Displaying items by tag: SADC

Regional value chains have gained increasing popularity in promoting sustained market opportunities, job creation, and sustainable development among countries. With the enactment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement, access to larger economic markets will mean larger economies of scale, development of specialised capabilities, increase in productivity, as well as increased obligational relationships among Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries through regional industrial value chains. This research investigates how South Africa can promote regional value chains in SADC by importing more from its fellow SADC countries.

The analysis investigates the export potential from SADC countries, using the Revealed Trade Advantage (RTA), the Revealed Import Advantage (RMA) and the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) indexes. These indexes will establish which sustained export opportunities (products) are available for SADC countries to export to South Africa, and these opportunities are detailed for each country. The analysis then looks at the regional perspective of these export opportunities from SADC countries, as most lie within the Clothing, Textiles, Footwear and Leather industry. Last, the analysis discusses the existing barriers to trade for SADC countries. The intention is to promote sustained export opportunities with South Africa importing more from SADC countries. The results from this paper can be a starting point for policymakers to think about strategies to enhance utilisation of sustained export opportunities for SADC countries into South Africa.

Business Day - 28 October 2019 by Neva Makgetla (TIPS Senior Economist)

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WIDER Working Paper 2019/70

This working paper, Assessment of demand in agro-processing machinery in the SADC region: A case study of the maize-milling machinery value chain in South Africa and Zambia, forms part of the project: Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED)

Abstract

The SADC Industrialization Strategy and Roadmap 2015–2063 aims to arrest deindustrialization and resuscitate manufacturing capabilities within the region. Agro-processing, the largest contributor to manufacturing in most of the member states, has been chosen as one of the growth paths to help the region reindustrialize. Because of its backward linkages with the agricultural industry and forward linkages into the diverse food industry, this subsector has received immense government support and private sector investment. However, the region faces important leakages in imports of machinery. This paper investigates whether the sector is stimulating additional manufacturing capabilities in agro-processing machinery, equipment, and parts, and whether these could drive capabilities, factor accumulation, and technological capabilitybuilding to capture the full value envisioned in the Roadmap.

Download Working Paper: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp-2019-70.pdf

TIPS acknowledges the support of the SA-TIED programme for this working paper, with special thanks to UNU-WIDER and the South African Department of Trade and Industry.

WIDER Working Paper 2019/61

This working paper, Charity begins at home The political economy of non-tariff barriers to trade in Southern Africa, forms part of the project: Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED)

Abstract

Increased intra-regional trade in southern Africa will have a positive impact on eonomic growth. However, this requires a shifting of loyalties from the national to the regional.Tension between the goals of long-term regional development and shorter-term national imperatives remains unresolved. This study presents a review of recent and current local content regulation (LCR) initiatives across a sample of the South African Development Community countries. LCRs are widely used across these countries, and their use has increased recently. Evidence suggests that the impact of LCRs is mixed, depending on their national context, whether or not they are implemented in line with the genuine desire to deliver local development, and whether they can remain corruption-free. LCRs may have long-term positive domestic and regional benefits, if they support sustainable local enterprise development and employment. In time this should translate into higher levels of growth across the region, and thus drive higher levels of trade.

Download Working Paper: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp-2019-61.pdf

TIPS acknowledges the support of the SA-TIED programme for this working paper, with special thanks to UNU-WIDER and the South African Department of Trade and Industry.

WIDER Working Paper 2019/38

This working paper, Moving up the copper value chain in Southern Africa, forms part of the project: Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED)

Abstract

t: Interest in industrial hemp has revived in the past 20 years. Malawi is considering legalizing the cultivation of industrial hemp as an alternative cash crop to tobacco with great potential. This study considers the potential and challenges of creating an industrial hemp value chain between South Africa and Malawi, with Malawi concentrating on upstream cultivation and South Africa on downstream value-adding activity. The research supports a finding that industrial hemp offers strong opportunities as a niche market even if mainstream demand is slow to materialize or does not materialize at all. It also shows that undertaking such an inter-regional endeavour would be considerably more complicated than initially envisaged, given the agricultural structure and operation of the Malawian economy and its smallholder farmers.

Download Working Paper: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp-2019-52.pdf

TIPS acknowledges the support of the SA-TIED programme for this working paper, with special thanks to UNU-WIDER and the South African Department of Trade and Industry.

WIDER Working Paper 2019/38

This working paper, Motorcycle parts and aftermarket industry regional value chain in Southern Africa, forms part of the project: Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED)

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the structure, key functions, and characteristics of the motorcycle parts and aftermarket industries in Southern Africa in order to identify challenges to and opportunities for growth in these industries. The research examines the end markets and utilization of motorcycles, the status of these markets, and demand for local or regional production processes. The paper also considers the main factors affecting the sales of motorcycles and their parts in the region and assesses whether a more coordinated approach between governments and foreign and local firms could lead to assembly and/or manufacturing value-added activity in the Southern African Development Community region.

Download Working Paper: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp-2019-38.pdf

TIPS acknowledges the support of the SA-TIED programme for this working paper, with special thanks to UNU-WIDER and the South African Department of Trade and Industry.

WIDER Working Paper 2019/26

This working paper, Black cat, white cat - lessons to be learned from ASEAN, forms part of the project: Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED)

Abstract

There is some consensus at present that SADC needs to re-imagine itself and breathe new life into its somewhat moribund structure. The European Union is often presented as the textbook example to be followed by other regional associations. The European Union is characterised by a rules-based, heavily bureaucratic and powerful supranational institutional structure to which individual nations have ceded sovereignty in several spheres (most notably the economy). The European Union has progressed in a highly linear and consecutive fashion from a free trade area to a customs union, to a single market and a common currency.

 On the other end of the integration spectrum sits the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Based on Confucian values and culture, it emphasises harmony, group above individual, and pragmatism above rules. ASEAN is designed around principles and behaviour norms rather than rules; it is intergovernmental instead of supranational; it is more market driven than government driven; it has strong bottom up and extra-entity processes, decision-making is based on unanimity not majority; it is institutionally and bureaucratically lite; it embraces open regionalism with unclear rules for entry; and deepening integration is being achieved in an ad hoc, parallel fashion rather than a linear, consecutive fashion.

In this paper, some of the key elements of ASEAN and its operationalisation are considered, not as recommendations or a systematic alternative guide to reconsidering the conceptual basis of SADC’s regional integration efforts – but simply as potential catalysts for discussion and thinking about problems from a different perspective.

Download Working Paper: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp-2019-26.pdf

TIPS acknowledges the support of the SA-TIED programme for this working paper, with special thanks to UNU-WIDER and the South African Department of Trade and Industry.

This policy brief provides context for technical regulation in the region. It then offers some cross-cutting solutions for developing monitoring mechanisms that can allow policymakers to identify problem areas, and some specific interventions for the Standards, Accreditation and Metrology functions that can build capacity at low cost. It provides some recommendations for a practical agenda on reducing Technical Barriers to Trade in the Southern African Development Community – ones that can be executed with minimal cost, and that improve the institutional capacity of regional organisations to grapple with the complexity inherent to the field. Above all, these regulations will need to be carefully attuned to assure that they provide the maximum protection for the region from dangerous substandard imports, while still allowing for a dynamic, mutually beneficial trading relationship.