Consultancy to identify constraints to deepening regional economic integration in the SADC

The SADC was formed in Zambia in 1980. The regional grouping’s main aim was the coordination of development projects in order to lessen economic dependence on the then apartheid South Africa. In 1998, the Coordination Conference became a Development Community. In march 2001, they approved a report on the “Restructuring of SADC’s Institutions”. The report articulated a more explicit Common Agenda that took account of a number of principles, including development orientation, subsidiarity, market integration and development, facilitation and promotion of trade and investment, and variable geometry. To underpin the restructuring of the SADC Secretariat and the other SADC institutions, and provide a clear orientation for regional integration policies over the medium to long-term, the 2001 Windhoek Extra-ordinary Summit also directed that the Secretariat prepares a regional strategic development plan: providing a framework for SADC policies and programmes over the long term. The overarching goals and timelines of the Regional Strategic Indicative Development Plan were: Free Trade Area (2008), Customs Union (2010), Common Market (2015), Monetary Union (2016), Single Currency and Economic Union (2018). For implementing the strategic plan, the selected priority intervention areas and strategies were: promoting trade and economic liberalisation; regional co-operation in order to ensure the availability of a sufficient, integrated, efficient and cost-effective economic infrastructure; co-operation in sustainable food security ; decreasing the number of HIV and AIDS infected; facilitating the achievement of substantive equality between women and men in the SADC region through mainstreaming gender at region and national levels; developing and strengthening national systems of innovation in order to provide scientific and technological solutions to/for sustainable socio-economic development, regional integration and poverty eradication; The global objective of the assignment was the realization of the SADC region’s Common Agenda of promoting sustainable and equitable growth and socio-economic development, in order to enhance the standard and quality of life of the people of Southern Africa. The overall objective was to facilitate a review of the integration agenda and provide the SADC Secretariat and the SADC Member States with strategic options for deepening regional economic integration, taking into account the legal, social and economic situation in each Member State.


Project Details
Country SADC
Start date 2010.09.01
End date 2011.06.30
Client EC Delegation
Sector REGIONAL POLICIES
Sub-sector Regional integration
Ref. ADE A423-079