Souther Africa Regional Poverty Network (SARPN) 6-7th April 2006

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Wally Roux*, March 2005

ANY person following the economic news in the newspapers, related publications and/or the internet, is likely to stumble across some information pertaining to the envisaged Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), especially nowadays. The EPA-proposals put forward by the European Union (EU) to the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries have in mind the replacement of the old Lome preferences with more internationally compliant trading arrangements.

The Lome Conventions were trading arrangements through which the EU afforded ACP countries preferential market access. In 1994 a trade dispute between the United States (US) and the EU over banana exports from the Caribbean was brought before the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The WTO eventually ruled that the Lome convention violated WTO rules because it gave the ACP countries an unfair trade advantage over other WTO members.

MASERU, LESOTHO 14-18 AUGUST 2006

"RECLAIMING SADC FOR PEOPLES SOLIDARITY AND DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION"

Dear Fellow Members of SAPSN and friends,

It is now almost six years since SAPSN held its highly successful three-day 'non-governmental' conference parallel to the annual SADC inter-governmental meeting and Heads of State Summit that took place in Windhoek, Namibia, in August 2000. That independent SAPSN conference was also organised in parallel to the simultaneous official SADC NGO consultative meeting in Windhoek. But SAPSN held an open public meeting in Windhoek which many of the other NGOs present in Windhoek also attended. Some of these then decided to join in the 'unofficial' meeting because of its more comprehensive coverage and intensive discussions. These produced a powerful final declaration affirming the solidarity of Southern African peoples organisations and committing them to "Making Southern African Development Cooperation and Integration a People-Centered and People-Driven Regional Challenge to Globalisation". This cogent and visionary document received wide recognition and dissemination throughout the region.

The Implications of the EU's Proposed "Regional Economic Partnership Agreements" with Respect to Regional Integration and Development in Southern Africa

Dot Keet, Sept 2004, AIDC 

It has long been recognised in the EU and amongst the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) members of the Lome Convention, and expressed in the Lome Convention itself, that the grouping of countries into larger economic units is an important basis for effective and sustainable development.

In Africa, the strategic objective of re-grouping African countries and (re)integrating the continent was a fundamental reaction to the legacy of colonialism; to arbitrarily created, artificial, largely non-viable and distorted economies, characterised by pronounced under-development and deep external dependence. Regional groupings in Africa were conceived in the 1960s and 1970s as more rational economic units and formally endorsed in the Lagos Plan of 1980. These putative regions would provide larger markets and economies of scale in investment and production, with combined or complementary resources, and would generally be more effective frameworks within which to correct disarticulated and ineffective economic structures UN-ECA, 1988.