Browsing by Author "Bezawit Mesfin"

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    Product Standards under the AfCFTA Protocol on Trade inGoodsand Ethiopia’s Journey towards Regional Economic Integration
    (Addis Ababa University, 2025-08-01) Bezawit Mesfin; Martha Belete
    Even though Ethiopia advances policy goals that capitalize on industrialization and enhancing export sector economy, the country’s market faces significant hurdles that relate to compliance with international standards and product quality requirements affecting its advancement on such sectors. As a signatory to the AfCFTA agreement, Ethiopia faces crucial obligations of harmonizing its standards and complying with the requirements of the TBT Annex of the AfCFTA Protocol on trade in goods. This study tries to assess Ethiopia's journey towards compliance with several specific obligations found in the AfCFTA TBT Annex that are related to the product standards obligations. The study analyzes the essential features of the Ethiopian product standard regulation regime, in light of the specific obligations under the AfCFTA TBT Annex. An analysis of the overall National Quality infrastructure of the country mainly consisting of the Institute of Ethiopian Standards, the Ethiopian Conformity Assessment Enterprise, the Ethiopian Metrology Institute, and the Ethiopian Accreditation Service has been made and several challenges like inadequate standards implementation regime, inefficient conformity assessment procedures, poor coordination, inadequate funding, and staff retention problems have been flagged. The study proposes that putting in place robust policy framework, focus on implementation and follow up of standards, rigorous capacity building and awareness initiatives and building strong strategi calliance with important stakeholders is necessary for Ethiopia to comply with our AfCFTA Agreement obligations and benefit out of it