EDITORIAL COMMENT : Industrialists must take advantage of SADC measures

THE 44th SADC Summit that Zimbabwe hosts next month will zero in on the industrialisation of the region, the critical stage in development that will boost economies and communities to create value and wealth that is needed to give the people a decent standard of living and create jobs.

This is preceded next week by the Seventh SADC Industrialisation Week, which brings together the private sector and institutions of higher learning of the member States so that the practicalities can be hammered out by those who must be the main implementers of the industrialisation, the industrialists and those supporting them and those moving from service sectors and mining into industry.

President Mnangagwa brought up, in remarks at the funeral of the late national hero, Brigadier General Dr Michael Chaminuka, the need for industrialists to ride on the back of this practical week and the following Summit to put together opportunities for accelerating industrialisation.

The linking of economic growth at higher levels and National Heroes like the late retired general officer makes sense. During the 1970s, a lot of young men and women fought for Zimbabwe’s freedom, and suffered for that freedom, but the freedom went far beyond political and social freedom. It was also freedom to create and use opportunities for economic advancement.

SADC itself grew out of the political Frontline States, and the liberation movements they backed. It played a crucial role in the defeat of die-hard colonial and settler regimes, with the liberation of Zimbabwe allowing the transformation of Sadc into a regional body, although South Africa and Namibia were still to be freed. But it was recognised that liberation meant economic and development liberation as political liberation was achieved.

So both sets of discussions in Harare are important and linked. The Heads of State and Government can create, through their joint policies and treaties, the conditions necessary for industrialisation. But the actual industrialising has to be done by business people, and the skills needed have to be created and honed by the education sectors. It all fits together with everyone interacting with everyone else.

For a wide range of reasons, the industrialisation of Southern Africa has to be a regional effort. For a start, while the region is rich in natural resources, no single country has the lot and so an industrial base built on local raw materials has to include every country, so the full range of resources is on tap.

Secondly, most of the countries are fairly small, and so need regional markets, and even the largest two, DRC and South Africa, are only roughly the size of a single country in the European Union or a single large state in the USA or, for that matter, a single province in China. So we need to move forward together.

Regional industrialisation also creates markets for each other as economies grow, both in value and in complexity. Industrial growth is not a zero-sum process that advances in one country are at the expense of others. Advances in one country drive development in the rest, and they in turn drive development with each other.

Some industries will need resources from several countries and with factories across a swathe of nations. For example, fertilisers, and the agricultural growth of Southern Africa needs a several-fold improvement in supplies. No country has all the bits, so Zimbabwe needs to upgrade phosphate mining to supply other countries. Mozambique with its natural gas resources needs to make much of the ammonia for the rest and so it goes. The trains carrying the fertiliser and raw materials will be full in all directions.

We have the new steelworks in Zimbabwe, which with South African capacity will mean that there is enough of this essential industrial raw material across SADC for factories in all countries. We have the copper mines in Zambia and Katanga that can be a basis for a serious electrical industry, making not just copper bars but the cabling and the electric motors and the rest of the components that others need.

And then there will be the smaller industries that supply largely a single market, and sometimes a small market, or which process specialised agricultural products such as indigenous fruit found in only one place. But they still need to be backed by the heavy industry that will be scattered across the region. And in any case we need competitive brands.

All this tends to mean that we all, right from the SMEs upwards, need to think regionally in terms of supplies, materials and markets, and this will largely be something                new.

National policies have tended to dominate thinking and import substitution has tended to be the main policy, a useful start but not really the way forward for a far larger industrial base.

Even South Africa, the most industrialised of the national economies, is not that large an industrial giant when you look at the major industrial countries, since it is hitting the limits like the rest of us and needs a richer market.

This is why breakout strategies need to be explored and mapped at both the industrial week next week and the summit itself as the businesses provide their input for the political leadership.

SADC has always been practical, finding what works, and adapting structures and bringing in all sectors as it keeps the goal of a developed region in clear view.

That is why the double meetings over the next few weeks are so important, so that we figure out all the needs and resources and then start stitching together our far larger, and richer, regional economy.