“Made in Africa” products like you’ve never seen/IMAGE: bird story agency
There is a continent-wide push to raise the standard and streamline accreditation processes for goods made in Africa. That way, they have a better chance at penetrating and thriving in global markets.
By Conrad Onyango, bird story agency
Accreditation was the buzzword during three days of robust discussions on upgrading and ensuring the quality of “Made in Africa” goods at the first International Accreditation Conference in Mombasa this month. Representatives from Kenya, Mauritius, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Botswana, the US, Bahrain, Germany and other countries attended the event.
Experts at the forum agreed that accreditation, often framed as a technical concept in commercial value chains, produces trust between the supplier and the buyer. This process to confirm that a test, product, or certificate meets local or global standards is key in boosting competitiveness of local products and regional trade.
At the conference, acccreditation and quality infrastructure expert, Brahim Houla, gave a hypothetical example of an avocado farmer from Kenya’s Kiambu. Mwangi, the farmer, may not need accreditation when selling on the local market but once he goes outside his county, he needs certificates of conformity and laboratory tests to prove that his avocados are free of pesticides and are indeed organic, as he claims them to be.
“Once he wants to export to Europe, they will ask him, ‘Is this lab trustful?’ That’s where accreditation links the trust of that product conformity with other countries,” explained Houla, chair-elect of the Global Accreditation Cooperation (GAC).
TradeMark Africa (TMA) Project Manager, Elizabeth Gathogo said accreditation is the “invisible bridge” linking science, policy, producers, regulators, and African goods to global markets.
“Market rewards proof, not promise. Accreditation is that proof, objective, repeatable, and borderless. When accreditation is absent, suspicion replaces science. When evidence is missing, opportunity evaporates,” she told delegates.
According to Gathogo, who delivered a speech on behalf of Trademark Africa, Director of Standards Dr. Andrew Edewa, TradeMark Africa data shows between 2019 and 2024, the continent lost more than US$ 700 million in agri-food exports due to lack of recognized proof. Countries that institutionalized accreditation, she said, recorded a 20 to 40 per cent reduction in technical barriers to trade, and a 30 per cent rise in export value. She noted that where accreditation systems are strong in countries such as in Kenya, Rwanda, and Ghana, clearance times have dropped by 30 per cent and rejection rates have halved.
“The Africa Continental Free Trade Area, (AfCFTA), offers us a golden framework to harmonize standards, accreditation, and mutual recognition,” said Gathogo.
Currently, Africa, with a population of 1.3 billion people has approximately 3,800 accreditation and compliance institutions from labs, inspections and certification bodies compared to China, which has a population of 1.4 billion and more than 27,000 accreditation bodies, according to Houla who affirmed that Africa needs more investment in quality infrastructure.
Policymakers across the continent are intensifying efforts to bolster their “Made in Africa” initiatives, the latest developments being seen in Morocco and Ethiopia. Earlier this month, the Moroccan government launched the “Made in Morocco” label, calling it “a guarantee of added value” and “a symbol of national pride.” The label, open to producers in all sectors, is based on four pillars: the origin, compliance, traceability and evidence. It requires products to have at least 40 per cent Moroccan content or undergo major transformation in Morocco.
“It’s a voluntary approach, but one that demands rigor,” Morocco’s Minister of Industry and Commerce, Ryad Mezzour told Morocco World News.
Automaker, Neo Motors Maroc also unveiled its first electric vehicle, the E-NEO Dial E, which is fully designed and built in Morocco and the first African vehicle to obtain full European Union approval under the L7e-CU standard, according to the makers.
“This new EV car makes us proud because it is affordable, accessible, and beautifully designed. It represents our dream to export Moroccan electric vehicles to Europe,” said Neo Motors Chief Executive Officer, Nassim Belkhayat.
In September, the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) renewed its memorandum of understanding with the African Association of Automotive Manufacturers (AAAM), aligning efforts to promote intra-African trade and investment in the continent’s automotive sector.
Afreximbank’s Trade Facilitation and Investment Promotion Director, Dr Gainmore Zanamwe, said the agreement is expected to catalyse industrialisation by boosting local vehicle production, creating skilled jobs and reducing reliance on imported second-hand cars.
“By aligning financial innovation, policy support, and value chain development within the automotive sector, we are fostering a new era of intra-African trade and manufacturing,” he said.
In Ethiopia, Green Scene Energy Plc launched Tolo, a locally assembled solar-powered stove designed for rural and off-grid households.
“Tolo is designed for households that lack electricity as well as users seeking cleaner and more efficient alternatives to biomass and charcoal,” said CEO Rekike Bekele.
The developers are leveraging on price points which are between 25 to 30 per cent cheaper than other infrared stoves in the market, and local designs to drive up local sales. CEO of the Kenya Accreditation Service (KENAS), Dr. Walter Ongeti, told bird in an interview that a quantitative framework to rank countries and quality of goods made in Africa is under development.
“We are interacting with the different players and stakeholders to be able to collect more accurate data to be able to say we can position ourselves at this particular point. These are areas that we still have in conversation so that we give more authoritative information,” he said.
He said the focus is to use the country’s strong quality infrastructure to drive industrial growth and consumer confidence as KENAS pushes for the use of quality infrastructures to bolster “Made in Africa” initiatives.
“It is very, very important to be intentional about accreditation because then we not only produce good quality goods and services which can be verified, can be tested and confirmed to meet international standards, not just because we want to export these products, but because we also are made to consume good things that meet all the international standards,” said Dr. Ongeti.
The chair of the International Accreditation Conference (IAC 2025)’s organizing committee, Felista Nyakoe, said that special emphasis should be placed on resource mobilisation and capacity building for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which often struggle to meet international quality standards due to limited financing.
“Resource mobilization is something that is very important. As we know, we have so many MSMEs, and they don’t have funds to be able to ensure that their products are good enough to access markets. So, we are also going to look at how do we do the resource mobilization to ensure that this work that they are doing can be acknowledged and can be improved,” said Nyakoe.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Nohemie Mwaka, founder of Lubembo, a company that supplies organic food , shared her experience navigating through the numerous and pricey steps required to meet international certification standards.
“Lord have mercy on Africa. I just spent US$23,000 on certifications for one product,” she lamented.
According to Mwaka as narrated in the post, a German organic tea company had sought to buy Lubembo’s Congolese honey, which she described “forest honey from one of the most pesticide-free ecosystems on Earth.” The buyer was ready to offer a premium price under a long-term contract, but the compliance requirements were exhaustive.
“They demanded EU organic certification, glyphosate residue analysis, heavy metal tests and complete traceability from hive to port,” she wrote.
All these mandatory elements pushed the total investment to between US$16,000 and US$34,000 before a single kilogram could even leave the country plus a four-month period to complete the accreditation process.
“Most individual African farmers can’t afford this. Most small cooperatives can’t either. So they stay locked into local markets where premium honey sells for US$3/kg instead of US$25/kg internationally,” she continued.
Manufacturers in Africa’s pharmaceutical sector face similar struggles. Medicines for Africa, a Johannesburg-based, African-led social enterprise focused on patient access, voiced concern that even when African manufacturers meet the world’s highest quality benchmarks, global systems still shut them out.
A statement from the company’s LinkedIn page reads: “African manufacturers, who have gone through the WHO PQ process and met these stringent standards, continue to face exclusion from the very global supply chains that the WHO itself supports. This raises an obvious and pressing question. Why does WHO PQ, intended to be a tool for greater equity, seem to keep African manufacturers out of international markets?”
The African Union’s “Made in Africa” initiative, conceived in 2021, seeks to build industrial capacity, promote export diversification and create sustainable value chains across the continent. It is anchored on the Africa Quality Policy, endorsed by AU Heads of State in 2022, which aims to establish a continental certification scheme for African goods and services.
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