This AUDA-NEPAD Food Safety] Community of Practice community charter documents information required by decision-makers to approve and support the activities necessary for a successful launch, cultivation, and sustainability of the food safety Community of Practice. The community charter includes the needs, scope, justification, and resource commitments. The intended audience of the AUDA-NEPAD Food Safety Community of Practice community charter is to achieve a recurring benefit of enhanced safety and quality of food, compliance with appropriate standards and access to international, continental and intraregional trade.

A Community of Practice (CoP) represents a group of professionals, informally bound to one another through exposure to a common class of problems and the common pursuit of solutions.  Communities of Practice are a way of developing social capital, nurturing new knowledge, stimulating innovation, and sharing knowledge.  Communities of practice knit people together with peers and their outputs can include leading practices, guidelines, knowledge repositories, technical problem and solution discussions, working papers, and strategies.