A regional workshop of the joint UNEP/UNCTAD Capacity Building Task Force (CBTF) "Promoting Production and Trading Opportunities for Organic Agricultural Products in East Africa" will be held in Kampala, Uganda, on 19 October 2005. The overarching objectives of this project are to contribute to sustainable trade, environmental protection, food security and poverty reduction in Kenya, the Republic of Tanzania and Uganda by promoting the production and export of organic agricultural products.
Organic agriculture (OA) offers a range of environmental, social and economic benefits for developing countries, thus providing reasonable opportunities for the successful attainment of various Development Goals set out in the UN Millennium Declaration. It may provide trading opportunities, with major markets for organic products growing at rates of 5-20 per cent per year and price premiums available for a number of goods. Another example is OA´s potential for sustainable local development. OA production has been shown to have a positive effect upon the local environment, including biodiversity. It is well suited to small-scale farming, and can increase the yields and incomes of subsistence farmers in developing countries, who are not using agrochemicals, thus contributing to poverty reduction and sustainable rural development. Moreover, OA might promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as it can have a significant positive impact on women´s incomes in a continent where 70 per cent of the farmers are women.
To reap these multifaceted benefits, however, governments should facilitate an enabling environment that fosters the development of this sector. Their OA producers and exporters must overcome a number of obstacles, including lack of information, expensive certification systems, small domestic markets and the cumbersome import requirements and local food preferences of markets.
The aim of the upcoming workshop is to share, with stakeholders, the preliminary results of the initial overview study and the national background documents that have been prepared under the country projects on Integrated Assessment of the Organic Agriculture Sector. Uganda´s ministers of trade, environment, finance and agriculture will participate in a panel discussion on future directions.
Following the workshop, the Regional Steering Committee, representing the government, national institutions and organic sectors of the three countries, will meet on the afternoon of 20 October 2005 to discuss project progress and future directions. Additionally, national multistakeholder workshops are being organised in Kampala, Uganda (20 October 2005), Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (25 October 2005), as well as in Nairobi, Kenya (date to be confirmed).
A second regional workshop will be convened in Arusha, Tanzania, during February 2006 to discuss and approve both a draft regional standard on organic production, which is to be developed by a separate Regional Standard Technical Working Group, and the institutional arrangements to implement the standard and other forms of regional cooperation in the area of organic agriculture.
