By Munetsi Madakufamba – SANF 04 no 18
ARUSHA, 9 March 2004 – Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, the current chairperson of the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC), is expected to launch the organisation’s new 15-year blueprint for regional development during the official opening of the Council of Ministers meeting on 12 March.
The Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP), seen as the compass that provides strategic direction for SADC programmes and activities over the next one-and-half decades, was approved by heads of state and government at the Summit in Dar es Salaam in August last year. RISDP’s main purpose is to facilitate regional integration based on time-bound targets.
Most of the targets are in line with international goals and objectives, notably the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
SADC, for instance, is targeting to achieve an economic growth rate of at least seven percent if it is to halve, by 2015, the number of people living in poverty.
This overarching target can only be met if member states achieve single digit inflation figures by 2008, and investment rates of 25-30 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2015.
With respect to combating HIV and AIDS, SADC is targeting that by 2010, at least 95 percent of young men and women aged between 15 and 24 have access to information, education including peer education and youth specific HIV education. The region also aims to halve the proportion of infants infected with HIV over the same period.
The situation on the ground, however, reveals the many challenges the region has to overcome if these targets are to be met. Speaking to the media in Arusha on 8 March, SADC Executive Secretary, Prega Ramsamy, said the region achieved an average economic growth rate of 3.2 percent in 2002, a marginal increase from the previous year.
Estimates for 2003 indicate that the growth rate will be around the three percent mark. Only Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique and the United Republic of Tanzania had growth rates of between 5.5 percent and 7 percent. At the current regional average, said Ramsamy, SADC is actually experiencing negative growth in per capita income, that is, more and more people are sliding into poverty.
Nonetheless, most countries are doing extremely well with their budget policies. Estimates for 2003 show that 10 member states contained inflation to below 10 percent. These are Botswana (9 percent), Democratic Republic of Congo (9.1), Lesotho (7.2), Malawi (5), Mauritius (5), Namibia (9.5), Seychelles (7), South Africa (5.8), Swaziland (7.4) and United Republic of Tanzania (4.4). Angola, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe had figures above 10 percent.
The RISDP offers a policy framework that individual member states must adhere to if regional targets are to be met. The document was completed after consultations with stakeholder groups in member states and SADC’s international cooperating partners.
The SADC Council, which is made up of mostly ministers of foreign affairs, is the political body that provides policy direction and oversees implementation of the RISDP. Operationalisation, management and coordination is the responsibility of the SADC Secretariat.
In Arusha, the SADC Council will also review preparations for the forthcoming SADC Special Summit on Food Security to be held in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, on 14 May.
The summit is to be held on the backdrop of recurrent food shortages in the region. Last year, six SADC countries were hit by food shortages due to a number of factors including bad weather.
The summit objectives are:
- to consider short, medium and long term strategies to ensure food security in the region;
- taking into consideration the experience of last year’s food crisis, review the issue of emergency preparedness as well as the over-dependency on rain-fed agriculture, which has among other things, greatly contributed to food insecurity in the region; and
- review a regional strategy to transform the region’s agricultural-dependent economies to agro-led industrialisation, which ensures food access and improved incomes for both rural and urban communities.
In preparation for the summit, SADC ministers of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources met in Dar es Salaam last month. They agreed on an action plan that will be considered by the upcoming summit. The standing committee of officials and the technical advisory committee of council, which meet on 10-12 March, precede the Arusha Council of Ministers meeting. Apart from the RISDP and the forthcoming special summit on food security, the Council agenda also includes housekeeping issues such as approval of the 2004 budget for SADC institutions as well as the review of a report on restructuring. [SARDC]
