The 46th Ordinary Summit of SADC heads of state met in Durban on Aug. 17 under the theme of industrialisation “through Infrastructure Development, Agricultural and Critical Minerals Transformation.” President Cyril Ramaphosa chaired it and was elected SADC Chairperson for the coming year, with Zambia’s president to succeed him.
The Summit communiqué adopts infrastructure, agriculture and critical minerals as the drivers of regional industrialisation, and endorses a list of priorities drawn from review of the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan: regional value chains, agro-processing, economic corridors, one-stop border posts, and a “resource mobilization framework.”
“Critical minerals transformation” is key. Southern Africa holds much of the world’s cobalt, copper, platinum, manganese and lithium, and has exported them as ore for a century. Transformation means beneficiation: refining and manufacturing at the source, to add value locally. That is the economic content of the anti-colonial intention, adopted as the organizing principle of a bloc of sixteen states.