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A historic event! For the first time in its existence IMPEL TFS, together with the Secretariat of the Basel Convention and the Ghanaian Environmental Protection Agency, hosted a three-day workshop outside Europe. In Accra, Ghana, from November 24th until November 26th a beginning was made with a training programme for enforcement officers from five African countries and establishing contact between European and African countries at operational enforcement level.

During this first meeting, representatives of the two continents had the chance to meet and to learn about each other’s work through presentations, working groups and plenary discussions. The Europeans gave explanations on their legislation and enforcement practices. The African participants presented their legislative framework, the state of affairs regarding the E-waste issue and the responsibilities of the various policy making and enforcement agencies.

Aim of the programme
Main objective of the training programme is to get more control on the export of (electronic) waste from Europe to Africa. The secretariat of the Basel Convention (SBC), based in Geneva, has launched the multi-annual “E-wastes Africa project”. Within this project, the enforcement component will be carried out by IMPEL TFS.

Participants
Representatives from Egypt, Tunisia, Nigeria, Benin and Ghana participated in the programme as well as reprentatives from Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom. Besides the respective environmental agencies, also port authorities and Customs were represented.  A special role was taken by Mrs. Francesca Cenni of SBC Geneva and the three directors of the Basel Convention Regional (Coordination) Centres of Egypt, Senegal and Nigeria. From IMPEL TFS side, the project team was led by mr. Joseph Domfeh from Norway.
On the first day of the seminar, opening speeches were delivered by mr. Jonathan Allotey, director of EPA Ghana and by mr. Gerard Wolters, Chair of the Board.

 Train the trainer
Most attention was paid to identifying the training needs of the five African countries. In the coming years, a series of courses will be offered, starting in Europe. By using the ‘train the trainer model’, the project team hopes that the results of the training programme will be dissiminated as widely as possible.

Port visit
During the seminar, a short trip to the main seaport of Ghana, the port of Tema, was made. The port site gave a clear impression of the difficulties that enforcers face. Clearance of containers loaded with imported second-hand products, like mattresses, cars, pots and pans, TVs, refrigerators or other electronics automatically lead to the main question: what is to be considered acceptable second hand product and what is waste?

Network for Africa
Besides offering training, IMPEL TFS invited all participating countries to establish a vital network of contact persons and enforcers. During the workshop, many people have become acquainted with each other. For this reason, and for the exchange of very much information in an open and informal atmosphere, the workshop marked a succesfull and promising start of a new field of cooperation.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 3:08 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.