Adopt new technologies to win war against illicit trade

Compliance with standards of products imported into the country and manufactured within is the mandate of several government agencies.

The agencies include the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) controlling sub-standards, Anti Counterfeit Authority (ACA) controlling counterfeits and Pharmacy and poisons Board (PPB) controlling medicines.

Others are Pest Control Product Board (PCPB) for pesticides, Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service for control of grains and pulses, Communication Authority (CAK) for communication gadgets among others.

As the agencies strategise to combat non-compliance to ensure safety and health of consumers, there is need to re-engineer our processes and adopt new technologies to effectively win the war against illicit trade. The strategies will also safeguard against unfair trade practices

Illicit goods include sub-standards of counterfeit and contraband goods smuggled into the country. With the usage of these products, the country suffers a huge commercial loss, not to mention safety concerns. There is also the danger of environmental degradation, affecting our efforts to contribute in climatic change policies.

Three key principles make up an efficient technological anti-counterfeiting and substandard strategy. These include the use of harmonised and standardised coding and identification system; the use of covert and overt features to authenticate products and guarantees as to the integrity of manufactures packaging throughout the whole supply chain.

The available technologies for combating substandard and counterfeit trade are categorised as optical, electronic, biological and chemical technologies.

Some of the anti-counterfeit technologies in use are in the optical field. This technology uses light and its many properties. Holograms are the most widely used.

A hologram is a recording of laser light that allows the recording of one and two- or three-dimension images on a flat surface as a microrelief diffraction pattern.

Using holograms as a security device has become successful due to various reasons. One of them is having social appeal, coupled with difficulty and high cost and investment to replicate them. Other technologies in use include optical thin films, retro-reflective material and scrambled images.

Electronic technologies in use encompass a variety of different options. The leading security technology in this category is magnetic stripe. This one is mainly used to protect credit and bank cards. These stripes can store a considerable amount of information in coded form in magnetisable particles, readable by a contact scanner.

Smart cards are another technology that is rapidly growing and is receiving rapid acceptance as anti-counterfeit devices. A smart card is a plastic card with a computer chip that allows to write into or read information from it with various degrees of security.

In some countries, credit cards and phone cards are good examples of "smart" 33 technology. The long-term development is to come up with a super-smart card that will contain a user interface for entering data on a keypad and a visual display.

Video recording and software industries have invested heavily in finding ways to defeat counterfeiters electronically.

They have developed a system of electronic encryption that encodes original video with a disturbance signal that confuses video recording devices during copying. This disturbance signal ensures that pirated videos are of poor quality and are not viewable.

Another electronic system involves the use of hardware keys to prevent software piracy. The key is an additional security device that attaches to the computer's serial ports or a printer and unlocks software products designed to work only with the key.

Other evolving electronic technologies are mobile-based. The consumer can verify the authenticity of a product by sending a verification code using his mobile phone to the manufacture's phone. The product comes with an attached scratch card.

Once the card is scratched, a one-time code is revealed and the customer sends the code as a text message to a toll-free number and receives a back message indicating whether the product is real or fake.

The breakthrough in biotechnology has increased the understanding of unique traits of biological proteins such as enzymes, DNA and antibodies.

Identifying certain chemical structures and their capacity to make specific reactions have made biotechnology an important field in combating substandard and counterfeit trade, more so in the pharmaceuticals and drug sectors.

The leading technology in this category is the development of monoclonal antibodies that recognises antigens or marker chemicals. The maker chemicals are added to products such as liquor and pharmaceutical in tiny concentrations. These are detected by kit with specific antibodies.

The advantage of this ant counterfeiting technology is that it is part of the product itself. Besides, no one can break the code since the makers' concentrations are too low to be detected through conventional methods. Also, the makers are masked with other chemicals.

Application of any of the above technologies depends on the cost of the product, the packaging and how easily customers can authenticate.