Sadc must integrate economies President Mugabe
President Mugabe

President Mugabe

Opinion Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
SADC heads of state will be meeting in Zimbabwe tomorrow and the day after and President Mugabe will take over the chairmanship of that regional grouping.A major issue that is most likely to concern Sadc at the projected meeting is regional economic integration.  That matter has been on the table of many Sadc conferences since the organisation’s inception as Sadc in the 1980s. The subject was given much impetus by the 1991 Abuja Treaty establishing the Pan-African Economic Community (PAEC).

The PAEC followed the 1980 Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) whose main objective was to achieve fundamental continental socio-economic restructuring.

That did not meet with much success as many African nations were reluctant to abolish high trade tariffs inherited largely from the micro-nation traditions whose origins are in the 1884-85 Berlin Conference that partitioned the African continent among a number of European imperial nations.

Another reason for the failure of both the LPA and the PAEC was the extremely poor economic performance of the African  continent which resulted in an average annual growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP) of a mere 0,4 percent in the 1980-87 period, and the per capita income declining by about 2,9 percent annually.

The continent’s poor economic performance continued well into the 1990s. In 1992, Africa’s GDP growth was only 1,9 percent whereas its average annual population growth was 3,1 percent.

That led to a fall in the per capita income that had been achieved a few years earlier.

Several factors that caused that economic decline included a decrease in the prices of primary commodities comprising the continent’s exports, an increase of the debts of many African nations to such international financial institutions as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Arab Development Bank and others.

External factors such as recession, poorly thought out domestic policy concerning investment, and weak regional economic performance were also responsible for the continent’s adverse GDP growth.

To worsen that situation, the continent was affected most negatively by extraneous variables such as drought.

Sadc states experienced some of these factors involving low mineral prices abroad, hostile or very poor weather conditions resulting in dangerously low agricultural yields that necessitated food imports for most African nations.

To be able to import the required foodstuffs, those nations had to borrow the required money since their mineral exports were not fetching enough abroad because of worldwide recession.

For Sadc countries to prosper, they have to increase the level of their industrial production and simultaneously integrate their economies.

To achieve this, there has to be much investment in various production infrastructures. While the removal of trade tariff barriers and even non-tariff barriers is very important, much more important is obviously the increase in the production of goods and services in the region.

If the private sector is being given the vital respect and security as is the case in the European countries, it should be clearly articulated in both constitutional and administrative terms.

In that case the role of the state would be that of a facilitator and not a competitor, let alone that of an inhibitor.

The need to promote a uniform policy at the macro-economic level throughout the Sadc region is long overdue. That would and could stabilise the Sadc’s financial regime, resulting in a common exchange rate and a uniform approach to possible inflationary occurrences.

The last but not least is the need to rationalise the roles played by the various regional economic organisations such as the Southern Africa Customs Union, the Preferential Trade Area and of course, Sadc itself. Is it not advisable to have only one for the entire region?

An interesting part of Sadc that has not been given much attention is what role education can play to develop the region educationally.

There have been Sadc military exercises and political workshops, but not much is being said or done about educational exchange programmes.

It is a historical fact that people of the Sadc region are divided broadly into two linguistic groups: the Anglophone and the Lusophone groups.

Education can bridge that divide by teaching the Lusophone nations the English language, and the Anglophone the Portuguese tongue.

The languages can be made components of the primary and secondary school syllabi.

With some mutual agreement, teachers could be trained within at least a five-year-long programme and the project could be launched within six or so years.

That could in the long run make communication within Sadc much easier than it is in the current situation.

It does not help very much to communicate through an interpreter. That fact was known to the pioneer Christian missionaries as well as to the Arab slave traders. The latter created KiSwahili and the former learned the languages of the communities in which they founded churches.

It would be most helpful to Southern Africa if Sadc could identify particular projects and deal with them within a specific time frame.

Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a Bulawayo-based retired journalist. He can be contacted on 0734 328136 or via email [email protected]

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