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The ECA Southern Africa Office | Mission, Vision & Objectives | Contact Information The ECA Southern Africa Office is located in Lusaka, Zambia. The ECA Southern Africa OfficeThe United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) was established by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations General Assembly (ECOSOC) in 1958 at the request of the few African countries which were then members of the United Nations Organization (UN). Its mission is to promote economic and social development in Africa by providing technical support and advisory services to member States in formulating and implementing relevant policies and programmes aimed at social and economic transformation of the African countries. Since its establishment, ECA has made significant contributions to Africa's development through institutional capacity building (e.g. ADB and PTA) and the formulation of macro-economic and sectoral policies, strategies and programmes (e.g. Lagos Plan of Action) for achieving sustainable development, anchored by the strategy of promoting regional cooperation among African States. The Commission, accordingly, adopted the strategy of establishing sub-regional offices or centres in order to promote Africa's development. The Commission established subregional presence in Southern Africa in 1966 when it opened the Subregional Office for Eastern and Southern Africa in Lusaka in 1966, four years after the very first such offices were opened in West and North Africa subregions. The functions of these offices were to: provide liaison between ECA headquarters and governments in the subregion; provide the secretariat with information on the needs and problems of the subregion for effective formulation of programmes of assistance; undertake studies on economic and social development of the subregions; collect information and up-to-date documentation on various aspects of the economic and social life of the area; provide advisory services at the request of the countries concerned; and assist in organization of meetings, seminars, workshops and study tours aimed at building development capacity in the subregions. The Subregional Offices were strengthened by the creation of United Nations Multidisciplinary Development Advisory Teams (UNDATs) in 1973 whose objective was to assist member States in development planning, public administration and management. The Lusaka-based UNDAT was integrated into the Subregional Office, while in the other cases the UNDATs and Subregional Offices existed side-by-side. An evaluation of this arrangement, which was carried out in 1976, recommended that the Offices and UNDATs be transformed into operational centres for development and to focus on identification, design and implementation of multinational programmes and projects. Thus, the Multinational Programming and Operational Centres, the ECA/MULPOCs, came into existence in 1977. The Lusaka-based MULPOC served 18 member States in Eastern and Southern Africa. The economic difficulties faced by most of the African countries in the 1980's and the resulting social problems led to an in-depth assessment of ECA's effectiveness in addressing the development needs of its member States. The need for strong regional presence was reaffirmed by several evaluations and, in 1995, the ECA Conference of Ministers approved the reform programme of the Commission presented in the report: Serving Africa Better - Strategic Directions for the Economic Commission for Africa. Among the key decisions of the Ministers was that to further strengthen the MULPOCs. The plan of action to strengthen the MULPOCs included revised mandates,
creation of separate centres for Eastern and Southern Africa, and
a change in name from MULPOCs to Subregional Development Centres
(SRDCs) to more accurately reflect their new role. 1997 marked the
birth of the SRDC for Southern Africa based in Lusaka and serving
eleven countries: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius,
Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Vision, Mission and Objective of the CentreThe vision of the SRDC for Southern Africa is to become a premier resource centre for economic and social development in Southern Africa. Guided by the principles of efficiency, cost effectiveness and effective partnership, as articulated in the new directions of the Commission, the above vision will enable the Centre to pursue its mission as the operational arm of ECA to promote regional cooperation and integration in Southern Africa. The development goal is to attain sustainable social and economic development in the member countries as called for in the Abuja Treaty (1991) establishing the African Economic Community (AEC). The objective of the Centre is threefold: first, to serve as a mobilizer of ideas and catalyst for promoting regional cooperation and integration by providing effective technical support to collective approaches for tackling common development problems in Southern Africa, in collaboration with the major Regional Economic Communities; second, to facilitate networking and information exchange among development partners; and, finally, to provide a link between ECA and the development partners in the subregion by organizing fora for discussion and dissemination of policy recommendations and technical publications developed by ECA and the other partners. Contact Information:The Director, |
