GSA wins continental award for fight against Aflatoxins

The Government of Ghana, through the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) and the Government of Tanzania have jointly been awarded as Best Policy Maker in the fight against aflatoxins at the first Aflasafe for Africa Conference held in Tanzania.

The National Aflatoxin Sensitisation and Management (NASAM) project, being implemented by the GSA with support from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), received the acclamation together with Tanzania’s Ministry of Agriculture, for their contribution to the fight against aflatoxins on the continent.

The NASAM project aims to catalyse and sustain an inclusive agricultural transformation by improving food safety and security through increased knowledge about aflatoxins, its impacts and management.

Mr George Anti, the Business Development Manager at the GSA represented the Authority at the Conference, where he also took part in a panel discussion on creating enabling policies for sustainable scaling-up of food safety innovation.

He expressed the GSA’s appreciation to the organisers of the Conference for the recognition, which he said came as a surprise to the Authority, since the NASAM project was barely a year old.

“It’s an award we were not expecting because there were leaders in this fight against aflatoxins on the continent. But it appears that the little we have done here, so far, has caught the eyes of the organisers,” he stated.

According to him, the award would spur the NASAM project team on to work more even beyond its lifespan.

“The recognition will spur us on. We will ensure that it serves as a catalyst to put aflatoxin- related issues on the front burner in the country,” he emphasised.

The two-day Conference assembled Company Managing Directors, Production Leads, Funders and Government Representatives, Regulators and Leading Food Safety Industry Players, Company Traders, Processors, Maize, Groundnut and Sorghum Producer Organisations, among several others.

Participants discussed topics covering technology improvement, bio-industry outlook, building lasting business partnerships, go-to-market business models and Aflasafe manufacturing optimisation.

Aflasafe is a research product from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and partners, whose pre-harvest application enables crop production with little or no aflatoxin, while providing post-harvest protection too.