HARARE, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- The South African Development Community (SADC) experts are meeting in Harare to craft an industrialization strategy and roadmap for the region ahead of an extraordinary SADC summit to be held in Zimbabwe in April.
The two-day meeting which ends on Friday is being attended by senior officials of the taskforce on regional economic integration, including permanent secretaries of ministries of industry in the region.
The meeting will be followed by another meeting next week of the ministerial taskforce on regional economic integration, which will fine tune the strategy before it is presented at the extraordinary SADC heads of state and government summit.
While opening the meeting Thursday, Zimbabwean minister of industry and commerce Mike Bimha said SADC urgently required a strategy to accelerate industrialization and arrest the region's over reliance on exportation of raw materials.
"The region as a whole faces the challenges of weak industrial bases, lack of industrial diversity, inadequate capacities to value add and beneficiate products and dependence on primary and raw products," the minister said.
He also lamented declining trade among SADC member states, saying this could be due to inadequate capacity by member states to beneficiate and value add their raw materials.
The extraordinary SADC summit in April will be a follow up to the 34th SADC heads of state and government summit held in Zimbabwe last year which came up with a decision that another summit be held to discuss how the region could speed up industrialization.
