For a food safety programme, support requests are not something to wait for at a desk: they are gathered on vegetable plots and in processing units. After a first year spent on procedures, governance and the choice of value chains [horticulture and artisanal fisheries], PASA-Côte d’Ivoire, the food safety programme funded by the European Union and implemented by COLEAD, is now in its operational phase. Its team therefore spent two weeks in the field, from 27 September to 10 October. Between Abidjan, Yamoussoukro, Bouaké and Tiébissou, it met some thirty stakeholders: competent authorities, support and extension bodies, vegetable growers’ cooperatives, women processing agricultural and fish products, traders, apex organisations, research centres and partner projects.
The same findings, meeting after meeting
Stakeholders are aware of the food safety issue and confirm that the programme is relevant; it is practices that are slow to change. Pre-harvest intervals are hard to respect on crops picked several times a week, such as okra. After harvest, vegetables are left on the ground, rarely sorted, and cartons are damaged in transport. One finding helps explain the others: sanitary control exists for exports but is virtually too absent on local markets, which gives little incentive to change. Lastly, management remains the weak point of organisations: governance, basic bookkeeping and knowledge of production costs are often lacking.
Initiatives to build on
The field also revealed stakeholders who are ahead of the curve: the collection centre run by the Regional Union of Vegetable Growers of Gbêkè (URMAG), agroecological practices in vegetable production, and entrepreneurs asking for trials so they can produce “residue-free”.
Multiplying the training effort
To reach growers well beyond those a single team can meet, the programme will work through organisations that already have extension networks and trainers. With the National Rural Development Support Agency (ANADER), a provisional action plan provides for training of trainers, notably on good hygiene practices and the safe use of pesticides, and for information about the programme to be relayed to cooperatives through ANADER’s nationwide network. Other synergies are taking shape: joint training of trainers and shared good-practice guides with the EU twinning project supporting the veterinary services; the mobilisation of expertise for cooperatives with the Centre for Rural Management and Economics (CGER Centre) and the Interprofessional Fund for Agricultural Research and Advisory Services (FIRCA); and, with the National Federation of Traders of Côte d’Ivoire (FENACCI), a local public-private consultation framework on food safety that could become a model for public-private dialogue.
What happens next?
The support requests collected during the mission are now being analysed. The aim is to have identified, by the end of November, all the relevant cooperatives and SMEs, so that the first collective and tailored support activities can start in early 2027.
This activity is implemented by COLEAD and supported by the Food Safety Support Programme for the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire (PASA-Côte d’Ivoire), funded by the European Union through the EU Delegation in Côte d’Ivoire. This communication has been produced with the financial support of the EU. Its contents are the sole responsibility of COLEAD and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the EU.