This first training session comes in response to the needs expressed during the SIQOI Steering Committee in 2015. The focal points of the Competence Center in the Indian Ocean area expressed a number of needs in terms of trainings, awareness raising and support of supervisors and project leaders with regard to the quality and valorization of agricultural and agri-food products. 

For this first workshop,IQUAE brought together on two days in Antananarivo 18 Malagasy economic operators and structures accompanying these operators having for project to valorize their products (agricultural or agribusiness) through a quality approach related, or not, to the origin.

During these two days, the objectives were to :
- Acquire concrete knowledge and skills on the implementation of an SIQO (Sign of Identification of Quality and Origin) ;
- Know the different approaches to enhance the quality and origin of agricultural and agri-food products in the local context ;
- Understand the strengths and constraints of each sign of quality ;
- Identify the most appropriate valuation pathway for its product based on its characteristics and targeted market ;
- Evaluate the impacts of the SIQO on the product and its valuation ;
- Be able to set up and manage the Defence and Management Organisation (DMO) of quality policy, which ensures cohesion among the sector’s players. 

Discussions and group exercises allowed the participants to face the necessary prerequisites for the implementation of valorisation procedures.

A follow-up to be planned ?

At the end of the training, the participants expressed new expectations for promoting Quality and Origin of agricultural and agri-food products, in particular to :
- Foster the networking of economic operators ;
- Carry out workshops with smaller working groups having a common project or individual work of accompaniment ;
- Carry out workshops in different targeted areas of Madagascar, so that a maximum of operators are concerned and we can study the field ;
- How to push towards Geographical Indications (GI) in Madagascar ?
 
A similar training was also organized in Rodrigues on 7 and 8 November 2017.

Both workshops were financed by the European Union and Region Reunion in the framework of Interreg-V Qualinnov I.