Hub IT Specialist Edward Ichung’wa participated in the East African Phytosanitary Information Committee (EAPIC) Meeting in Arusha, 10 - 12 October where he presented some of the regional IT projects that the Hub is involved in, explaining how each country's pest information system would contribute to a Community Based System (CBS) as a pest information resource and alert system for risk analysis and eventually in the sharing of Phytosanitary eCertificates.

The meeting brought together biologists and entomologists from Kenya (KEPHIS and Kenya Agricultural Research Institute - KARI), Uganda (Min. of Agriculture), Tanzania (Tanzania Pest Research Institute and Min. of Agriculture), Zambia (Agricultural Research Institute). Others present were Lloyd Garcia (USDA Agricultural Advisor, USAID Kampala) and Esther Muchiri (ICT Programs - Regional Economic Growth & Integration, USAID East Africa)

USAID sponsored Drs. Ron Stinner and Karl Suiter, of the NSF Center for Integrated Pest Management - NC State University and Dr. Woody Bailey (USDA APHIS) introduced the idea of a country-specific I.T. system for the management of plant pest information and demonstrated systems used in the U.S. They then provided an implementation plan where they would collect plant pest lists from each country by December 15th 2006 and provide a complete copy of a web-based plant pest information management system (designed by Ron and Karl) to each country by January 15 2007 with future plans to meet in April 2007 to start discussions on a regional plant pest information sharing system.

The meeting had direct benefits to each country's phytosanitary organizations. The NSF Center for Integrated Pest Management - NC State University donated two servers to Uganda and Tanzania which will