November 2014
Regional Gender Knowledge Partners Strategy Review 27 November
“From Promises to Delivery”
SARDC gender partners from throughout southern Africa and head of SADC Gender Unit will meet to review strategy and discuss Plan of Action for 2015-2018. Meeting at SARDC in Harare, hosted by SARDC’s Beyond Inequalities Gender Institute.
Gender Reference Group met on 26 November to prepare and focus the meeting. These initiatives resulted from the Fourth World Women Conference in Beijing in 1995 and so it is appropriate that our review meeting is taking place in the context of Beijing +20, and the African Union declaration of 2015 as the “Year of Women’s Empowerment and Development towards Africa’s Agenda 2063”. This strategy review meeting with SADC and national knowledge partners is designed to envision our gender work for the next planning period in the context of regional issues such as water and river basin development, human trafficking, industrialization, and education, among others. As Zimbabwe is the current SADC chair and will next year become chair of the African Union, we have decided to hold this strategic review meeting here in Harare, at our SARDC facilities. The context for this discussion is “From Promises to Delivery”.
Egline Tauya, the head of SARDC’s I Musokotwane Environment Resource Centre for Southern Africa (IMERCSA),is attending a workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa on 18 November to discuss the SADC Member States Common Position on climate change negotiations. The meeting will discuss various activities to enhance the SADC common position in advance of the UN Framework for Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 20) in Lima, Peru and COP 21 in Paris, France next year. This workshop of non-state actors follows a workshop in September in Namibia where Member States deliberated on the SADC Common Position on Climate Change.
Senior Researcher/Writer, Kizito Sikuka, from SARDC’s Regional Economic Development Institute (REDI, will attend the International Conference on Solar Energy Technology in Development Cooperation to be held from 6-7 November
in Frankfurt, Germany. The conference is organized by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and will share knowledge and experiences on how to boost the uptake of solar energy products and technologies. SARDC is a key stakeholder in the energy sector, and REDI is running a regional knowledge programme on Communicating Energy in Southern Africa with support from ADA. SARDC provides knowledge support to the SADC Energy Thematic Group, including a news bulletin and a SADC Energy Portal.
October 2014
SARDC Founding Director, Phyllis Johnson, visited Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from 23-28 October, regarding a commemorative publication about SARDC’s Founding Patron, Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere. She met with the former President, H.E. Benjamin W. Mkapa; the Mozambique Ambassador, H.E. VM Veloso; and Walter Bgoya, who is Chairperson of Mkuki na Nyota, the publishers of Hashim Mbita’s SADC History Project. She also met with Mary Rusimbi, a SARDC Board Member, who is Executive Director of the new Women Fund Tanzania (WFT) and Chairperson of the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP).
Global Environment Outlook 6 Intergovernmental and Multi‐stakeholder Consultation 21‐23 October 2014, Berlin, Germany. UNEP’s Division of Early Warning and Assessment (UNEP/DEWA) is organizing the above consultation. The aim of the global consultation is to agree on the objectives, scope and processes for GEO-6, which will culminate in the production of the GEO-6 assessment report and a Summary for Policy Makers. The GEO assessment is a core UNEP activity aimed at keeping the global environment under review. To date, five assessments have been published on various time scales (1997, 1999, 2002 and 2007 and 2012). SARDC is a collaboration centre of UNEP for southern Africa and contributes to the environmental assessment including the Africa Environment Outlook (AEO) SARDC IMERCSA has contributed to the previous AEO and GEO reports. Egline attending
SARDC Founding Director, Phyllis Johnson, attended a seminar on China-Africa Peace and Security Cooperation on 16 October in Nairobi, Kenya, hosted by the Chinese embassy and the Inter Region Economic Network (IREN). She presented a paper titled “Peace and Security Cooperation Within Africa, the opportunities for closer partnership with China through sub-regional organizations: A case study from the Southern African Development Community (SADC)”. She attended on behalf of SARDC’s new Institute on China Africa Studies in Southern Africa (ICASSA), and other participants included senior scholars from leading think tanks and universities in Africa and China. The keynote speaker was H.E. Ambassador Zhong Jianhua, Special Representative on African Affairs for the Chinese Government. The African Union Commissioner for Peace and Security was represented by H.E. Ambassador Francisco Madeira from Mozambique, who is Director of the African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism, based in Algiers, Algeria, and Special Representative of the AU Chairperson for Counter-terrorism Cooperation.
SADC 6th River Basin Organisation workshop 15-17 October Johannesburg, South Africa. The theme for this year’s workshop is “Strengthening Regional Cooperation and Resilience in water Related Disasters”. This initiative is aimed at enhancing the coordination amongst the relevant institutions as well as optimizing the readiness of the river basin organisations for floods and other climate change impacts.
LIMCOM, ORASECOM, OKACOM, ZAMCOM, CICOS and other River Basins in SADC and beyond will be presenting on their on-going activities, their activities with regards to Flood Risk Management (FRM) and Drought Risk Management (DRM) as well as the challenges faced. The workshop will also provide input to the next phase of the SADC Water Programme (RSAP IV). The workshop is organised by SADC Water Division in collaboration with GWP SA. SARDC work closely with the river basin. Egline attending
September 2014
SARDC Senior Research-Writer, Kizito Sikuka, will attend the International Conference on African Agriculture, Rural Development and Sino-Africa Cooperation (CAARDSAC 2014) in Nanjing, China from 21-28 September. CAARDSAC 2014 coincides with the 50th Anniversary of the Centre of African Studies of Nanjing University (CASNJU), and aims to create a platform for better communication and scholarly exchange among Chinese and African researchers. CASNJU was established in 1964 and has played an important role in promoting African studies in China. K Sikuka, from SARDC’s Regional Economic Development Institute, was selected to attend on the basis of his proposal to present a paper on “The African Green Revolution: Drawing Lessons from the Chinese Experience”.
The SADC Energy Thematic Group meets in Gaborone, Botswana, 15-16 September, attended by representatives of SADC and International Cooperating Partners. The SARDC Executive Director, Munetsi Madakufamba will attend with Joseph Ngwawi, Head of SARDC’s Regional Economic Development Institute. SARDC provides knowledge support to the Energy Thematic Group, including production of a news bulletin and a portal on ETG activities.
Phyllis Johnson, the SARDC Founding Director responsible for special projects, is the guest of honour at a meeting of women ambassadors hosted by the Ambassador of Namibia to Zimbabwe, H.E. Balbina Daes Pienaar, on 4 September. She will discuss knowledge support and access, notably through SARDC as a regional knowledge resource, Zimbabwe as current chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and expectations for the coming year.
The Technical Adviser to the SADC Energy Division, Wolfgang Moser, will visit SARDC on 3/4 September to discuss SARDC implementation of the project on Communicating Energy in Southern Africa, which is supported by the Austrian Development Agency. The project includes the publication of an Energy Monitor and an Energy Investment Year Book, as well as activities to support the SADC Energy Thematic Group, chaired by Austria.
China-Africa. Danai Majaha, Assistant Researcher with the Regional Economic Development Institute (REDI), is in Beijing, China attending a seminar on “Employment Promotion and Economic Development for African English-Speaking Countries” that runs from 4-24 September. The seminar is organised by the Academy for International Business Officials, which is the Training Centre of the Ministry of Commerce.
Workshop for SADC negotiators 2-4 September 2014 in Swakopmund, Namibia in preparation for the next round of negotiations of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Egline Tauya, the head of SARDC’s I Musokotwane Environment Resource Centre for Southern Africa (IMERCSA) is attending. One of the workshop objectives is to draft a SADC position for consideration by SADC Ministers who will brief their Heads of State in preparation for the UN Climate Summit in New York on 23 September 2014. Another objective is to draft a SADC position paper on Climate Change in preparation for the next Conference of the Parties (COP 20) in Lima, Peru; to set out a clear roadmap of activities to strengthen the adoption of the SADC position in the post-2015 global agreement on climate change; and, to strengthen the negotiating capacity of Member States.
August 2014
34th SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government, hosted by Zimbabwe at Victoria Falls, 17-18 August. SARDC Executive Director, Munetsi Madakufamba, is attending, with two other senior staff providing daily coverage of the event and related issues. Joseph Ngwawi, Head of SARDC’s Regional Economic Development Institute (REDI) and Senior Research-Writer, Kizito Sikuka. SARDC produced the main Summit book/brochure for SADC, and special issues of Southern Africa Today (SADC Today) for June and August 2014.
SARDC Finance and Administration Manager, Dambudzo Jambwa, is in Shanghai, China attending a Seminar on Fiscal Science Management for Development Countries from 24 July to 13 August.
The new Executive Secretary of the Zambezi Watercourse Commission (ZAMCOM), Dr Z Phiri, visited SARDC on 8 August, accompanied by the Senior Advisor, John Metzger. They met with the SARDC Executive Director, Munetsi Madakufamba, and Egline Tauya, head of SARDC’s I Musokotwane Environment Resource Centre for Southern Africa (IMERCSA) and others, for familiarization with current joint activities with ZAMCOM. SARDC IMERCSA is a knowledge partner of ZAMCOM, and produces the periodical The Zambezi. IMERCSA and ZAMCOM are also working on the Zambezi Environment Outlook, a full-length report to be published in 2015. This updates the State of Environment Zambezi Basin 2000, which was the first environmental assessment of a single ecosystem in the SADC region.
