T here will be fundamental changes to the logistics infrastructure in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) if the political leadership of the member countries heeds the call of the new SADC chair to add value to their vast resources rather than export raw materials. “Our countries are not poor, they are very rich. We have all the resources to make us rich,” said Tanzania’s President John Magufuli at the opening of the 39th Ordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government in Dar es Salaam in August. Speaking on the occasion of accepting of the rotating SADC chair from President Hage Geingob of Namibia, Magufuli said the region has the capacity to achieve sustainable development and integration if these resources are developed within the SADC, rather than being traded elsewhere as raw material. “For our industrial sector to flourish, we must work together to improve the business environment in our region by addressing all impediments and bottlenecks, including transit delays, bureaucratic red-tape, and corruption,” he said. A vibrant industrialised sector would allow the region to add value to its raw materials before exporting, thus creating jobs within the region rather than exporting resources in raw or unprocessed form, and later importing them back as finished goods. “By exporting our raw materials, it means we are also exporting jobs,” he said. Industrialisation has been on the SADC summit agenda since 2014, and there has been some progress. According to SADC statistics, the rate of growth in the manufacturing sector was higher than that of the overall growth in the region between 2014 and 2018. The manufacturing sector grew by 4.3% in 2018 compared to 4.6% in 2017. Zimbabwe and Tanzania recorded significant growth rates of 12.1% and 8.3% respectively in 2018, whilst the manufacturing sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo declined by 0.8%. The European Union is providing funding for the next five years for the SADC Support to Industrialisation and Productive Sectors (SIPS) programme. An action plan approved by the SADC summit in Swaziland in 2017 set out three potential growth paths: agro-processing; mineral beneficiation and downstream processing; and (industry- and servicedriven) value chains. “The central challenge facing Africa is how to transition from the commodity-dependent growth path in which African countries find themselves to value-adding, knowledge-intensive and industrialised economies,” proposes to the strategy document that was adopted, by SADC member states.
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For our industrial sector to flourish, we must work together to improve the business environment in our region by addressing all impediments and bottlenecks. – John Magufuli
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