AOAC SSA Annual Meeting - Day 1

Dr. Hermogene Nsengimana, since 2012 to date, is the Secretary General of the African Organisation for Standardisation, ARSO, an intergovernmental Organisation which was formed by the African Union (AU, formerly OAU) and Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and with a membership of 38 African countries. Recruited by the ARSO Council, the Administrative arm of the Organisation, Dr Hermogene Nsengimana began his Career with ARSO in 2012. Steering ARSO to fulfil its Mandate of harmonising Standards and Conformity Assessment to reduce Technical Barriers to Trade and promote Intra-African and global Trade, Dr Nsengimana has demonstrated unrivalled and higher success at all key programmes of the Organisation, given his thorough understanding of the challenges of Technical Barriers to Trade issues in Africa and in World Trading systems, based on his wide knowledge of the World Trade Organisation TBTs Agreement (WTO TBT Agreement),. His demonstrated primary strength in the delivery of ARSO mandate is his visionary leadership with a deeper understanding of the letter and intent of the African Integration, Industrialisation and Transformation Agenda; the main African key blueprints of Lagos Plan of Action, Abuja Treaty and the African Agenda 2063, the African we Want.

veteran senior manager in corporate communications and regulatory affairs, with 35 years’ experience both in Agency and In House within major multinational corporations, including 17 years at Nestlé. In that capacity, he was instrumental in developing the company’s Creating Shared Value approach to its role in society. He assembled, prepared, published and publicised 11 increasingly sophisticated Creating Shared Value reports to stakeholders; and socialised the CSV Concept internally (to Chairman and CEO level) and externally through six increasingly high-profile CSV Fora, attracting more than 300 worldwide delegates, including (for the last three editions) serving Heads of State or Prime Ministers; and generating significant owned, earned and paid echo across traditional and new media. Most recently, he headed the company’s Regulatory and Scientific Affairs teams in Sub Saharan Africa, based at its Research Centre in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Part of his role in this capacity was to establish relations with continental African institutions and other key stakeholders, up to and including Commissioner level at the African Union, VP level at the African Development Bank among others. In this context he initiated a significant partnership between the African Green Revolution Alliance (AGRA) and Nestlè’s Central and West African market for farmer development in Nigeria and Ghana. He also worked with the AGRA team to bring senior Nestlé experts to speak at the African Green Revolution Forum. Other successful partnership activity was carried out with the African Union, the African Development Bank and GIZ. Fluent in English, French and German and a graduate of University College London, John is married with one daughter. His wife, Nsa, is Nigerian and, in addition to their five years‘ spent in Abidjan and John’s role representing Nestlé throughout Africa, John and Nsa have spent significant time visiting extended family in Nigeria and beyond, learning first hand of the challenges and opportunities that face African rural communities on a daily basis.

Prior to joining RAF, Dr. Ouattara was seconded by the government of Canada to FAO, Rome, Italy to provide high-level expertise to the activities of the Food Safety and Quality Unit in the area of scientific advice regarding various aspects of food safety and quality. At the FAO RAF, he is responsible for technical support and capacity development in various areas of Food Safety including Food Safety Risk Analysis, Food Control Systems, SPS measures and Codex Alimentarius.
Before joining FAO, Rome, he worked at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in the Policy and Program Branch as a national Specialist, Food Microbiology and in the Science Branch as Chief of the risk prioritization and profiling unit. Among his responsibilities, he led the development of the CFIA’s risk prioritization and profiling process and the abattoir component of the Canadian Integrated Program on Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance (CIPARS). He also has a strong industry experience as the Technical Director of the Canadian Meat Council (CMC), the largest Canada’s federally registered meat packers and meat processors.
Dr. Ouattara has been a lecturer on Food Safety, Food microbiology, and meat inspection at the University of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), University of Ottawa (Canada) and University of Quebec in Montreal (Canada).

Provide technical support to the development of lending program and implementation of portfolio of projects under the prior value chains of the Feed Africa Strategy focusing on the development of agro industrial clusters and corridors

Coordinate the Postharvest Loss and Agro Processing (PHAP) and Food Safety and Quality Initiatives Flagships under the Feed Africa Strategy.

Former Rural Infrastructure Engineer Expert in the same Agriculture and Agroindustry Department, of the African Development Bank

Prior to the Bank, held managerial positions as Director of the Regional Development Agency under the Decentralization Law and Regional Coordinator of the Rural Infrastructure Development National Program, in Senegal

Civil rural Engineer by training

Dr. Amare Ayalew is the Program Manager of PACA. Dr. Amare has researched the occurrence, epidemiology, and management of aflatoxins and other mycotoxins as well as plant health for over 20 years. Prior to joining PACA, he had served as Associate Professor of Plant Pathology and Head of the School of Plant Sciences at Haramaya University, Ethiopia. He had also led the Crop Protection Section and the Crop Protection Research Program at the same university. He has supervised 54 post-graduate students including 10 PhD graduates. He has published on mycotoxins, plant health and other challenges to agriculture and is author/co-author of over 50 publications including 35 peer reviewed journal articles. Dr. Amare received a PhD (summa cum laude) in plant pathology from the University of Goettingen, Germany, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Haramaya University in Ethiopia. He holds certificates in project management, evidence-based policy making, higher institution leadership, SPS and pest risk analysis, among others. He has been a USDA fellow and visiting professor at Texas A&M University, USA (2008) and had five separate research stays at the Bavarian State Research Center in Munich, Germany, studying mycotoxigenic fungi, mycotoxins, and biorational plant disease control between 1993 and 2012.

Ms. Martha Byanyima is a food safety professional with extensive experience in a wide range of food sectors in East and Southern Africa. After many years of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) capacity development work with the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA), she now leads the USDA-Land O Lakes Venture37 agricultural trade program in East Africa. Besides Martha’s professional background, she comes from a farming background in Uganda, where she has private interest in beef cattle ranching.

Maria is passionate about understanding laboratories' measurement challenges, and developing relevant solutions, products and quality assurance training that will enable laboratories to deliver credible testing services to the country and region, sustaining quality of life, protecting consumers and conserving environment. This desire to help build chemical testing capacity has allowed her to reinforce networks within the analytical testing community across Africa.

While embracing the dual role of technical manager and analytical chemist, she works with an amazing team of 12 dedicated analyical scientists.

As a team, they have established a reference material production facility, delivering reference measurements, new certified reference materials and proficiency testing schemes in the fields of food safety and nutrition, environmental pollution monitoring, forensic analysis and the characterization of organic chemicals according to the international standards ISO 17025, 17034 and 17043.

2014 to date:Consultant/Trainer- Laboratory Management and Accreditation, Food Safety Systems, Environmental Impact Assessment, Training and workshop organization. Have consulted for COMESA, FAO/International Atomic Energy Agency and EU Cole-ACP on SPS measures Laboratory Quality System and Food Safety matters.
Previously headed a chemical testing laboratory, which was accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 in 2006. It was Re-accredited in June 2011 where the scope of methods was doubled. Analysis included pesticide residues analysis in food and the environment, pesticide formulation analysis, soil and plant tissue nutrient evaluation, fertilizer analysis, heavy metal analysis in food and the environment. Responsibilities included decision making on sampling protocols, contract reviews with clients, preparing work schedules, supervising analysts, cross checking and analyzing data and coordination of method validation.
I oversaw the preparation of equipment specifications,procurement of the appropriate laboratory utilities and the day to day performance of the equipment. I acted for the General Manger Quality Assurance in his absence. I was involved in accessing the WTO/SPS and WTO/TBT notifications, evaluating them and advising stakeholders accordingly. I was a component leader in the project “Horticultural Produce Phytosanitary Certification and Quality Assurance” (Horticap) funded by the European Union which ran up to 2010. During the final evaluation of the project, KEPHIS scored over 80%.
I previously coordinated PIP-COLEACP-supported laboratory analysis work and coordinated a field Pre-harvest Interval Trial by the same sponsor in 2012/2013.
I oversaw Food safety issues and was a team member working on a National Food Safety Policy and Implementation strategy.

I was the Laboratory Cluster contact person for the EDES-COLEACP project and coordinated the practical based laboratory training in Kenya for the same program.