Backgrounder: Development of African regional bloc SADC

NAIROBI, Sept. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Southern African Development Community (SADC), one of Africa's major regional economic group, is scheduled to hold its summit on Sept. 7-8 in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). The following is a brief introduction about the development of SADC. The formation of SADC was the culmination of a long process of consultations by the leaders of Southern Africa, according to the official website of the bloc. The SADC has been in existence since 1980 when it was formed as a loose alliance of nine majority-ruled states in southern Africa known as the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) in the Zambian capital of Lusaka, following the adoption of the Lusaka Declaration. Towards the end of the 1970's, it became clear to the leaders of the region that just having a national flag and a national anthem would not meet the needs of the people for improved living standards. From 1977, active consultations were undertaken by representatives of the so-called Frontline States, culminating in a meeting of Foreign Ministries of the Frontline States in Gaborone, in May 1979, which called for a meeting of ministers responsible for economic development. That meeting was subsequently convened in Arusha, Tanzania, in July 1979. The Arusha meeting led to the birth to the SADCC a year later. The founding members of the bloc are Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The SADC was formed with four principal objectives: to reduce member states dependence on apartheid South Africa; to implement programs and projects with national and regional impact; to mobilize member states' resources, in the quest for collective self-reliance; and to secure international understanding and support. Heads of state and government of the bloc's members decided to ink the Declaration and Treaty at the summit on August 17, 1992 in the Namibian capital of Windhoek, realizing the transformation of the organization from a coordinating conference into a development community and giving the organization a legal character. The SADC took a historic step in its 28th summit last October in Johannesburg, South Africa by launching the long-anticipated the Free Trade Area and welcoming the comeback by Seychelles into the bloc. Along with other two major African regional blocs, the East African Community and the Common Market of the Eastern and Southern Africa, the SADC adopted a communiqué on a program of harmonization of trading arrangements among the three blocs in October in Uganda. The tripartite summit resolved that the three blocs should immediately start working toward a merger into a single regional economic community with the objective of fast tracking the attainment of the African Economic Community.