The West Africa Quality System Programme (WAQSP) organized, from 21 to 22 November 2018, at the ACI2000 Private Sector Center in Bamako (Mali), a national training workshop on the requirements of the ISO / IEC 17065 v 2012.

The overall objective of this workshop was to strengthen the operational capacities of around 20 national resource persons in order to facilitate the operationalization of the "products" certification unit of the Malian Agency for Standardization and Promotion of Quality (AMANORM), to strengthen the process of implementation of the Marketing Authorization (MA) issuance in the National Agency of Industry in charge of monitoring national companies.

At the opening of the works attended by key directorates and structures of the sector of the Malian industry, Mr. Younoussa MAÏGA, Director General of AMANORM, Focal Point of the WAQSP, thanked the partners of the programme before underlining that the workshop tends to reinforce the achievements of previous workshops that helped to validate the certification standards for three priority products namely, steels for reinforced, cement and edible oils.

Finally, he reminded all the hope placed in this workshop whose specific priority objective is to facilitate the operationalization of the AMANORM certification unit. In her opening address, Ms. AG ERLESS Oumou Coulibaly, Technical Adviser, representative of the Minister of Industrial Development and Investment Promotion, said that the workshop organized by the WAQSP and funded by the European Union, intends to support the development of Quality Infrastructure within ECOWAS. "The support of the WAQSP allowed Mali to validate the draft special technical regulations for the priority products and the certification procedures for these products, to train the members of the specific technical certification committees and to train the members of the impartiality committee ", she said before urging to make the most of the knowledge gained during the two days of training.

During the training, the international expert, Mr. Cherif EZZINE, talked about product certification systems, processes and services according to ISO / IEC 17067 and ISO / IEC 17065, the general, structural requirements and those related to the resources of a certification body, as well as the requirements of the management system. At the end of the session, an exercise distributed at the beginning of the training was corrected with the participants in order to better master the requirements of ISO 17065.

The national training workshop to the requirements of ISO / IEC 17065 v 2012 ended with the delivery of certificates to participants.