Business has to be able to fire on all cylinders if the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is to achieve its goals of increasing intra-regional trade to at least 35% (from the current 2,5%) and form a free trade area by 2008, followed by a common market in 2015. It must be made easy as possible for countries to trade with one another.
This is where the Association of SADC Chambers of Commerce & Industry (ASCCI) comes in. ASCCI was launched in its present form in 1992 to act as the voice of business in the region. It represents 18 national chambers of commerce in all 14 SADC states - namely, Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, SA, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Its primary objective is to encourage the governments to implement policies conducive to doing business in the region, to develop mechanisms to increase capital flow and foreign direct investment and to promote enterprise, SMME and industrial development.
WHAT IT MEANS
 ASCCI has the will to promote business
All SADC governments need to be of help
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The private sector is relatively small in most of the SADC. The key exception is SA, the region's economic dynamo, which SADC was, in 1980, originally formed to reduce the region's dependence on. That was in the apartheid era. Today the SADC's quest, together with a free SA, is regional economic integration.
In 2002 ASCCI signed a memorandum of understanding with the SADC secretariat, making it (on paper at least) the secretariat's private-sector partner.
"Our role is to unleash trade and investment opportunities in the region," says ASCCI CEO Sipho Mseleku. "We represent the interests of the private sector to ensure that business creates wealth so that the region's economies can grow at increasingly higher rates and thereby generate employment and reduce poverty."
Mseleku was appointed CEO in 2004, on a five-year contract. Previously hosted by Mauritius and Malawi, the ASCCI secretariat is now based permanently in SA. The CEO is appointed by an executive council of five drawn from a general assembly comprising the CEOs and presidents of affiliated chambers.
Lobbying government
ASCCI president and head of the Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce & Industry Harrison Kalua describes the association's main role as "lobbying governments so that business is carried out in a better environment". However, "very little has been carried out so far, as the organisation is still in its infancy as an autonomous body. But it has done well in providing information to members on business opportunities, including launching SMME toolkits in various countries."
An important tool in ASCCI's advocacy and policy-influencing role is the Regional Business Climate Survey it conducts in member states (see "Cautious optimism").
Kalua says the key business opportunities within SADC lie in the expanded market, adding "for business to grow one needs a viable market whose disposable incomes for people are good".
A major issue facing ASCCI, according to Lesotho Chamber of Commerce & Industry president Simon Phafane, is that "government officials continue driving the process with little concern about the role the private sector can play". Obviously referring to Zimbabwe, he also calls for SADC to intervene in pockets of instability caused by undemocratic regimes "before more damage is inflicted on the entire region".
He says ASCCI should be given the chance to work more closely with the SADC secretariat. "The reality is that it is the private sector and not the public sector that turns regional economic integration into a meaningful venture."
Drawbacks
Kalua says it has not been easy to do business in the region because:
- The cost is high, infrastructure is under-developed, there are electricity blackouts, water shortages and no proper roads;
- High customs duties and government reluctance to open up borders, which other regional blocs such as the European Union are doing;
- High interest and inflation rates; and
- Political and economic instability.
He says the biggest challenge small and medium enterprises is access to finance.
"Currently, the visibility of ASCCI activities in member states is not good as such," says Kalua. However, Mseleku has more recently been criss-crossing the region promoting ASCCI services such as its business toolkit. Kalua says the business climate surveys have helped local chambers in talks with their governments.
Federation of Swaziland Employers & Chambers of Commerce CEO Zodwa Mabuza says: "ASCCI has been useful in organising successful trade missions for the region." She too says the SMME toolkit has been "a resounding success, as it covers the critical areas that tend to be overlooked by most businesses".
According to Botswana Chamber of Commerce & Industry executive director Maria Machailo-Ellis: "ASCCI is not generally known in our country. But as a regional private-sector body, it has the potential to influence and drive the process of regional integration [in complementing government efforts]."
She says the main challenges are:
- The lack of regional infrastructure for the transport of goods and people;
- A lack of policies in some member states to facilitate trade and compliance ;
- Overlapping membership in different regional groupings such as the Southern African Customs Union and Comesa;
- Most of the region's exports are commodities that are similar; and
- Onerous border and customs procedures in most member states.
The key opportunity, she says, is access to a much bigger market.
Overarching perspective
Though the national business chambers are conduits to government, the advantage of ASCCI is that it takes a regional view of the issues facing the private sector, says Neuma Grobbelaar, head of the Business in Africa Programme at the SA Institute of International Affairs.
Potential investors generally take a regional view as individual countries' have relatively small markets. ASCCI's business climate survey, she adds, highlights problems that need to be addressed by governments. ASCCI would have more leverage than local chambers in some cases by removing the political sensitivity of dealing with government.
