The Sunday Mail
Hon Simbarashe Mumbengegwi
The 36th Sadc Summit was well attended as about 10 out of the 15 Heads of State and Government or their deputies were present, and that was a very high number.
Heads of State and Government must meet in August every year to look at various issues, a number of which are permanent features on the agenda.
The first (issue) is considering and adopting the budget for the coming year, and the second focuses on the peace and security and economic situation in the region.
In 2015, President Mugabe initiated the Sadc Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap, and produced a very comprehensive document on the subject which was subsequently adopted at an Extraordinary Sadc Summit in April that year.
Now, President Mugabe’s brainchild became so popular among his fellow Heads of State that they decided that the question of industrialisation in the region must become a permanent feature of all Sadc Summits.
The Heads of State and Government had been impressed by what had been done in that one year of President Mugabe’s Chairmanship of Sadc and felt the foundations the President had laid required building upon in subsequent years.
This issue will be on the Sadc agenda not just for one year or two, three years, but for the next 50 years.
The idea hatched by our President will be a dominant force in the development of our region.
The Secretariat will always give a progress report on what is happening throughout Sadc on the question of industrialisation and regional integration.
By the way, it was also under President Mugabe that the African Union adopted the 50-year long Agenda 2063, the blueprint for Africa’s development over the next 50 years.
So President Mugabe will continue to be the reference point in the development of the African Union and Sadc for the next half century.
That is a very important legacy that our President has bequeathed, not only to the Sadc region, but the entire African continent.
As for Zimbabwe, we all know what our President has bequeathed to us – empowerment in our economy, politics, education and other spheres.
Zimbabwe has benefited from President Mugabe’s vision for the future, so have Sadc and the rest of Africa.
The Strategy
At the Summit in Swaziland, the Sadc Secretariat presented a progress report (on the industrialisation action plan), including preliminary costings.
They indicated that this was work in progress, and it has been decided that an Extraordinary Summit will be held in March/April 2017 to look at this costed implementation plan in greater detail.
Preliminary figures show that they are looking at something around US$400 billion as the initial implementation cost of the Sadc Industrialisation Strategy.
But, of course, this will be discussed further in the first quarter of 2017.
The Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap is based on projects, programmes and value chains within the region.
Its fundamental principle is that no Sadc country should be left behind by the industrialisation train. Every Sadc country must be able to produce something it can export.
This is why the Regional Indicative Development Programme was reviewed in 2015 to frontload industrialisation and backload liberalisation.
You cannot liberalise in a situation where some countries have nothing to export as those countries will simply become warehouses or supermarkets of those who are in a position to manufacture and export.
So, the Strategy’s entire thrust is ensuring value chains are created and include all Sadc countries. The Strategy will be based on programmes and projects, therefore, these programmes and projects have to be bankable.
In other words, they should not only be self-sustaining, but profitable, too. And anything which is profitable will always get investors. This is where the private sector will come in, and the business community was also meeting during the Summit.
It is not a question of Government coming up with funding, It’s a collective effort between the public and private sectors. The idea is to come up with bankable projects and programmes throughout the region that will then attract investment both from the region and beyond.
Basically, this is where the finance will be generated from. It will have to be a self-sustaining programme of industrialisation, value addition and beneficiation.
It’s not a question of someone coming with one bag of money and dishing it around. No. It is about creating attractive investment opportunities throughout the Sadc region so that we can be able to relate to one another.
One country can produce a certain component and the other another component, and then in the end all these can be brought together to produce one unit.
In fact, the Sadc Secretariat is being re-organised to enable it to play this co-ordinative role in the region’s industrialisation. Co-ordination is absolutely essential. Things just don’t happen by chance or by accident.
They have to be planned, and where you are planning, co-ordination is absolutely fundamental.
This is why we are now building a very strong Secretariat, specifically targeting the whole area of industrialising the Sadc region.
The Secretariat has just presented a general framework, but obviously, you need expertise to be brought in and structures that can interact with individual countries to see what aspects of our industrialisation agenda each of the respective countries is best suited to produce.
Regional Development Fund
There were discussions on setting up the Sadc Regional Development Fund where Member States make contributions in accordance with their capacity as determined by their Gross Domestic Product.
This Fund is expected to address issues within the region, say, when disasters occur. For example, at the moment, we are faced with a disaster in the whole region – the El Nino-induced drought.
Obviously, resources are required.
President (Seretse Khama Ian) Khama (Immediate past Sadc Chair) recently declared a state of drought throughout the Sadc region, and appealed for assistance from the international community.
It’s much easier to get support from the international community if you, yourselves, have your own seed capital rather than going out to say, “Please, help us.”
But what have you done to help yourselves?
And you say, “Nothing.”
That is not viable and acceptable. So, this Fund is being set up, and the Secretariat was instructed to continue working towards operationalising it.
The target is to fully operationalise the Fund by 2020.
Earlier, I spoke about the budget for the coming year. What is significant about this current budget is that we, the Member States, are contributing 59 percent of it while the remainder is coming from our co-operating partners.
This is a big improvement because the ratios were previously reversed. Co-operating partners were contributing far more than member states, and this is something we have rejected at Sadc and African Union level.
Ownership of an organisation is absolutely fundamental.
The only way to show ownership is to pay your way for your organisation.
“Whoever pays the piper calls the tune” is not an idle saying. If other people are paying for you, they are not going to pay for things they do not want.
They will pay for what they want, and because you have no money, you will have to accept what they want and not what you want. What it means now is that because we are contributing about 60 percent of our budget, we now own our organisation 60 percent, which is a big improvement.
At AU level, again under the Chairmanship of President Mugabe, the African Union agreed that they should continue to increase member states’ contribution so that within five years, the continental body will be able to pay 100 percent of its operational budget, at least 75 percent of its programme budget and at least 25 percent of its peace-keeping operations.
This is a decision that was taken at the level of the African Union and so the subsidiary bodies, regional economic communities, have to get the cue from the mother body.
It is impressive that Sadc has reacted with such speed to now be able to pay its way 60 percent. If there are any co-operating partners who want to assist, it must come as a bonus on top of what we are doing for ourselves.
It will not be brought in as a lifeline as was the case in the past.
Honourable Simbarashe Mumbengegwi is the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was speaking to The Sunday Mail News Editor Morris Mkwate in Harare last week.
