Experience Sharing Workshop on Compliance Monitoring & Enforcement: Challenges & Prospects for African Nations Nairobi, Kenya

March 14-1, 2016

A workshop has been organized on Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement: Challenges and Prospects for African Nations in Nairobi, Kenya from 14-16th March, 2016. The programme was organized by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in collaboration with National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), Kenya and Kenya Water Institute (KEWI).

There were all together 11 countries were represented, namely Ethiopia, Zanzibar, Ghana, Malawi, Gambia, Namibia, Zambia, Nigeria and last but not the least Kenya.

The programme was inaugurated by Anumita Roy Chowdhury, Executive Director, CSE wherein she talked about challenges which India and Africa are facing in terms of urban air pollution. 

The programme was also attended by Honorable High Commissioner of India, in Nairobi, Ms. Suchitra Durai. She expressed her gratitude to CSE for organizing this kind of India –African workshop, as according to her, this will be an impetus to the ongoing ITEC programme. 

She had an interactive session with the participants, as she discussed in detail about the various initiative taken and probably can be taken in future under the ITEC programme with the participants from various African Nations. She also requested us to share few photographs of the programme, as they have a system of uploading this initiative on their website (http://www.hcinairobi.co.ke/).

A good discussion took place, as all the countries represented their respective country specific scenario in terms of achieving environmental compliance and enforcement and what are the challenges they are facing in ensuring the compliance level. 

A parallel representation by CSE on its India initiative was also highlighted to give participants an outlook on the potential areas of collaboration with CSE. 

Area of collaboration with CSE:

Majority of the attended representatives including new countries like Malawi, Zanzibar, Namibia and Ghana expressed their willingness to work with CSE, specially in the area of 

1. Developing inspection checklist in line with their regulation and industries

2. Water quality and air quality monitoring and capacity building on the technical laboratory analysis 

3. Bio medical waste management issues 

4. Explore the scope of coming up with some kind of rating programme, similar to GRP initiative

5. Developing national regulations for various waste streams 

6. Training and capacity building programme