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Archive -President Michel

34th SADC summit of Heads of State and Government in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe |21 August 2014

‘Africa is the continent of tomorrow’


“Africa is seen as the continent of tomorrow, the continent of the future and I can say that the ocean is the new frontier. So we must all work hard and in partnership to propel the African continent to play its role as the youngest and fastest-growing continent in the globalised world,” President James Michel has said.
 
He was speaking to the Seychelles media at the end of the 34th Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit of Heads of State and Government in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.

The Victoria Falls, one of the natural wonders of the world, provided the perfect scenic backdrop for the interview and President Michel described it as “out of this world”.

Speaking about the summit’s theme – ‘SADC Strategy for Economic Transformation: Leveraging the Region’s Diverse Resources for Sustainable Economic and Social Development through Beneficiation and Value Addition’ – President Michel said “it is an important one as SADC needs to relook at itself, relook at its mission, why it came into existence and what it has to do to reach a new stage of its development.”

Mr Michel noted that during the summit it was declared that SADC has achieved its mission but with many changes happening in the globalised world it is time for us to work on radical changes on the organisation’s structure and the actions it has to take to keep pace with the development happening in the rest of the world.

During the summit, the leaders also threw their weight behind a drive to turn their nations into industrialised economies and President said: “The theme set the scene for heads of state and government to discuss how Africa can reach the next level of its development. It came out that Africa has a lot of raw materials and natural resources, but these resources are exported outside the continent before being imported as transformed goods. This has to stop if we want the continent to develop and progress. With the help of developed countries, it is important that we transform these raw materials in Africa and then export the transformed products to get better revenues. We also spoke about integration and infrastructure development which are all key elements in bringing about these changes. For this to happen we have set up committees to monitor the work being done.”

As industrialisation should take centre stage in SADC’s regional integration agenda, the SADC heads of state and government have mandated the Ministerial Task Force on Regional Economic Integration to develop a strategy and roadmap for industrialisation in the region.

President Michel said he took the opportunity to point out that Africa is not only mainland Africa.

“Africa also has islands and the oceans. The development of the ocean is also very important and falls within the blue economy concept Seychelles has been putting forward for some time now. We have to see how we can transform the different raw materials and resources found in the oceans. I’m happy that the blue economy has been accepted by SADC as a concept of Africa’s development. Africa is now considering its mainland and its oceans as a whole in its development. Seychelles thus has an important part to play in this development,” he said.

There were also talks for the establishment of an expanded free trade area (FTA) and when Seychelles becomes a member of the FTA it will be able to trade with other SADC countries without having to pay taxes.

“Like some other countries, Seychelles has taken into consideration some of its key produce and has to protect its farmers and animal breeders for example.

This is why it has sought derogation of the FTA law allowing it to keep a percentage of the tax income. As Seychelles is not expected to pay taxes on products imported from within the SADC region, the prices of the products on the market will fall. The same will apply when other countries import fish, for example, from Seychelles. It will help in regional integration,” said President Michel.

The President pointed out that although SADC is the most stable region in Africa it is not the poorest as some critics may say, adding it has a lot of natural resources but lack the infrastructure to develop these.
 
“A lot has been said about energy development, the construction of railways to link up countries to help transportation. For island nations, this is not enough. We need shipping lines for commerce between the mainland and the islands. The Victoria Falls is a very good example of the power of water in Africa.
 
It is a permanent energy source which we don’t have in Seychelles and SADC has to see how Seychelles too can benefit from such projects. We have to see the resources available in every country and then harmonise our position for us all to benefit,” he said.

When he spoke about the issue of SADC depending too much on foreign financing, President Michel said: “Partnership is very important in development especially if you have the manpower but not the know-how to develop the resources at your disposal. Many historical reasons like colonisation and wars might have contributed for us not to have been able to develop our human resources to the required level. We also don’t have advanced technology and this is why we need partnership. Seychelles and Africa need to have foreign direct investments (FDI) and it must be a win-win situation that benefits both parties. The knowledge and skills acquired by the locals will help in the development of the country. It’s a process which Seychelles and Africa have to go through, the same thing China and some south-east Asian countries went through.”

SADC is a 15-member regional grouping that aims to promote sustainable and equitable socio-economic development in southern Africa.

The member states have an estimated combined population of 277 million and GDP (gross domestic products) of around US $575.5 billion.

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