*1.3. African Countries and Economic Communities*

Africa, as all other continents, is a spectacular mixture of ethnic groups, languages (approximately 2000), religions, lifestyles, and cultures, subsuming into more than 1.3 billion humans inhabiting it. All African states are part of the African Union (AU). Within it, the African Economic Community (AEC) is the common organization seeking, ultimately, economic and monetary union of the member states, which vaguely corresponds to the EU. AU/AEC recognize several, so-called Regional Economic Communities (REC), some of which have subgroups, i.e.,


However, most subgroups are not recognized by AEC (CEMAC, SACU, and UEMOA), and there are other trade unions that also lack recognition by AEC, i.e., the Economic Community of Great Lakes Countries (CEPGL), Indian Ocean Commission (IOC), and Mano River Union (MRU).

Finally, there are trade blocks that include both African and non-African nations. One example is GAFTA, the Greater Arab Free Trade Area, which originates from the Arab League and includes most Arabic-speaking countries inside and outside Africa. IOC is an organization that links African island nations with France via this country's oversea regions. Table 2 subsumes the affiliation of the African nations to these trading communities. It reveals a complex network of interactions between the different African nations.

**Table 2.** Affiliations of African nations to the different trading blocks. See text for abbreviations. Blocks not addressing food issues were excluded.


Regardless of the official status at AU/AEC, these trade blocks have the goal to improve the trade among the member states, creating free trading zones. The trade also includes foods, and just like many European countries, African countries face the problem of trading foodstuffs with different quality standards. Another of the challenges these blocs have is the fact that many African countries belong to the more than one trading block, and the activity of these blocks varies. Some of these blocks have issued common trade rules that can be read in the internet, and some do not.

Besides international rules, national food law and other regulations also a play a very important role, particularly for foodstuffs produced and consumed inside the corresponding countries. The extent of this legislation varies strongly among them.

The aim of this contribution is to outline the current legal situation regarding edible insects in all African countries.

#### **2. Material and Methods**

For this research, all African countries were included (Table 2). Not entering a political dispute, states not recognized by the United Nations (typically "break-away states") were included if five or more UN nations recognized them as independent. In this way, Galmudug, Khaatumo, Puntland, Republic of Azania, and the Republic of Somaliland were not considered in this survey, while the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was. However, no data for the latter could be encountered, so no further mention of this country would be made.

Initially, an approach similar that made for the publication regarding the legal status in Europe [7,10] was intended, i.e., contacting the competent authorities (Table 3) personally by telephone and/or mail. However, the degree of response varied strongly among countries, with the best replies from the most French-speaking and Arabic-speaking countries. Others did not respond (even after contacting the corresponding embassies in Europe), even after several attempts, and so their homepages were searched for corresponding regulations. As this was not successful in some of them, the FAOLEX page (http://www.fao.org/faolex/country-profiles/en/) was consulted, trusting in having the most complete and updated database for FAO-related legislations. Eventually, all nations were checked by this mean. In some cases, additional information was found in secondary sources, e.g., Droit-Afrique.com, but there is a possible bias because these regulations may not be reflecting the actual situation of the given country. Data was gathered between the fall of 2018 and that of 2019.


**Table 3.** List of African countries and authorities that provided information on the legal status of edible insects including the amount of edible species per countries according to Jongema [11]; besides these country-specific data, 4 species were recorded for Northern, 91 for central, 2 for Western, 9 for Eastern, and 20 for Southern Africa.


**Table 3.** *Cont.*


**Table 3.** *Cont.*

\* REIS = recorded edible insect species, \*\* due to its independence in 2011, some species recorded earlier for Sudan may also occur in South Sudan.

Resources considered in this paper were publications from the AU and other trade blocks detailed in Table 2 and regulations that have been in force. It largely omits national policy papers due to space reasons and because policies may be implemented late, in a changed version, or even be abandoned, not meeting this contribution's title. Bilateral agreements among African states or between African and non-African states (which are basically trade agreements) were also excluded in this analysis, as they are of minor concern for the African citizens.

The use of insects other than food was also not considered here.

Regarding which insect species are edible or not, the list of Jongema [11] was taken as reference. Within the text, law references are marked in italics (sometimes abbreviated) and presented before the ordinary reference list as an Appendix A. Although written differently in the various documents, the abbreviations for "number" were unified according to the corresponding typing conventions,

i.e., "№" (English), "no" (French and Portuguese), and "n.o" (Spanish). Regarding capitalization, the original version of the acts was retained.
