Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) standards are designed to ensure safe and healthy food systems while facilitating cross-border trade. However, compliance-related challenges often turn these standards into barriers to trade, leading to significant health risks and productivity losses. Unsafe food can cause illness and even lead to death, preventing people from working and thriving. According to a World Bank study, low- and middle-income countries lose approximately US$95 billion in productivity each year as a result of unsafe food (Jaffee et al. 2019). It also undermines food and nutritional security, places a heavy burden on the food economy and public health systems, and disrupts international trade.

The Kampala CAADP Declaration underscores the urgent need to enhance SPS standards and implement One Health protocols to safeguard food safety and protect human, animal, plant, and environmental health (AUC and AUDA-NEPAD 2025). In line with this vision, the CAADP Strategy and Action Plan (2026-2035) outlines six interventions to strengthen food safety and SPS measures across Africa, including formulating and enforcing comprehensive food safety laws and regulations at the national, sub-regional, and regional levels.

For countries to effectively domesticate and adapt these interventions, it is essential to ground implementation efforts in solid evidence. Understanding the underlying drivers, constraints, and institutional contexts that shape SPS compliance is critical to designing policies that are both feasible and sustainable.

This policy brief focuses on two key challenges that continue to undermine SPS compliance and enforcement in Africa: 1) Limited awareness among value chain actors of existing standards and their benefits; and 2) The high cost of compliance, which disproportionately affects producers and private operators.

We argue that the success of SPS enforcement largely hinges on the awareness levels and compliance costs faced by private enterprises, who ultimately make operational decisions about whether to adhere to—or neglect—these standards. Therefore, gaining a clearer understanding of the perceptions, knowledge, and financial burdens borne by these actors is vital. Such insights will inform the design of targeted investments and policy interventions that enhance compliance, promote safe and competitive agrifood systems, and facilitate intra-African and international agricultural trade.