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IF WISHES WERE HORSES, BEGGARS WOULD RIDE

01/09/2016 03:44:00 By Burns Dlamini

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THIS old English adage rings true when you look at the SADC Summit. A great initiative for Africa, something to be proud of for citizens of this region. Fifteen member States and millions of citizens means there are a lot of business opportunities to support economies of scale in the production of goods and services!

Speakers making keynote addresses such as the erstwhile chairman of SADC have spoken passionately about challenges for the region; such as food security exacerbated by the ongoing drought, energy and the lack of beneficiation of African minerals and commodities that rob the region of millions in jobs, are but a few of the challenges that bedevil the region. And the fact that the SADC community knows what their challenges are, it means we are halfway to solving them. And as such, it seems the diagnostic stage has been exhausted and time for solutions has come. And as the speakers were speaking, lamenting about these challenges I couldn’t help but see the opportunities these challenges present.

I started developing my own wish list - such as how we could fast-track electricity/energy generation. Here, with statistics presented showing access to electricity in Africa to be around 40 per cent, it seemed to me that this is the biggest area of growth where jobs would come from. The market for this is huge and we can mobilize billions of Dollars.

That said, I was reminded of President Obama’s energy funding plan for Africa and asked myself if member States had attempted to access this funding estimated to be in the billions; because I thought we had much of the money we need to overcome this challenge. Maybe this is another area of cooperation as we could develop a SADC power generation plant/s with all member States contributing. Then there was the issue confronting Africa and this region’s food security - and I thought all the countries in the region were food insecure with the exception of Zambia, I asked myself how Zambia pulled it off when El Nino was a phenomenon that is understood to have hit us all.

Question is, what did they do differently that we can emulate going forward? Can we also learn from experiences of the leading agro-producers of the world when it comes to maize - the likes of China, US and Brazil? Industrialisation, as promulgated by member States as another agenda point, presents tremendous opportunities in terms of value-addition and beneficiation, presenting opportunities of import substitution in instances. How I wish these wonderful initiatives were implemented, because the key to success is implementation. As it is, we are hearing a lot of thunder at this time (and as may be expected, are excited) but sadly, there is still not much rain. What would make a difference for the SADC-wide citizenry is the implementation of those strategies - something that governments, the world over, are notorious for not doing. In some nations, huge electricity generation projects have been in the air for many years, with feasibility studies that never end or take forever to complete, a major undoing for many governments.

While the heads of State may have it high up in their priorities to industrialise, make their countries food secure and so forth, what will make a difference is the political will of the governments they lead to implement those strategies - whether they are taken from Blue Ocean summits or SADC summits. There has to be proper buy-in by the Executive and Legislature in order for meaningful implementation to manifest.
Again, a major part of the implementation plan rests with the private sector - businesses.
On this basis, if businesses do not want to invest in certain sectors because they are guided by returns (like in the production of the stable food, maize) in these instances, governments must look at doing it themselves by using public entities like the NMCs and NAMBoards of this world.