Editorial Comment: SADC Summit: All eyes on Zim

17 Aug, 2014 - 06:08 0 Views
Editorial Comment: SADC Summit: All eyes on Zim

The Sunday Mail

The 34th Southern African Development Community (SADC) Summit is finally here. While other delegates started arriving into the country since the beginning of the month, Heads of State flew into the country yesterday ahead of the Summit today.

Zimbabwe is hosting the two-day event in Victoria Falls, which will see President Robert Mugabe taking over the Chairmanship of the 15-member regional bloc from Malawi.

This means that from today, with Zimbabwe at the helm, every move by Zimbabwe will be watched by millions of people from the region and beyond as they wait anxiously for socio-economic progression within the region.

The summit is running under a forward-looking theme, ‘‘SADC Strategy for Economic Transformation: Leveraging the Region’s Diverse Resources for Sustainable Economic and Social Development through Beneficiation and Value Addition’’, will deliberate on a wide range of issues including the political and socio-economic situation in the region.

This summit comes at the back of the successful co-hosting of last year’s United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) General Assembly that was held in Zimbabwe and the neighbouring Livingstone in Zambia.

Now while we bask in the honour of hosting such big events, there is need to remain focused as a nation. Lest we forget, our beautiful country is on the spotlight and the international investment community is watching. Yes, they may pretend that they do not care of what is happening in the SADC region, but they do!

This is our chance to shine in this spotlight and ‘‘sell’’ Zimbabwe. Our chance to reassure investors that Zimbabwe is stable and attractive enough for them to commit their investment for the long run. Our chance to become a favourite investment destination.

As the Heads of State meet to deliberate on the region’s affairs, Southern Africans should be reminded that they belong on the centre stage of Africa’s socio-economic rebirth. Southern Africa has got all that it takes to become a major player in international economics.

Yet it continues to be among the poorest regions in the world despite the abundance of natural resources.

The majority of SADC countries do not have beneficiation and value addition policies, hence the bulk of our natural resources find their way to other nations for beneficiation thereby benefiting those other nations instead. SADC heads should use this opportunity presented by the summit to discuss clear policies on natural resources exploitation and beneficiation. And of course discussing alone will not be good enough; Africa needs to implement the agreed policies.

Back home, indicators abound that Zimbabwe will soon regain economic momentum and command its due share of the international economy but only and only if we take the spotlight that comes with hosting such big events to our advantage and use it wisely to strategically position our nation.

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