Lusaka, November 20, 2019: Egypt is the eighth COMESA Member State to domesticate the COMESA Seed Trade Harmonisation Regulations. This follows the signing of a Gazette notice by Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation Prof. Ezaldin Abusteit.

Egypt now joins Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, which have completely aligned their national seed regulations or laws with the regional Seed Trade Harmonisation Regulations.

The Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (ACTESA), COMESA Seed Development Expert Dr John Mukuka told eComesa that this was expected after the validation of the draft COMESA aligned national Seeds Laws of Egypt by stakeholders earlier this year. The validation meeting was supported by the USAID.

Subsequently, Hytech-seed Company of Egypt has registered six varieties on the COMESA Variety catalogue. These are: two medium maturing maize varieties of Hytec 203, 2055, late maturing maize varieties of 1100 and 2031 and late sorghum varieties of Horus and Mabrouk.

Five other Member States namely Djibouti, Eritrea, DR Congo, Ethiopia, and Eswatini are advancing steadily in domesticating the COMESA Seed Trade Harmonisation Regulations as they have draft COMESA aligned national seed laws / regulations awaiting official gazetting at national level.

The remaining eight countries Comoros, Madagascar, Libya, Mauritius, Tunisia, Somalia, Seychelles and Sudan are yet to align and domesticate the COMESA Seed Trade Harmonisation Regulations.

The development of the COMESA Seed Harmonization Implementation Plan (COMSHIP) was aimed at expediting the implementation of the harmonized regional seed regulations to enhance seed production, reliability, seed trade including increasing the competitiveness of the seed industry in the Southern and East African Region.