Deise M. F. Capalbo¹ and Maria José A. Sampaio²

A pre-workshop questionnaire was prepared and electronically distributed to the Workshop participants from Africa in order to detect expectations and main concerns to enhance the effectiveness of the organization thereof moving forward.

The organizers received 8 answers which accounted for 6 participating countries (out of the 7 countries present at the Workshop).

Since the group was very small and no more than 3 representatives from each country were present, we have to emphasize that no statistics were applied and also that the results do not represented all countries, or respondents attributed the same level of importance for the issues presented. Just indicatives of expectations and main concerns or interests were focused in this summary of results. Taking these messages, some indications were brought out:

the most important issues for the countries were (in this order):

legal framework and policies
research aspects

gaps or needs identified by participants:

more information made available: mainly regarding policies, coexistence, labeling and segregation;
more training and capacity building on topics that could allow research focused on answers for risk assessment questions;
more experience (acquirement) on how to improve the legal framework;
more opportunities for the south-south exchange of experts, other regional arrangements.

¹ Researcher at Embrapa Envrionment
² Researcher at Embrapa Headquarters, Secretariat of International Affairs