The East African Community joining hands to strengthen pesticide regulation and address Highly Hazardous Pesticides: Customized Pesticide Registration Toolkit Training in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
A regional Toolkit training was held in Dar es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania upon the request of the Secretariat of the East African Community (EAC). The customized 3.5-day Toolkit training was held back-to-back with a workshop to review and finalize the EAC regional strategy on Highly Hazardous Pesticides. It involved 33 participants comprising technical officers representing the Ministries of Agriculture, Environment and Health from all the 8 EAC namely Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda as well as the EAC Secretariat, Agricultural Production Sector. The hybrid training was facilitated by Ms Ivy Saunyama (FAO) and Ms Jenny Rönngren (Swedish Chemicals Agency) with all participants, except the three from Rwanda attending in person.
Other than meeting the participants’ expectations, the training was historically significant in that in 2015 the coastal city of Dar es Salaam hosted the first Pesticide Registration Toolkit Pilot training, albeit with a much smaller EAC that had 5 partner states then (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda). It was indeed a significant and heartwarming milestone to have the 8 partner states come together almost a decade later to a fully developed Pesticide Registration Tool that continues to improve with each passing year. The training ended on a high note with the EAC Secretariat requesting FAO for technical and financial support for a follow-on training focusing on pesticide risk assessment, selection of safer alternatives to HHPs and registration of biopesticides.