The Implementation Gap of the Regional Integration Agenda in SADC

In May 2017, the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR), Cape Town, South Africa, hosted about 30 diverse representatives including African policymakers, former officials from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat, national role-players, private sector actors, regional civil society, and members of the academic community. A key focus of the May 2017 seminar was on SADC National Committees (SNCs), and the Botswana-based SADC Secretariat, in assessing critically their efforts to promote regional integration in Southern Africa. The seminar had five key objectives: first, to identify the major policy and protocol implementation challenges facing the SADC Secretariat and its member states; second, to critically examine the architecture for the implementation and domestication of the Community's policies and protocols; third, to discuss prospects, problems and progress of implementation in Namibia and Mozambique; fourth, to analyse the cross-cutting issue of ownership of the regional integration agenda; and fifth, to assess how to close the implementation gap in the policies and protocols of SADC's regional integration efforts