The Southern African Development Community (SADC) needs to better understand technical infrastructure and its capabilities in order to achieve common industrialisation efforts in the region.
Speaking during the SADC Technical Barriers to Trade Meeting in Johannesburg earlier this week, Department of Trade and Industry Industrial Policy Development deputy director-general, Garth Strachan, said that little was understood about this area of infrastructure.
“But it has the ability to create cohesive and strong regional growth when implemented properly,” he added.
“Our biggest challenge is that we need to be looking at this as a region in order to get a superior understanding of how critical technical infrastructure institutions and their capabilities are for this common purpose,” said Strachan. “To do this we need to ensure that we secure intra-regional investment in trade and industrial integration and that together with the private sector we build industries that are characterised by a high-level of technology, value-addition and exports.”
He added that policy coherence, an education and skills strategy, and a system of science technology and innovation was required to eliminate unnecessary technical barriers to trade amongst SADC members and other regional and international trading blocs.
