Africa Focus: Zimbabwe's Mugabe hands over SADC mantle as region surges towards prosperity

When Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe took over as chairperson of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in August 2014, he outlined his vision for greater integration, value addition of resources and less dependence on donor partners.

And 12 months on, on the eve of handing over the mantle to Botswana's President Ian Khama, Mugabe can look back and count some accomplishments of his tenure, observers say.

Political scientist Charity Manyeruke from the University of Zimbabwe said Mugabe had pushed for industrialization of the region and managed to deal with security issues in the region.

She cited the political situations in Lesotho and Mozambique and the xenophobic attacks in South Africa as examples.

"He (Mugabe) excelled in dealing with the Lesotho conflict which could have escalated to higher levels, but using his experience and diplomacy, he was able to quell the situation," she said.

She added that Zimbabwe's readiness to send delegations to Lesotho at the height of the crisis after the assassination of a former senior military officer in June had shown that Mugabe was ready to offer his total support to the peace process there.

"That contributes to strong SADC security, and his diplomatic efforts in Mozambique were also another highlight of his tenure because Mozambique is a potential conflict area," she said.

On South Africa's xenophobic attacks, Manyeruke said Mugabe's approach to handling the issue had led to a peaceful resolution of the situation, especially after they had raised the ire of some regional leaders who wanted SADC -- and him in particular -- to address the issue with South Africa.

Mugabe, in power since Zimbabwe attained independence from Britain in 1980, was once chairperson of the regional bloc in the late 1980s when it was still known as the Southern African Development Coordination Conference.

The grouping was transformed into a regional development community in 1992 and now includes the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), Madagascar, Mauritius, Namibia, Seychelles, and South Africa and has a total population of about 277 million.

According to the SADC statistics, total regional trade almost quadrupled between 2000 and 2011 from about 91 billion U.S. dollars in 2000 to about 353.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2011, although there was a sharp decline of more than 25 percent in 2009 as a result of the global economic crisis.

The bloc's export items to the rest of the world consist of predominantly export of resources such as coal, ferrochromium, manganese ores, platinum, as well as precious metals and diamonds, resource intensive manufactured goods, mainly for the automotive industry, some clothing and textiles and tobacco.

The highest share of total SADC exports over time is to the Asia Pacific Market, followed by the European Union market, while trade within Africa is the smallest and of this the majority is confined to the region.

In an earlier interview with Xinhua, executive director of research organization the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC) Munetsi Madakufamba, said weak and disconnected infrastructure was one of the biggest challenges hindering regional integration and development not only in the sub-region of SADC but in Africa as a whole.

He said there was also nothing wrong with SADC and Africa using their abundant natural resources to leverage capital from countries such as China and other BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), warning however that what needed to be avoided in such deals was giving away resources at well below their true value.

"Only that way can Africa guarantee today's development without compromising on development opportunities for future generations," he said.

SADC has identified the development of cross-border infrastructure as a top priority, but lack of funds has stalled some projects such as the North-South Corridor spanning eight countries in eastern and southern Africa.

Some of the planned programs under the Corridor include the construction of more than 8,000 kilometres of road, rehabilitation of 600 km of rail track and upgrading of the Dar-es-Salaam port in Tanzania.

The priority power projects are the construction of the Zambia-Tanzania-Kenya transmission line linking the power grids of the three countries and the Zambia-DR Congo Interconnector project.

But while the region continues on a growth trajectory, Mugabe remains worried though that SADC's dependence on development partners has compromised the region's sovereignty.

Various landmark resolutions were made at the summit, including the approval of the SADC Industrialization Strategy and Roadmap and reaffirmation of the importance of industrial development in poverty alleviation and the economic emancipation of the people.

The SADC secretariat was also directed to finalize the development of an action plan to facilitate the urgent implementation of the Industrialization Strategy and Roadmap, which would be accorded top priority in the implementation of the Revised Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) (2015-2020).

The RISDP will guide the implementation of SADC programs in the next five years. Endit