ALL is set for the 34th Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit to be held in the resort town of Victoria falls next week.
So far 11 SADC Heads of State and Government have confirmed their attendance, where President Robert Mugabe is set to assume the SADC Chairmanship, taking over from Malawi.
Face-lifts are in place right from the airport, the Chinotimba (Victoria Falls) General Hospital, the roads and hotels.
A private clinic with state-of-the-art hospital equipment has also been established.
Several marquees have been erected at Elephant Hills Hotel, including the main one, (a 700-seater) where the opening ceremony will take place, one for the First Ladies, another one for accreditation of delegates and a media centre.
Slated for August 17 to 18, the summit will run under the theme, ‘SADC Strategy for Economic Transformation: Leveraging the Region’s Diverse Resources for Sustainable Economic and Social Development through Beneficiation and Value Addition’.
The SADC Executive committee has expressed satisfaction with the preparations for the Summit.
Speaking after briefing President Robert Mugabe at State House on preparations for the summit last week, Executive Secretary, Dr Stergomena Lawrence Tax said the country is ready to host the summit.
Dr Tax said the summit would focus on how the region can prosper leveraging its plentiful resources.
“The centre stage of our discussion has been that for the region to prosper we have a lot of resources, so we need to make sure that this value addition and beneficiation is for our economies and our people’s prosperity,” said Dr Tax.
She underscored the bloc’s need to concentrate on sustaining the prevailing peace and security in the region for economic growth and prosperity in the region.
Dr Tax said the committee has been hard at work revising the region’s blueprint, the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP).
“We expect to present the revised RISDP to the Heads of State for them to look at it and see if the key identified priorities are appropriate to enable us for deepening economic integration,” she said.
The RISDP is a comprehensive 15–year strategic roadmap, which provides the strategic direction for achieving SADC’s long term social and economic goals.
The plan is intended to guide member states, SADC institutions, regional stakeholders and international cooperating partners in the process of deepening integration, to turn SADC’s vision into a reality.
It (the plan) was approved by SADC member states in 2003 as a blueprint for regional integration and development.
Due to limited financial and technical resources, volatilities in the global economy and other crises, most of the development targets for SADC are not realistic, hence the need to review the RISDP to ensure that targets are more manageable and practical.
For example, SADC has deferred the launch of a Customs Union initially set for 2010 because countries are still implementing the SADC Free Trade Area (FTA) launched in 2008.
This deferment could ultimately mean that SADC will not be able to launch its monetary union by 2016 and an economic union with a single currency by 2018.
However, despite these challenges, the SADC region has made significant progress in implementing the RISDP in most of the thematic areas.
SADC member states have signed 27 protocols and a number of declarations, charters and memoranda of understanding on various matters, ranging from trade, mining and finance and investment to illicit drugs, forestry and shared watercourses.
Most of the 27 protocols have been ratified and have entered into force.
Highlighting on the successes of the bloc in implementing the plan, Dr Tax said the region has scored successes in attaining peace and stability as well as progress in regional integration.
Dr Tax said economically the region has managed to score a Free Trade Area and on the cards is the intra-trade.
She however said the region was facing a number of challenges such as infrastructure development.
“However we need to accelerate the economic integration because there is no peace and security without development and there is no development without peace and political stability,” Dr Tax.
“As part of addressing that challenge, the region is working on a number of infrastructural projects.
“We cannot have trade in isolation without having infrastructure which can facilitate trade and economic development as a whole.”
Addressing journalist at the same occasion, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi had this to say:
“We have done all the work that we had to do in terms of preparing all the logistics and everything is finalised, everything has been completed,” he said.
“I must say that the cooperation that we have had from the various Government departments as well as our private sector has been extremely gratifying.
“The expectations from the summit, of course, are that as you know that our theme relates to the issue of value addition.
“In other words, it is time that we focus on how we are going to export our products.”