By Paul Fauvet
Maputo (MOZTIMES) - Foreign Ministers of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) on Sunday “reaffirmed their shared commitment to strengthening regional solidarity, enhancing policy coherence, strengthening regional institutions, and deepening cooperation in order to build a more resilient, self-sustaining, and competitive SADC region”.
This bland statement came at the end of a two day retreat held in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. The retreat was intended “to assess the impact of evolving global geopolitical developments in the SADC region”.
The closing statement said the Foreign Ministers “underscored the impact of intensifying geopolitical rivalry, including the current Middle-East conflict, climate-related pressures, and disruptions to global trade, energy, tourism, and financial systems, and noted that these factors are driving higher food and fuel prices, exchange-rate volatility, and increasing risks to food and energy security across Member States”.
But the statement did not propose any measures for dealing with the crisis. It could not even bring itself to mention the United States whose aggression against Iran is the main cause of spiralling energy costs.
It merely said that the Ministers “reaffirmed their commitment to collective action aimed at strengthening resilience, deepening regional integration, and advancing sustainable development across the Member States, and further committed to enhancing policy coherence, strengthening regional institutions, and advancing coordinated diplomacy to ensure a coherent regional voice in global engagements”.
The retreat, they said, “discussed five thematic areas, namely Financing Regional Integration, Investment, Public Debt Management and Domestic Revenue Mobilisation, Industrialisation, Value Chains and Trade; Infrastructure, Transport and Logistics and the Free Movement of People, Goods and Services; Energy, Oil and Gas and Mineral Resources; and Agriculture, Agricultural Inputs, Supply Chains, Markets and Food Security”
But the statement gave no details. Thus the peoples of the SADC region have no idea what their governments hope to do to restrain food and fuel prices.
The Ministers said their retreat “concluded with a renewed commitment to advancing the SADC Vision 2050, which envisions a Common Future within a regional community that ensures economic well-being, improved standards of living and quality of life, freedom, social justice, and peace and security for the people of Southern Africa”.
But these are just fine words. The Ministers did not mention any measures that might put them into practice. (MT)
