Twinning project to boost international trade
The Minister of Industrialisation and Trade, Lucia Ipumbu, officially launched the European Union (EU) funded twinning project “Providing support to the Namibia Standard Institution (NSI)” in Windhoek last week.The two-year twinning project aims to boost the NSI’s capacity to carry out its mandate and increase Namibia's involvement in international trade.
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. They 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).
Revised quality policy
In her keynote address, Iipumbu applauded all stakeholders, as this 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.”
NSI and the Ministry of Industrialisation and Trade (MIT) are the project's primary beneficiaries. Speaking at the occasion, the EU Ambassador to Namibia Sinikka Antila, narrated how “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 €1.6 million (N$27 million).