From the headquarters

North Africa Experts call for Development Policies that Match Training with Employment Needs

Forum urges SADC countries to mainstream regional protocols in development plans

Issue 3, 15 - 31 May 2009

Forum urges SADC countries to mainstream regional protocols in development plans

Major African development institutions have warned that regional integration targets would not be achieved in Southern Africa unless poverty reduction strategies and other national development initiatives are harmonised with the strategic orientations contained in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Treaty.

At a two-day forum held in Maputo, Mozambique from 28- 29 May 2009, participants called on SADC member countries to speed up the process of ratification of protocols on integration and to align national laws with regional legal instruments.

The forum was jointly organized by the Eduardo Mondlane University (EMU) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) sub regional office for Southern Africa (SRO-SA), in collaboration with the NEPAD and Regional Integration Division of ECA.
The objective of this Forum was to lay the foundation for a framework that can assist SADC member countries in mainstreaming regional integration objectives in their national development policies.

Discussions focused on how to create ownership and commitment to the objectives and instruments defined in the SADC Common Agenda and in the Report of the Review of the Operations of SADC institutions.

The challenge for the Forum was how to design effective ways of overcoming political, institutional and capacity bottlenecks hampering the achievement of regional integration goals.
Addressing the participants, the Director of the ECA sub regional office in Southern Africa, Ms. Jennifer Kargbo, stated that: “the realization of benefits of regional integration hinges critically on the resolute and effective mainstreaming of regional protocols and other undertakings into national laws and programmes’’.

The outcome document of the Maputo Forum suggests benchmarks, performance indicators and monitoring mechanisms for consideration by the SADC decision-making bodies.

Some of the key performance indicators include the provision of adequate resources in the national budgets to reflect regional integration commitments by 2012 and the adoption of policy harmonisation model framework for specific sectors.

The Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) and the Strategic Indicative Plan of the Organ on Politics, Defense and Security (SIPO), which have been devised with ECA’s support, are key elements of the draft framework under consideration.

Each country in the SADC region is expected to devise its own ways of reflecting their provisions in its domestic legal system, to set its own priorities for the reforms and to come up with a coordination mechanism with the rest of the region.