Did you know where those tomatoes grow, which enable Italians to flood markets in Africa - West Africa in particular - with concentrated tomato pulp? In the south of Italy? Oh no!

In China ? Yes !

Chinese traders export their tomato pulp to Italy. The quality is not sufficiently good to allow Italians to sell the product on their home market. Therefore, they just bottle or can the pulp and label it under their own brand name with the indication “Made in Italy”. This is no guarantee of the origin of the tomatoes, but only tells us where the canning or bottling process took place. This is common practice.

Thus, in Togo you may find grated and dried cocoa flakes, which have been imported from northern France. Nestlé sells formula milk in Ghana “made in Ghana from pure cow’s milk”.

But when you telephone the consumer information desk at Nestlé, you will learn that that the cows from which that milk comes are all in Europe!

Here is another example. In Ouagadougou you can find several brands of cooking oil “guaranteed 100% GMO”, imported from northern France. Oils that you will have great difficulty in locating anywhere in Paris!

What is actually happening at present? The European Union is busy negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements, EPAs,
with four regions in Africa ( one of them being West Africa) and with the Pacific and the Caribbean, joined under the name of the ACP countries. A crucial item in these negotiations is the list of “sensitive products” - those which will enjoy special protection in the liberalisation of trade between the EU and the ACP.

However, the current negotiating round in the WTO (World Trade Organisation), the so-called Doha round, equally includes some very important talks on sensitive products. The Europeans continuously brandish WTO trade regulations in their negotiations with the ACP. But new regulations are now under discussion in the WTO and the issue of sensitive products is a focal point. It is therefore “urgent to wait” before any Partnership Agreement is signed with the EU.

Let us take an example – tomatoes and its by-products, such as concentrated tomato pulp. It seems likely that West Africa could be granted the recognition of tomatoes as “sensitive products” by the WTO, but not by the EU in its talks with West Africa. The result is that China can continue to inundate West Africa with its tomato pulp “Made in Italy” or “bottled in Italy”.

But the leeway African negotiators have in their confrontation with the EU (and its weapon of mass dissuasion, the European Development Fund) is not on par with the hopes and expectations of African farmers. It appears that the WTO is taking a more favourable stance on African development than European traders and the Partnership Agreements. In order to limit the damage, a first decisive step in the negotiations with the EU on the EPAs would be to abstain from signing anything at all, until the Doha round has been completed.

In conclusion: It is urgent to wait!

Koudougou, April 7, 2007
Maurice Oudet

Director, SEDELAN