A digital fix for an analogue problem
The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) launched its Seed Information System, known as COMSIS, in Lusaka on 6 August 2026, alongside a new Seed Labelling and Certification System. The launch event was organised by the Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (ACTESA), a COMESA agency, and brought together government officials and seed-sector representatives from across the bloc’s member states.
Dr John Mukuka, acting director of COMESA’s Industry and Agriculture Department, told the launch that the region needs modern systems for transparency and informed decision-making, not just harmonised policies on paper. He described COMSIS as “more than a digital platform,” calling it “a regional public good” intended to serve farmers, regulators and seed companies alike rather than any single national interest.
The problem COMSIS is meant to solve
John Mulongoti, Zambia’s Permanent Secretary for Technical Services at the Ministry of Agriculture, said fragmented markets, conflicting national seed regulations, and limited access to reliable information have long kept many of the region’s farmers from accessing certified, high-quality seed. “As member states, we believe that these efforts are critical,” he said of the harmonisation push.
The problem is not new. COMESA’s technical agencies have worked for years on seed-trade harmonisation, including a regional dialogue on seed-trade harmonisation held separately in Lusaka around the same period, and an earlier regional seed-statistics effort that identified the same core issue: a lack of real-time, comparable data on seed stocks, movement and quality across borders, which delays decisions and raises costs for seed companies trying to sell into more than one COMESA market.
Why this matters for food security
Regional seed-trade harmonisation is often framed as a technical, back-office issue, but its effects are felt directly by farmers. A seed variety certified and available in one COMESA country can be held up at a neighbouring border by a mismatched certification standard or an absent data-sharing agreement, even when the seed itself would perform well in both markets. COMESA argues that improving seed trade, by removing exactly those frictions, can unlock regional food security by letting proven varieties move more freely to where they are needed, rather than every member state having to separately develop, test and certify its own supply.
A launch that lands amid other regional seed-sector shifts
COMSIS arrives in the same period as other notable moves in the region’s seed sector. Zambia’s oldest seed company, ZAMSEED, appointed its first woman managing director earlier in the year, while Angola inaugurated a new 35,000-tonne seed processing plant in Huíla province in the same week as the COMSIS launch, part of a broader push to reduce the country’s reliance on imported seed. Taken together, the moves suggest a regional seed sector under simultaneous pressure to modernise its data systems, its processing capacity and its institutional leadership.
What happens next
COMSIS’s success will depend on adoption: a shared data platform only improves seed trade if member states and private seed companies actually populate and use it consistently, rather than maintaining parallel national systems alongside it. COMESA has not published a timeline for full rollout across all member states, but the Lusaka launch, paired with the new certification and labelling system, marks the first time the bloc has moved from policy harmonisation discussions to an operating digital platform.
Related: Zambia’s ZAMSEED and Angola’s new seed processing plant are both navigating the same regional push toward more resilient, better-integrated seed systems that COMSIS is designed to support.
