The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has convened a series of trainings to address the disintegrated policy environment and align Member States’ industrialisation policies and strategies with the SADC Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap 2015-2063.
This was after a realisation that while SADC Member States are rated highly in the ranks of countries endowed with abundant natural resources worldwide, fragmented policy environment constantly proves to be a challenge which extends across African countries and hinders development and growth.
In order to counter this challenge, the SADC Secretariat has been convening a series of Enhancing the Quality of Industrial Policies' (EQuIP) national capacity building trainings since 2019 through the Strengthening National Regional Linkages (SNRL) Programme. The SNRL is a partnership programme funded by the European Union and German Development Cooperation (BMZ) and implemented by GIZ.
In 2022, the last group of countries comprising the Kingdom of Eswatini and the Republics of Seychelles and Madagascar participated in trainings on the 21-28 June, 08-12 August and 17-22 October 2022. National industrial policy environment stakeholders -- public and private sector officials -- participated in the training on the EQuIP approach to addressing the outcomes of the regional workshop held on March 2019 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The participants examined the need for a multi-stakeholder industrial policy dialogue with diverse representation at the national level.
Stakeholders were introduced to the SADC Secretariat's responsibilities concerning implementing the regional strategy and how it coordinates and facilitates the implementation of industrial-related projects and/or programmes based on regionally defined priorities. At the same time, Member States implement these projects and/or programmes nationally thus it is incumbent upon Member States to craft their industrialisation strategies based on the regional strategy.
Further to this, the EQuIP methodology also provides a systematic approach to drafting, revising and monitoring industrialisation strategies. It includes a policy design approach to assess and select policy instruments aligned with the country's core objectives and a series of indicators that governments can easily calculate to monitor progress with regard to their set targets.
The methodology proposes an industrial policy intervention logic with intervention areas and qualitative objectives, as agreed to by national industrial policy stakeholders and tailored to a country's specific needs as reflected by its National Development Goals. It also proposes using a monitoring and evaluation log framework to assist in setting achievable quantitative targets, thus making it easier for a Member State to align its targets and objectives with the SADC Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap (2015-2063) coordinated regional targets and objectives.
