‘Twinning’ project to ensure Namibian products meet international standards
The Ministry of Industrialisation and Trade recently launched a 2-year twinning project to boost the Namibia Standards Institute’s capacity to carry out its mandate and increase Namibia’s involvement in international trade.
Trade minister Lucia Iipumbu said the EU-funded project is the first step in achieving the revised National Quality Policy 2020 – 2025 by ensuring that locally manufactured products are in line with international standards.
“With the Twinning Project in motion, Namibia will undoubtedly build a strong foundation for the development and enhancement of new and existing partnerships to international trade agreements and boost the market environment,” Iipumbu said.
EU Ambassador to Namibia Sinikka Antila said ‘twinning’ is a special concept by the European Union to enhance institutional collaboration between public administrations in EU Member States and beneficiary or partner nations.
Through peer-to-peer operations, twinning programmes combine the public sector expertise of the EU Member States and recipient countries to provide concrete, mandatory operational outcomes. The Twinning project is part of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) Implementation Plan for Namibia and is supported to the tune of N$27 million (1.6 million Euros).
This is the first EU Twinning project in Sub-Saharan Africa jointly implemented by a consortium of eight German and Swedish institutes with experience in trade policy, technical regulation, food safety, standardization, accreditation, metrology, and conformity assessment.
These are the Swedish National Board of Trade (NBT), the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), the Swedish Institute for Standards (SIS), the German Institute for Standardization (DIN), the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL), the Swedish Board for Accreditation and Conformity Assessment (SWEDAC), the German Accreditation Body (DAkkS), and the German National Metrology Institute (PTB).
