Nairobi — TANZANIA IS among the seven countries in Africa that have started cleaning up obsolete pesticides and preventing toxic threats under a 15-year programme to rid Africa of 50,000 tonnes of stockpiled pesticides.

The other six countries already implementing the first phase of the Africa Stockpiles Programme (ASP) are Ethiopia, South Africa, Lesotho, Morocco, Mali and Tunisia.

The first phase, lasting for three years (2003-2006), will cost $60 million. The money will be raised by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) and other donors and channelled to recipient countries and institutions through the World Bank.

Out of the $60 million, some $25 million will come from GEF and $35 million will be co-financing from bilateral donors, foundations, GEF partners and the pesticide industry. About 70 per cent of the money will be spent on waste disposal, 10 per cent on contigencies and 20 per cent on prevention of pesticide stockpiles.

According to the Arusha-based Tropical Pesticide Research Institute (TPRI), the programme will eventually cover all 53 African countries with the aim of assisting them to get rid of stockpiled obsolete pesticides and associated wastes like containers.

Besides destroying unwanted pesticides, ASP hopes to prevent stockpiling of chemical wastes in future through minimising of pesticide use, better management and handling of pesticides and better hazardous waste management.

According to Charles Muangirwa, the TPRI director of research, the continent-wide programme was initiated after the realisation that a country-by-country approach to obsolete and hazardous pesticide management could not work.

"The consequence has been persisting problems of hazardous chemical wastes, impacting heavily on public health and environment with severe consequences on the poor communities," he told pesticide experts who met in Arusha recently.

Under the ASP, African countries are requested to put in place the necessary legal frameworks in order to implement various international conventions against chemical hazards, including stockpiled wastes.

To ensure better pesticide management, regulatory and policy frameworks are to be put in place to control mishandling of pesticides and other chemicals during their use, transportation, storage and disposal, he said.

Among the international organisations to be involved in the multi-million dollar chemical waste disposal programme are the World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Pesticide Action Network (PAN) UK, PAN Africa and the African Union.

Others are the New Partnership for Africa's Development, (Nepad), African Development Bank, UN Economic Commission for Africa and the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation.

According to Dr Muangirwa, the selection criteria for the first phase of the ASP at country level will be the size of pesticide stockpiles and how far the country has gone in implementing international conventions on chemical wastes it has ratified or signed.

Trans-border issues relating to pesticide use or application, transportation, pilot testing of new disposal technologies, training in safe operations like repackaging will also be the focus of the activities to be undertaken under ASP from this year until 2018.

The second phase of the programme will last from 2007 to 2010 and cost an estimated $60 million.

Phase three (2011-2014) will spend $65 million and the fourth phase (2015-2018), $65 million, making a total of $170 million for the programme's total life of 15 years.

It is estimated that the African continent has more than 20,00 tonnes of obsolete pesticides, out of a total of 100,000 tonnes in developing countries.