Abuja, Nigeria, January 26, 2018 – The ECOWAS Commission organizes in Dakar, under the patronage of Mr. Macky Sall, President of the Republic of Senegal, the 1^st edition of ECOQUAF, a Regional Forum dedicated to its Quality Infrastructure.

Under the aegis of the Ministry of Industry and Small and Medium Industry of Senegal, ECOQUAF will gather from January 29th to February 1st, 2018, about 300 participants, including representatives of the fifteen (15) States members of ECOWAS and Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, regional and international quality institutions, technical and financial partners and national, regional and international civil society organizations.

During this major meeting of quality actors, debates will be organized around the following topics: development and implementation of Quality Policies, financing Quality Infrastructure, major challenges of the main components of the Quality Infrastructure, and promotion of Quality.

As a reminder, the ECOWAS Commission has previously set up the necessary legal basis for any credible and sustainable Quality Infrastructure, notably through the adoption of the following three main texts: the ECOWAS Quality Policy (ECOQUAL), the Regulation C / REG.14 / 12/12 adopting the Harmonization Procedures of the ECOWAS Standards (ECOSHAM) and the Regulation C / REG. / 12/13 adopting the Regional Quality Infrastructure Scheme (IRQ) of ECOWAS. ECOWAS, through the Regulation C / REG. / 12/13, then created the Community Council of Quality (CCQ); the Community Committee for Conformity Assessment (CCEC); the Community Committee for Technical Regulations (CCTR) and the Regional Accreditation System (RAS).

In order to make these structures operational, the Council of Ministers adopted in June 2017, seven (7) Regulations defining the operation of the SRA and the three Community Committees mentioned above, and authorizing the creation of the ECOWAS Quality Agency, called ECOWAQ, executive structure of the scheme. These structures were effectively formed as part of the meetings held on November 2017 in Abuja, at which their Presidents and Vice-Presidents were elected.

The last step in this process of setting up the IQR structures will be to organize the first meeting of the ECOWAS Community Council of Quality as well as the ECOWAQ Constitutive General Assembly. These meetings will be organized as a prelude to the Forum, on January 29th, 2018. All these activities take place under the guise of the West Africa Quality System Program (WAQSP) funded by the European Union in tune of 12 million Euros and implemented by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

WAQSP is one of the major programs of the ECOWAS Commission, in support of the implementation of ECOQUAL and the West African Common Industrial Policy (WACIP).