SANF 08 No 81
The curtain comes down on a historic year for southern Africa with the launch of the Free Trade Area and a watershed agreement to form a single market from Cape to Cairo.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) launched its Free Trade Area in August at a summit in South Africa. This marked the attainment of the first milestone towards the economic integration plan, which when fully implemented will see a Customs Union by 2010, a Common Market by 2012 and a Monetary Union by 2015.
Formed in 1980 by nine leaders as the Southern Africa Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), the organisation, whose membership has grown to 15 countries, has thus concluded yet another significant year in its history.
As the region moves closer to a Customs Union, the question of multiple memberships to other Regional Economic Communities (RECs) has become more and more relevant. This is because World Trade Organization (WTO) rules prevent countries from belonging to more than one Customs Union.
But that question will now be resolved if the agreement reached in October at a Tripartite Summit of SADC, the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the East African Community to merge their free trade areas into one grand market from Cape to Cairo is fully implemented.
The SADC Free Trade Area, and indeed the envisaged COMESA-EAC-SADC single market, are developments that have raised optimism for an economic boom that will require a stable and predictable energy supply, among many other infrastructure services.
These events take place against a backdrop of crippling energy shortages which became most evident in 2007. The Year 2008 was therefore significant in gauging SADC’s responsiveness to the current energy shortages which have threatened to derail economic growth and development at a time when the region is striving to reduce poverty.
The Southern African Power Pool (SAPP), a regional body tasked with facilitating electricity trade among the regionally interconnected national grids, gave a noteworthy mid-year status report to the SADC Summit in August saying the power supply-demand situation in the region remained unstable.
The report warned that the energy shortages were likely to continue into 2010 when most of the projects currently underway would have been completed.
As of February 2008, SADC’s combined electricity demand stood at 47,067MW against available capacity of 43,518MW.
However, the good news is that a significant amount of power, totalling about 1700MW, has been added to the regional grid, with the commissioning of a number of projects either as new ones or completed refurbishments.
SADC and SAPP have developed a roadmap which seeks to address current challenges including the shortfall which is expected to be overcome by 2010 if identified projects are implemented on schedule, while by 2013 the region is expected to enjoy adequate energy resources, including the desired 10 percent reserve margin.
Regarding social developments, the 2008 SADC Summit in South Africa will be remembered for the approval of the groundbreaking Protocol on Gender and Development by twelve member states after three years of negotiation.
Once ratified, the protocol will give legal weight to SADC’s quest for gender equity and equality.
The Year 2008 was also significant with the holding of the first ever SADC International Conference on Poverty and Development in Mauritius in April.
The conference, attended at the highest level by member states and selected European and Asian countries, made a diagnosis of the extent of poverty in the region, coming up with actionable recommendations on ways to tackle social and economic deprivation.
With global food and fuel prices, and most recently the financial turmoil affecting significant parts of the region in 2008, SADC leaders in Mauritius committed, among others, to “focus immediately on the current food challenges by increasing agricultural production”.
The same sentiments were echoed by regional leaders during the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September.
During the General Assembly, southern African leaders rallied on the need to review existing treaties governing international trade to allow African farmers to compete effectively with those from the North.
Experts have warned that climate change is having far reaching environmental impacts including heavy rainfall and droughts which are likely to become more frequent and severe in the future.
Nearly all future scenarios indicate that Africa is expected to be worst hit.
Some models predict up to a nine percent decrease in potential agricultural land by 2050 and reductions in yield of 18 percent and 10 percent for maize and other cereals respectively.
In June, African ministers of environment launched the Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, which shows a rapidly changing landscape, prominent of which is the disappearance of glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and the Ruwenzori Mountains on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda.
What has been underscored in 2008 is that climate change is real. It is a global issue with catastrophic consequences. It is an issue that southern Africa has to pay special attention to, especially given the severity of the dry spells that has worsened over the years.
Weather experts in southern Africa have forecast normal rainfall in major parts of the region for the 2008/2009 agricultural season.
Other sad developments on the social front worth of noting were the attacks by South Africans in poor neighbourhoods, unleashed on foreign nationals, most of whom were from southern Africa.
Mozambique was one of the countries that responded by declaring a state of emergency after six of its citizens were killed and another 50,000 were left homeless.
Commenting in the aftermath of the attacks, SADC said the actions resembled the worst form of crimes against humanity and that they were against the spirit of regional integration.
On the political front, SADC had a fairly busy election calendar, with harmonized elections in Zimbabwe in March, parliamentary polls in Angola and Swaziland both in September, and a presidential ballot in Zambia in October.
The Zimbabwe presidential election in March did not produce a clear winner, which led to a runoff in June won by Robert Mugabe.
However, a hung parliament and a post-election political impasse between the ruling party and the main opposition prompted SADC to step up its mediation efforts which have so far produced a Global Political Agreement signed in September, paving the way for an inclusive government which is now expected any time with the recent gazetting of the requisite constitutional amendment.
SADC has resolved to remain seized with the political developments in Zimbabwe until a solution is found.
In Angola, the Popular Movement for Liberation of Angola (MPLA) won 191 seats in the 220-member parliament.
And in Zambia’s presidential election, the Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) candidate, Rupiah Banda won the presidency, beating his arch-rival Michael Sata with a small margin in an election necessitated by the death of Levy Mwanawasa in August.
The region’s attention will now turn to 2009 during which no less than seven countries are expected to hold elections.
In the DRC, renewed fighting between government forces and rebels loyal to General Laurent Nkunda displaced more than half a million people in eastern Goma, enlisting a swift response from SADC in the form of a resolution to provide “immediate military assistance” at an extraordinary summit in November.
In other political developments, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) recalled Thabo Mbeki in September, seven months before the end of his term as president. He was replaced by Kgalema Motlanthe, ANC’s vice president.
Mbeki has continued his meditation role in Zimbabwe.
With 2008 having come and gone, attention now turns to 2009 with high expectations on the eve of the 2010 Soccer World Cup, hosted for the first time in Africa by South Africa.
