Regional economic policy under crisis conditions: the case of agriculture within SADCC

Abstract

With the international economic crisis, the drought, and food production crisis in Africa, all of the economic indicators show a negative growth and a decrease in the quality of life of most African peoples. After two and one-half 'development decades' of the United Nations, the international community and the individual states have clearly failed in their goal. From the 'capitalist' model of development (Ivory Coast, Kenya) to the 'socialist' model (Ethiopia, Mozambique), the economies are in crisis. 'National' development no longer seems possible. Further, individual states find the colonial legacy of underdevelopment too difficult to transform in a period of international economic crisis. Even countries like Angola and Mozambique, who won national revolutions and began social revolutions to transform production relations, have found the inherited economic linkages an inimical barrier to development. Born in the struggle for political independence of Zimbabwe, the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) brings together nine economies in the region (Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe) to address problems of their colonial legacy of underdevelopment, their vulnerability to present economic crises, and their dependence on the South African apartheid economy. This paper analyses the ability of SADCC, as an innovative model for regional cooperation, to coordinate their policies and set priorities for regional development. The first section briefly reviews the international economic crisis of capitalism and discusses the negative impact on developing countries of 'solutions' tried by the advanced capitalist states. The second section analyses the diversity of the SADCC nine, resulting from their different historical positions in the regional Southern African economy, for the contradictions among the nine are important obstacles to regional coordination. Finally, the study investigates SADCC planning in agriculture, coordinated by Zimbabwe. As a priority of SADCC, agriculture is the first productive sector that SADCC is trying to coordinate. There are some real successes for SADCC, ones which point to the idea that regional coordination may alleviate somewhat the long-term international economic