Towards free trade in Southern Africa: the need to keep pace with world trends

Abstract

This paper examines the challenges and opportunities that present themselves to the Southern African region as far as free regional and international trade is concerned. The focus of the paper is on the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the one regional organization to which all Southern African countries are members. Issues that need to be dealt with include the existence of a total of three regional groups all concerned with trade: SADC, the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and concern over productivity and competitiveness of the region internationally. The SADC region needs to move swiftly towards free regional trade as part of the process of gearing up to the ever increasing global competition. Domination of the region by South Africa is also alluded to briefly. There is very little discussion on the Democratic Republic of Congo and Seychelles, the latest members of SADC. However, data on these two countries is presented in the three tables contained in this paper.