G/TBT/W/597  
 
11 March 2019  
(19-1457) Page: 1/2 
Committee  on Technical Barriers to Trade  Original: English  
 
AGENDA ITEM 4: TECHN ICAL ASSISTANCE ACTI VITIES  
STATEMENT BY THE UNI TED STATES TO THE CO MMITTEE ON TECHNICAL  BARRIERS TO TRADE  
6 AND 7 MARCH 2019  
The following communication, dated 11 March 2019, is being circulated at the request of the 
delegation of the United States . 
 
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1.  Emphasizing the importance of effective technical assistance activities, the United States would 
like to highlight our ongoing efforts to support understanding and implementation of the TBT 
Agreement and its principles und er several capacity building mechanisms.  
2.  First, the Standards Alliance is a public -private partnership between the US Agency for 
International Development (USAID) and ANSI, which coordinates with developing and least 
developed countries to identify and pr ioritize areas for technical assistance. Beginning in 2012, the 
program originally focused on 10 markets/regions of the world and was expanded in 2016 to include 
five additional countries on the African continent. These include Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mozamb ique, 
Senegal, and Zambia.  
3.  Over the past six years, the Standards Alliance has aided many of our partners in graduating 
from general knowledge sharing activities toward practical applications of the TBT Agreement. 
Examples from past activities include nat ional enquiry point and notification authority trainings that 
have supported increased notification and transparency amongst participating countries.  
4.  More recently, since 2017 the Standards Alliance has worked with Zambia to improve regulatory 
review proce sses and public consultation. Through this work, the Zambian government has moved 
from awareness building activities on the value of regulatory review to specific trainings on 
stakeholder engagement, considering alternatives to regulation, and quantitative  measures 
including cost benefit analysis and cost effectiveness analysis.  
5.  Standards Alliance activities do not only focus on broad items, like those noted in the Code of 
Good Practice, but also sector -specific issues that allow participating nations to p ractice the general 
principles learned through previous trainings. Some sector -specific topics include our work on 
medical devices in Central and South America, which emphasizes the adoption of internationally 
recognized best practices as well as the imple mentation and reinforcement of policies promoting the 
use of internationally harmonized voluntary consensus standards and conformity assessment 
mechanisms particularly for the medical devices sector.  
6.  In the coming year, the Standards Alliance has a robust pipeline focusing on our partners in 
Africa. These include workshops on Good Regulatory Practice in Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, and Senegal 
as well as further trainings on regulatory review in Zambia and best practices related to standards 
development and confor mity assessment to aid Mozambique in building out their recently codified 
law on national quality infrastructure. Our efforts continue to emphasize transparency and to 
promote the foundational principles of the TBT Agreement.  G/TBT/W/597  
 
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  7.  In addition to Standards Alli ance activities, ANSI also works with African countries to promote 
international standards and good regulatory practices to support clean energy, under the US Trade 
and Development Agency's (USTDA) US-Africa Clean Energy Standards Program (CESP).  The CESP 
provides a platform for industry and government to conduct technical exchange on standards and 
conformity assessment for clean energy technologies.  In 2018, ANSI and USTDA carried out 
workshops in Senegal, Rwanda, Benin and Kenya and addressed subjects suc h as energy storage 
standards and regulatory framework for solar mini -grids.  
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