OSHAfrica, structured with a Regional Administrative Office in Lagos, Nigeria, and with sub-regional leadership offices across all African sub-regions, launched the OSHAfrica web platform with the aim of bringing activities closer to each OSHAfrican.
Occupational Safety and Health Africa Foundation with the trademark OSHAfrica is a Pan-African Occupational Safety and Health organisation legally registered in 2017 with the principal aim of bringing together Occupational Safety and Health professionals across Africa, creating an atmosphere for collaborative work, sharing of knowledge and OSH data across different countries and sub-regions of Africa. One of the founders (from Nigeria) is a member of the ENETOSH network. Of course, Education and Training in OSH across Africa is one of the important topics of OSHAfrica.

The OSHAfrica idea was conceptualised in ICOH Conference 2015 held in Seoul, South Korea. At a meeting during the conference, 23 African representatives agreed to create a unified Pan African OSH body. They created a WhatsApp Group called OSHAfrica which grew to 120 members discussing Occupational Safety and Health in Africa. The next step on this way is the new OSHAfrica web platform.
OSHAfrica is aspired to be the African information agency on Occupational Safety and Health.
The official launch of the project took place on 2 May at the 2018 ICO Congress in Dublin.

In January 2018, the International Labour Office published a Special Issue of its OSH Newsletter, with the main topic networking.
This Special Issue is based on the ILO global survey on OSH knowledge agencies, institutions and organizations (AIO) which was undertaken in 2016 to constitute, for the first time, a comprehensive global knowledge base of their scope of work and international networking practices.
The Special Issue of the OSH Newsletter was produced and published through the collaborative effort of the ILO, the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH), and the Department of Public Health/Occupational Health of Helsinki University (HU), and financially supported by the ILO (Grant from the Republic of Korea) and ICOH.
Please click here to access the ILO website and download the newsletter

Once more, Diana Policarpo presented the Mind Safety - Safety Matters! project, coordinated by the Authority for Working Conditions (ACT), Portugal, at the INTERNATIONAL OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY CONGRESS (IOHSC2017), invited by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Occupational Health and Safety Department, 6 – 7 December 2017” in Istanbul, Turkey.
This communication focuses on MS-SM project which integrates strategic partnerships to establish a collaborative and networked practice to study and propose innovative practices and materials for the teaching of occupational health and safety concepts, thus fostering a risk perception in the young people of school age and contributing to the creation of a safety culture.
The absence of workplace accidents occurs in companies where safety is a core nuclear value, meaning a value that translates into consistency between decisions, policies, resource distribution and organizational practices, where productivity never threatens safety. Therefore, with this project we intend to awaken our conscience and set out a path for the implementation of a safety culture that is expected, in the medium and long term, to be reflected in the reduction of occupational accidents and diseases in Europe and particularly in Portugal.
In conclusion, this conference provided the participants with a successful exchange of experiences and good practices in various contexts, whether professional or scholar.

In Singapore, at the XXI World Congress on Safety and Health at Work, Matthew Holder of the British Safety Council had the opportunity to do an interview with Dr Ulrike Bollmann, founder and coordinator of the ENETOSH network.
The interview was published in the Safety Management Magazine.
Please find out more about the magazine here and read the interview here.