SADC diversity crucial for regional progress

By Editor

Editorial Cartoon

Sothern African Development Community (SADC) heads of state and government concluded their 34th Summit at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe this week.

 

Themed “SADC strategy for Economic Transformation: Leveraging the Region’s Diverse Resources for Sustainable Economic and Social Development through Benefaction and Value Addition” the meeting looked styled in a different way compared to many in the past.

 

This time around, the regional leaders together with 700 other delegates from the businesses, made a step forward in the second liberation of southern Africans by coming up with bold decisions on building the sub region’s economies which for generations have depended on aid handouts, imported finished goods and exported jobs.

 

To this, they made it clear, that member states should look into ways of ensuring that they are no longer act as distributors of finished products from overseas but instead add value to their products so they could secure foreign markets.

 

With an area of 9,882,959 sq kms, population of 233,944,179, GDP of USD737, 335m, SADC is the third largest regional entity on the continent after Comesa with an area of 12,873,957 and a population of 406,102,471. 

This is followed by Ecowas with an area of 5,112,903 and population of 300,000,000.

 

However, despite the economic potential of SADC, it is sad to learn that most of its members still languish in poverty, fail even to feed their people or take their children to school.

 

While the region’s countries have abundant resources which go untapped, they have always relied on imported manufactured goods, which, at times, act so as to ruin their economies. Worse, these countries have not managed to industrialise. 

 

The SADC summit deserves kudos for one thing. At least the leaders have realised that given the contemporary, they cannot lead their nations the way they do and manage to achieve Africa’s second liberation—economic liberation without changing strategies.

 

Given the humble political origins of SADC way back in the 1960s, when the leaders of majority-ruled countries and national liberation movements coordinated their political, diplomatic and military struggles to bring an end to colonial and white-minority rule in southern Africa, this realisation is a big step forward. 

 

The economies of these countries now need to be turned around and be made to exploit the inherited resources of the land for the development of the people.

 

But changing these economies from importers of finished products to exporters of raw materials is one thing. The other, which is equally important, is how to exploit the disparities within the regional countries for the sake of transforming the very economies of the area.

 

South Africa, for example, is relatively more advanced than the other member states. That being the case, there is nothing wrong in having other SADC countries exploiting the disparity underlining this reality for their development and the entire region.

 

All said, we advise the leaders to implement the reached resolutions to the letter and spirit.

 

In that way the “SADC Strategy for Economic Transformation: Leveraging the Region’s Diverse Resources for Sustainable Economic and Social Development through Benefaction and Value Addition,” would be achieved.