Lome:
35 agricultural trade and development experts from Ghana, Niger, Sierra Leone, Chad, Togo and ECOWAS, with the support of AKADEMIYA2063 - a strategic research organisation, have met in Lomé, Togo from 24th-28th February, 2025 to analyse and report on data on trade flows in agricultural products in the region gathered in 2024.
These analytical sessions were held ahead of the release of the EATM-S (ECOWAS Agriculture Trade & Markets Scorecard), which is due in June this year. Through the Scorecard, ECOWAS aims to provide policy and decision-makers in West African states with authentic strategic data toinfluence reforms and promote intra-regional trade.
INCISIVE SESSIONS
ECOWAS, the regional coordinators of FSRP and Akademyia 2063, a renowned regional research organization led technical sessions which bordered on: Experiences and lessons learned from countries' implementation of the Scorecard process: Stocktaking of available missing data and implications for parameter computations; Critical elements on the use of the Scorecard's data processing and cleaning tool. Implementation of data reporting procedures to the electronic platform; Implementation of the scoring methodology; and Country-specific indicator values and scores, among other critical issues.
ECOWAS and Akademyia 2063 also coordinated strategic communication sessions for the dissemination of the 2025 Scorecard report, as well as communicating FSRP in general. From Lome, representatives would be conducting national validation sessions with EATM-S technical teams and stakeholders in their respective countries.
WORK DONE BY EATM-S GHANA TEAM
Ghana’s national working group, led by FSRP, is made up ofsenior representatives of the Ministry of Food & Agriculture (MoFA), Ministry of Trade, Ghana Statistical Service, Ghana Standards Authority, Food and Drugs Authority, Ghana Revenue Authority, African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and private sector representation.
In August-September last year, the team collated information on Ghana’s cross-border agricultural trade activities. They investigated, among others: the extent and value of intra-regional imports and exports of agricultural goods and inputs, time spent and cost of trade of agricultural goods and inputs across borders. prevalence of custom duties or other charges with equivalent effect, prevalence of restrictions, prohibitions and documentation requirements at borders, prevalence of administrative obstacles to regional trade of agricultural goods and inputs, quality of transport infrastructure and frequency of road inspections and checkpoints.
Additionally, each country’s adherence to the implementation of the ECOWAS Common External Tarif and implementation of an electronic system for customs declaration were investigated; along with tendencies to reject mutually recognized documents related to agricultural trade, number of coordinated joint physical inspections among countries’ control agencies, number of public and private actors trained on agricultural trade-related non-tariff measures and the existence of monitoring mechanisms to implement agricultural trade related to non-tariff measures.
Following data validation, the results will be fed into the broader regional EATM-S, following which regional rankings will be generated to reveal the level of compliance or otherwise by member countries.
ABOUT FSRP
FSRP is a World Bank funded program of the Government of Ghana, promoted by ECOWAS. It is to strengthen food system risk management, improve the sustainability of the agricultural productive base and harmonize agricultural markets in the West African sub region. Component 3 of FSRP focuses on the promotion of regional trade as part of measures to ensure food safety and resilience among member nations.
[Lome; March 2025]
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