with regards to COMESA SQA planning, implementation and follow up activities and proposed a related action plan.

A final validation workshop was organised, where SQA Sub committees on standard harmonization and technical regulations, industrial and scientific/legal metrology, conformity assessment and accreditation, and the steering committee on pharmaceuticals harmonization reviewed their respective areas of the draft report and proposed recommendations.