Southern African leaders have agreed that industrialisation is key to the region’s success.
Concluding the 46th Summit of SADC Heads of State and Government held over the weekend in eThekwini, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said that, while it is important to accelerate the pace of industrialisation, it’s not an end in itself.
“It is the means through which we must create jobs, expand productive capacity, beneficiate our minerals, strengthen agriculture and agro-processing, develop new technologies and build competitive regional value chains,” he says.
The region is richly endowed with minerals, agricultural potential, renewable energy resources, a young population and a growing market, he says. “Our task is to convert these endowments into factories, farms, enterprises, skills, exports and jobs.”
This is why South Africa is making infrastructure development central to its SADC chairmanship, Ramaphosa says.
“A major focus will be the development and efficient functioning of our regional corridors. We intend to make these corridors arteries of regional integration – connecting our centres of production to markets, linking landlocked countries to ports and enabling goods, services and people to move across our region more efficiently and at lower cost.”
To this end, he calls on corridor countries to conclude and implement the necessary legal and institutional arrangements required to operationalise these corridors, including the establishment of One-Stop Border Posts.
“We will take steps to revitalise our railway networks, expand and modernise our ports and improve the roads and logistics systems that connect our economies,” he adds.
Energy is another focus area, and the goal is to increase electricity access across the region to 85% by 2030.
“But access alone is not enough,” Ramaphosa says. “Our households and businesses need electricity that is reliable, affordable and increasingly generated from the diverse energy resources with which our region is blessed.”
Building infrastructure will require financing, he adds, so the SADC Regional Development Fund will be operationalised as soon as possible, drawing resources from within southern African states and international financiers, development partners and the private sector.