Nigeria Defeats Malawi, Clinches Presidency of African Standards Body Nigeria Thursday defeated Malawi in a keenly contested bid by the two nations to clinch the presidency of the African Organisation for Standardisation (ARSO), the continent’s umbrella body in charge of standardisation and quality assurance. The victory also coincided with a declaration by the Director General of the Camerounian National Standards Agency (ANOR), Mr. Charles Booto, that the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) had bequeathed 450 standards covering various sectors to Cameroun to boost the central African nation’s quality regulation capacity. Booto declared that Nigeria and Cameroun would also be signing a cooperation agreement, during the ongoing programme, to continue the collaboration between the two countries, which was initiated by Nigeria’s donation of the 450 standards. “This step by Nigeria and Cameroun is a testimony of the effectiveness of ARSO. Without the ARSO platform, this might not have been achieved so easily. We thank Nigeria for introducing these 450 standards, in different areas, to Cameroun. By this initiative, Cameroun has saved about $9 million that would have been spent if the nation had embarked on the development of these standards from the scratch,” Booto said. In the tussle for the ARSO presidency, Nigeria’s triumph over Malawi was laden with intrigues, as both countries, since the commencement of ARSO’s standardisation week on June 17, lobbied member nations of the regional body for support in the election that would see only one nation produce the president of the organisation established in 1977 by the then Organisation of Africa Unity (OAU), now known as African Union (AU). The Director General of SON, Dr. Joseph Odumodu, and his Malawian Bureau of Standards (MBS) counterpart, Mr. Davlin Chokazinga, were left to challenge each other on behalf of their countries, after their counterpart from Sudan withdrew from the election in which each of the 34 member countries of ARSO were entitled to one vote per country. Nineteen nations including Nigeria, Malawi, Egypt, Kenya, Tunisia, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Sudan, Mauritius, Madagascar, Tanzania, Cameroun, Ghana, Cote d’ Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Gabon and Ethiopia, present for the weeklong event and the organisation’s general assembly, were the only nations eligible to elect the new leader. Confident of their chances to clinch victory, both candidates canvassed the seventeen others countries present until a few minutes before the ARSO assembly took place yesterday, and just before the meeting was called to order, Malawi conceded to Nigeria, declaring that it had become clear that the southern African nation did not stand a chance against the towering clout of the giant West African country. Sharing his vision to stir the continent towards and efficiently managed standardisation and quality regime to boost Africa’s global trade, Odumodu expressed satisfaction that 36 years on, the region was still forging ahead in the same pan-African spirit, which brings about togetherness and the belief that its constituents share a common destiny. “It is said that ‘when the music changes, so does the dance’. I am glad to note that many changes are taking place in Africa. Multinational companies that want to expand their businesses are turning towards pre-growth emerging African Economies, now branded as the final investment frontier. This is influenced by the fact that Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, has been among the fastest growing regions in the world, with an average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate exceeding five per cent.” Odumodu noted that Africa needed to change its fortunes and go beyond the current three per cent, of its contributions in the World trade and 10 per cent of its intra-African trade. “There is great need for turning tables on import-based approach to industrialisation. More so there is great need to change from exporting primary goods in its trade arrangements and focus on the value addition of its products from vast natural resources (agricultural, forestry, fisheries, energy, Minerals) and also harness its tourism potential.” The ARSO president noted that he intended to work with all the member nations of the organisation to tackle the problem of low industrial capacity for diversified manufactured goods; the lack of qualified standardisation personnel; dearth of effective standardisation and conformity assessment infrastructure; over dependence on imports from outside the continent for more than 90 percent of its goods; SMEs’ lack of capacity to take advantage of globalisation among several other objectives.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 11:13:17 +0000
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