A two-day Southern African Development Community (SADC) Summit has been held in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC. At the 29th SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government held on Monday and Tuesday, leaders of 14 member nations, namely Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa, Malawi, Mauritius and DRC as well as Seychelles confer on political situation in some countries within the region, regional economic situation, particularly on the impact of the global financial situation and the region's response to it.
South African President and outgoing SADC Chairman Jacob Zuma told an inauguration of the summit that leaders of SADC prioritize the pursuit of lasting peace, security and democracy. The situation in eastern DRC has gradually turned stable, and Zimbabwe's political and economic situation has greatly improved, Jacob Zuma said. SADC has played an important, active role in safeguarding regional peace.
The impact of global financial crisis and climate change in the African continent has given the challenges facing the continent, Zuma acknowledged. Nevertheless, he added, SADC member states should not underrate the importance of their role in spurring a prosperous, competitive SADC in the global arena. While expanding their relations with developed nations, especially those ties with European countries, President Zuma said, the SADC community should enhance its viable and feasible partnership with Southern Hemisphere's newly emerged countries.
The summit is the ultimate policy-making institution of SADC, which currently meets once a year around August or September in a Member state, at which a new Chairperson and Deputy are elected.
During this summit, DRC President Joseph Kabila succeeded South African President Jacob Zuma as the new SADC chairman. In the coming year, Zuma noted, SADC will actively respond to all challenges and play a positive role in further integrating and developing regional politics and economy and promoting security and stability in the regional situation.
The current SADC Summit is the first international meeting the Democratic Republic of Congo or DRC has sponsored since the war broke out in the country in August 1998.
The predecessor of SADC is the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), which was initially set up on April 1, 1980. At their meeting in August 1992, the Heads of State and Government signed a Treaty transforming the "SADCC" from a coordination conference into a Community as leaders of 10 southern African states met in Windhoek, Namibia and signed the Treaty establishing the Southern African Development Community.
The main vision of SADC, which is based in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, is that of "(a) common future within a regional community that will ensure economic wellbeing, improvement of the standard of living and economic wellbeing".
With Seychelles having joined SADC last year, SADC Community currently has 15 member states with a population of approximately 750 million people and a combined GDP of 430 billion US dollars, which account for 55 percent of GDP in sub-Sahara Africa. So, it can be termed as a regional organization with greatest vitality. In March 2009, the SADC suspended Madagascar from the regional grouping for what they called an unconstitutional change of government in March 2009.
The SADC Community has mapped out a strategic blueprint or ideas usually intrinsic in a common market and political union, by materializing, among others, a customs union by 2010, common market by 2015, a supranational central bank and a monetary union in 2016 and regional currency in 2018.
By People's Daily Online and contributed by Pei Guangjiang and Huang Peizhao, PD resident reporters respectively in South Africa and Egypt
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