Between March and July of 2018, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service's (FAS) Food Safety Network (FSN) program undertook a scoping to assess the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) capacity building needs of select Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS) focus countries in Africa - Kenya, Ethiopia, Senegal and Ghana - in order to produce a set of recommendations and programming considerations for USAID, USDA and other participating U.S. government (USG) GFSS’ agencies in the next phase of Feed the Future. 

The FSN team engaged with USG, private industry, civil society and host country government stakeholders through phone and in-person consultations using a rapid, open-ended survey approach as well as literature review and comparative analysis from a more in-depth assessment conducted by USAID, FDA and USDA in 2013. Findings from West Africa were presented at a regional Feed the Future event in Ghana and discussed individually with missions.

Common SPS needs/capacity building priority areas were found across all countries, summarized as porous borders, agricultural inputs, scientific capacity and transparency - P.A.S.T.  Based on these findings, tailored action tables were presented for programming considerations using a market systems approach to priority agricultural value chains.  

The FSN hopes these reports will serve as a resource for ongoing conversations about how investing in SPS capacity building can help meet GFSS country and regional objectives as well as international trade objectives for U.S. agricultural exports.