Background
This session aims to highlight the necessary interplay between various stakeholders involved in policy and practice to enable practical solutions to plastic pollution challenges in West Africa. Recent developments in the region involve Ivory Coast’s initiative for a regional recycling hub in West Africa involving C4+ countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Cote D’Ivoire) presented in June 2025 at the WTO Dialogue on Plastics. Similarly, the Government of Ghana will share how it is working on plastic control policies and standards that facilitate higher material recovery and recycling rates. The World Economic Forum will discuss how their National Plastics Action Plans (NPAP) contribute to experience sharing and cohesive action across West Africa and beyond. The panel will then zoom into practical cases, including the challenge of plastic pollution in Agriculture, with insights from the FreshPPact project in Ghana which is testing innovative ways to substitute agricultural mulch films and conventional packaging; as well as views from an entrepreneur from GIVO-Nigeria deploying modular, resilient, renewables-powered and data-enabled community recycling stations.
Programme
Opening remarks: Ms. Luz Maria de la Mora, Director, Division of International Trade and Commodities, UNCTAD (tbc)
Moderator: Mr. Henrique Pacini, UNCTAD SMEP Programme Lead
Panelists:
- Ms. Lydia Essuah, Director, Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (PPME), Ministry of Environment, Science, and Technology (MEST) Ghana (tbc)
- Mr. Koffi Guillaume Seka, Commercial Counsellor, Côte d'Ivoire (tbc)
- Mr. Christian Kaufholz, GPAP, World Economic Forum (tbc)
- Mr. Victor Boyle-Komolafe, GIVO-Africa
- Dr. Ebenezer Laryea, FRESHPPACT Project Lead, Aston University
Q&A
Luz Maria de la Mora is the Director of UNCTAD's Division on International Trade and Commodities. As a former Vice-Minister for International Trade and decades of government and private sector positions, Ms. de la Mora developed a career in international trade policy, negotiation, operations, and trade promotion.
During her tenure as Vice-Minister for International Trade of Mexico from 2018 to 2022, Ms. de la Mora led Mexico's trade and investment policy, overseeing fourteen free trade agreements with 51 countries. To bolster Mexico's development, she steered discussions in the World Trade Organization, the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and Pacific Alliance, among others. She also coordinated policy dialogues and handled private sector consultations.
Ms. de la Mora holds a PhD in Political Science from Yale University, USA, a Master's degree in International Affairs from Carleton University, Canada, and a Bachelor's degree in International Relations from El Colegio de México, Mexico.
She is fluent in English and Spanish, and proficient in French.
Henrique Pacini is an economist at the United Nations in Geneva, where he works on trade and circular economy issues. He has a degree in economics from the University of São Paulo, a Masters in European Studies from Hochschule Bremen, Germany, and a Ph.D in Energy Technology from KTH, Sweden.
He recently completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University, where he examined the commercial dynamics of secondary/scrap materials in world trade, and co-chaired Harvard’s first Circular Economy Symposium. Dr. Pacini published over 60 articles on environment, energy, trade and development issues.
