Pretoria - A three-day Southern African Development Community (SADC) Council of Ministers’ meeting took place in Harare this weekend to thrash out strategies to speed up regional industrialisation.
Zimbabwe, which was elected to the position of SADC chair at the August 2014 SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government, chaired the meeting.
The Council of Ministers fine-tuned a five-year roadmap and strategy for regional industrialisation. The strategy will be presented at the extraordinary summit to be held next month.
The meeting, held under the theme ‘Regional Strategy and Roadmap for Industrialisation’, also focused on the implementation of the decisions taken by the Summit of Heads of State and Government, among other matters.
A South African government delegation - led by the Ministers of International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and Trade and Industry Rob Davies – participated in the meeting.
SADC is the primary vehicle used by the sub-region to promote balanced and equitable integration among its member states and to achieve sustainable development, allowing the region to address the key challenge of poverty eradication.
South Africa is one of 15 member states of SADC and currently chairs the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation.
Other member states include Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. – SAnews.gov.za
