News Update as @ 1530 hours, Wednesday 7 January 2015

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Zimbabwe's minerals export earnings decline

By Rumbidzayi Zinyuke

Zimbabwe’s diamond export earnings for the month of November went down 58,4 percent in November to $6,6 mil-lion from $16 million in October, figures from Zimstats have shown.

Unsorted diamonds worth $14,2 million were exported in the period, down from $18 million exported in the month of October. Industrial diamonds worth $7,5 million were exported, up from $1,6 million worth of diamonds exported in October.

There were no exports of non-industrial diamonds in the review period.

According to Zimstat, cumulative dia-mond exports in the 11 months to November 2014 totaled $207 million.

The diamond industry grew signifi-

cantly between 2009 and 2012. How-ever, export sales have been falling over the past 2 years due to a decline in production with sales falling by about 39 percent in 2013.

Government last year scraped royalties and value added tax from diamonds that are cut and polished by local com-panies as part of measures to promote local value addition and beneficiation

as well as employment creation in line with ZimAsset.

This is also expected to significantly grow earnings from polished diamond sales as the country has been earning less for raw diamonds.

Figures from ZimStats also showed that gold exports in the month of November went down 23 percent at $46 million from $59,3 million recorded

in October.

In the 11 months to November, cumu-lative gold export earnings stood at $496 million.

Gold deliveries have been increasing since the re-opening of Fidelity Printers and Refiners in 2013 paving the way for the country’s readmission to the London Bullion Market Association.

Platinum exports in the period under review totaled $9,2 million down from $13,5 million recorded in October. Cumulatively platinum exports brought in $125 million in the eleven months to November.

This could be attributed to the decline in production which resulted from the collapse of Zimplats’ Bimha mine in August last year leading to its closure. •

By Funny Hudzerema

The Netherlands government has extended $100 000 to Zimbabwe towards its participation at the Vakan-tibeurs Travel Fair and Roadshows Pro-gram

The aim is to boost Zimbabwe's lost market share in the Benelux region.

The Vakantibeurs fair will run from January 11 to 1, 2015 while the road-shows will run from January 19 to the 26th in Netherlands.

Vakantibeurs Travel Fair and Road-shows Program is an annual fair held in the Netherlands to market tourism products in the Benelux region which comprises countries such as Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg.

Speaking at a press conference today Minister of Tourism and Hospitality Industry Engineer Walter Muzembi has said stakeholders in the tourism sector must take this advantage to market its products competitively to increase the number of arrivals from the Benelux region.

“Pricing is the key feature in rebrand-ing Zimbabwe for the country to be competitive in its products and to being viewed as a safe destination to visit and spend holidays.

“It is imperative for Zimbabwe to employ aggressive marketing strate-gies to re-gain the lost market share and we have to enhance our marketing drive,” he said.

He added that government must revisit the pricing of local products to increase confidence to potential tourists who wants to visit the country for the coun-try to fully benefit from the Vakanti-beurs Travel Fair and Roadshows Pro-gram.

Currently the Benelux region contrib-uted a total of 14 000 tourist arrival in the country annually which have dropped from 40 000 in 1999.

He also added that countries like Egypt are benefiting from good pricing which allows tourists to flock in the country charging a total of $700 for a five days holiday which will cater for accommo-dation, air transport and other facilities.

“This initiative will allow Zimbabwe to achieve the vision of attaining $5 billion tourism economy by 2020 by growing the Benelux market to 50 000 visitors a year by 2020,” he said.

The Vakantibeurs Travel Fair and Road-shows Program will allow the Zimba-bwean Tourism sector to have a stand in the Benelux to advertise its tour-ism products and the Roadshows will increase awareness to tourists who haven’t visited country.

“The platform will serve as a network-ing platform for destination Zimbabwe especially in furthering destination presence and visibility,” he said.

The Netherlands ambassador to Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe Gera Sneller said her country will continue to support the tourism industry of Zimba-bwe for the country to be visible and regain its lost markets.

“Vakantibeurs will help Zimbabwe unlock various tourism and investment opportunities from the Benelux mar-ket,” she said.

She also added that the initiative will allow Zimbabwe to regain its lost mar-kets in the west and the European Union and this will also allow the coun-try to be back on the tourism map. •

Netherlands assists Zim tourism regain Benelux region market share

2 Tourism

Minister Mzembi

BH24 Reporter

AfrAsia Zimbabwe Holdings Limited (AZHL) has announced the appoint-ment of Hashmon Matemera as the managing director for AfrAsia Bank Zimbabwe Limited (ABZL) with effect from the beginning of this month.

“We welcome Hashmon to the Group and look forward to gaining from his vast banking experience as we endeav-our to implement various strategies to steer the Bank forward in our market,” said AfrAsia Zimbabwe Holdings Ltd group CEO Lyn Mukonoweshuro.

A holder of a Master of Science (Msc) in Economics (Zimbabwe), Matemera has over 17 years banking experience.

Prior to joining AZHL, he held various

executive positions at BancABC Zim-babwe.

In respect of its banking arm, AZHL

has since embarked on a turn-around strategy involving key local and inter-national investors as it moves to address its liquidity challenges.

In November last year, AZHL — in which Mauritian’s AfrAsia Bank Limited (ABL) has a controlling shareholding — announced plans to raise equity as well as and providing a Senior Secured Note (SSN) to avail immediate liquidity.

In 2011, ABL bought 35 percent in the then Kingdom Financial Holdings Lim-ited founded by Nigel Chanakira.

The group was then re-named AfrAsia Zimbabwe Holdings Limited as ABL increased its shareholding to over 50 percent last year. •

3 NEWs

AfrAsia Zimbabwe Holdings Ltd appoints Matemera as bank MD

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BH24

55 BH24

Powertel, a subsidiary of state owned power company, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) Holdings, has been unveiled as the southern African country’s fourth mobile network ser-vice.

Currently, Zimbabwe, with a popu-lation of 13 million people, has three operating mobile phone and internet service providers. They include the pan-African giant Econet Wireless, Telecel and Netone.

“This has always been Powertel’s objective to offer total telecommunica-tions solutions to Zimbabwe and Africa at large,” said Powertel’s marketing manager, Prosper Mutswiri.

Stoking competition

According to Potraz’s latest data, Econet Wireless has 8,5 million sub-scribers, Telecel 2,54 million users and state-owned NetOne 2,45 million sub-scribers, meaning the entire population is roughly accounted for the current operators.

However Powertel is now set to further stoke competition within a relatively small market by becoming its fourth player. This was made possible after it was granted a converged telecom-munications licence by the regulatory body, Posts and Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (Potraz), to pro-vide both voice and internet services in

Zimbabwe.

“To keep up with competition, you also need to be innovative hence we are not

diversifying as such but we are mov-ing fast to fulfil the set objectives of the business as outlined on its formation,” added Mutswiri. - Ventures Africa •

66 NEWs

Zimbabwe welcomes fourth telecom operator

Zimbabwe said indigenous farmers settled on land seized from its former white owners will have to get govern-ment approval for contracts to produce crops.

Farmers will also have to pay rent to the government for the land they’ve been allocated, Rural Resettlement Minister Douglas Mombeshora said today in a telephone interview from the country’s capital, Harare. The money raised will finance a national land audit next year,

said Mombeshora, who denied reports that the government would allow for-mer white farmers to lease land from its new occupants.

“There’s been no u-turn at all,” he said. “We don’t want to see the former farm-ers on the ground.”

Mombeshora said the move to control contract farming was intended to pre-vent crops being sold to third parties, a practise known as “side-marketing.” Farmers in Zimbabwe have tradition-ally grown crops like barley and seed corn under contract for companies such as brewer, Delta Corp Ltd., and seed merchant, Seedco Ltd., while tobacco traders have also adopted the practise in the past decade. - Bloomberg •

Zimbabwe plans to control crop-production contracts, levy rents

BH24

Latest figures show that Zimbabwe's trade deficit stood at $3 billion by November last year, and the sad sit-uation is that the relevant authorities seem not to have found an effective solution to this problem that continues to bludgeon our economy.

Investopedia.com describes a 'trade deficit' as "an economic measure of a negative balance of trade in which a country's imports exceeds its exports."

But critically - and this is particularly worrisome for Zimbabwe's current eco-nomic state - a trade deficit represents an outflow of domestic currency to for-eign markets.

Economic analyst Gilles Saint-Paul writing in The Economist says: "trade deficits are not a problem when they are the result of temporary imbalances between investment and savings. For example, an emerging country may need to invest a lot in physical capital, and it makes little sense for it to finance this investment with a reduction in con-sumption."

But we have to be honest with each other here and admit that Zimbabwe's

trade deficit is not of the type men-tioned above.

Ours is a deficit that has basically resulted from a loss of competitiveness overtime. And that should spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

Zimbabwe is losing vast amounts of monies(that is, the multi-curren-cies that are presently in use) into the region and internationally, sim-

ply because we are failing to export enough (which is rather odd for a coun-try that has traditionally prided itself in being a export-oriented economy.

Official figures from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency shows that imports in the first 11 months of 2014 stood at $5,8 billion while exports amounted to $2,8 billion.

And strangely enough too, we seen

to be importing extensive amounts of merchandise imports, the majority of which are produced right here in Zim-babwe.

Are imports always better quality? We think not.

Are imports always more affordable? Most likely.

The solution then, lies in the relevant authorities (both in the public and private sectors) putting in work to improve the country's industrial capaci-ties and doing business environment so that, firstly, we have significant levels and diversity of range of locally man-ufactured goods to place on the export market.

Second, if the business operating envi-ronment is improved significantly, this will help push down the cost of produc-tion for local firms, hence the resultant output will be price and quality compet-itive in the regional and international markets.

Achieving competitiveness will also help the Government achieve a level of fiscal sustainability. •

8 BH24 COMMENT

Enduring trade deficit needs urgent redress

The equities market was down for the third consecutive day this week as the industrial index shed 0.10 points to close at 160.59 points.

Hippo and PPC traded 5 cents lower to 50 cents and 170 cents respectively. Afdis lost 2 cents to trade at 45 cents,

Meikles shed 0.50 cents to 14 cents and Masimba dropped 0.30 cents to settle at 2 cents. On the upside, ZB Financial Holdings led the movers with a 2 cent gain to trade at 5.60 cents, Old Mutual added a cent to trade at 235 cents and Econet was marginally up by 0.01 cents to close at 60.01

cents.

The mining index was steady at 68.11 points as Bindura, Falgold, Hwange and RioZim were unchanged at 6 cents, 3 cents, 4.80 cents and 15 cents respectively. ― BH24 Reporter •

9 ZSE REVIEW

ZSE in third consecutive loss

REGIONAL NEWS 10

Cell C Pty Ltd., South Africa’s third-larg-est mobile-phone carrier, plans to tell regulators at a hearing next week that its business is threatened by Vodacom Group Ltd’s proposed acquisition of Neotel Pty Ltd.

Vodacom is already South Africa’s larg-est mobile-service provider and its 7 bil-lion-rand ($600 million) deal to buy the Internet provider shouldn’t be approved “because of the detrimental, indeed fatal, impact that this could have on competition in the electronic communi-cations market,” Cell C said in a state-ment to the Independent Communica-tions Authority of South Africa.

MTN Group Ltd, Africa’s biggest mobile-phone company, said in November that the transaction should be blocked on competition grounds as it would allow Vodacom to start a high-speed 4G mobile network before other operators. Telkom SA SOC Ltd, the continent’s big-gest landline provider, said in the same month that Neotel’s wireless spectrum should be reallocated to other operators to prevent the deal causing a “distortion of the competitive landscape.”

By acquiring Neotel’s customers, fiber lines and wireless capacity, Vodacom would become “a super-dominant oper-ator,” hurting competition and making it uneconomic for new entrants to join

the market, Johannesburg-based Cell C said in an Oct. 15 statement to regula-tor Icasa that was seen by Bloomberg News. The document was verified by a company representative, who said it reflects Cell C’s current position.

Vodacom’s competitiveness would be “unfairly” strengthened by control of Neotel’s wireless spectrum, so any such capacity not used by Neotel should be reallocated to other companies, said Cell C, which calculated its share of the mobile market at about 11 percent by revenue and Vodacom’s at more than 50 percent. Vodacom had domestic ser-vice revenue of 48.3 billion rand in the year ending March 31, 2014.

Vodacom would probably force Cell C and other competitors to stop leasing capacity on Neotel’s fiber network after the acquisition, Cell C said.

Icasa will hold a hearing on the deal on Jan. 15 and 16 in Johannesburg. Vodacom, which is 65 percent owned by Newbury, England-based Voda-fone Group Plc, agreed to buy Neotel from India's Tata Communications Ltd. in May to expand its network of high-speed fiber-optic cable for businesses and homes. Vodacom’s shares gained 1 percent to 124.72 rand as of 9:05 a.m. in Johannesburg, valuing the company at 184 billion rand. - Bloomberg •

Vodacom-Neotel tie-up would be 'super-dominant', Cell C says

South Africa's rand weakens as oil price tumble fuels investor jitters

South Africa's rand weakened against the U.S. dollar early on Wednesday as falling global oil prices, down 10 percent in the past two days, and worries over global growth prospects soured confi-dence in emerging market assets.

At 0600 GMT the rand traded at 11.7275 per dollar, 0.11 percent softer

following an overnight close of 11.7150 in New York, the currency failing to con-firm stops near the 11.6800 resistance level. Government bonds continued to be firm as investors sought safer bets in fixed income, with the yield on the benchmark paper due in 2026 shedding 3.5 basis points to a month-low of 7.755

percent.

Russia's rouble led the slide in emerging market currencies, falling by over 4 per-cent as the price of brent crude eased another 17 cents to $50.93 a barrel.

Euro zone inflation data due later in the session is expected to show a fall in

prices across the region, while a Reu-ters poll predicts Chinese GDP will slow to its weakest since 2009, as econo-mies globally continue to struggle and fuel uncertainty. Locally, South Africa's vehicle industry publishes new car sales data for December at 0900 GMT. - Reu-ters •

11 DIARY OF EVENTS

The black arrow indicate level of load shedding across the country.

POWER GENERATION STATS

Gen Station

6January 14

Energy

(Megawatts)

Hwange 316 MW

Kariba 614 MW

Harare 30 MW

Munyati 25 MW

Bulawayo 26 MW

Imports 30 MW

Total 1041 MW

29 December - Extraordinary General Meeting of the members of Zimplow Holdings Limited; Place: Main

Lounge, Royal Harare Golf Club, 5th Street Extension, Harare; Time: 12:00 hours

12 January 2015 - CBZ Extraordinary General Meeting; Place: CBZ Wealth Management Centre, Pomona;

Time: 08:30am

THE BH24 DIARY

12 ZSE

ZSEMOVERS CHANGE TODAY PRICE USC SHAKERS CHANGE TODAY PRICE USC

ZBFH 55.56 5.60 MASIMBA -13.04 2.00

OLD MUTUAL 0.43 235.00 HIPPO -9.09 50.00

ECONET 0.02 60.01 AFDIS -4.26 45.00

MEIKLES -3.45 14.00

PPC -2.86 170.00

IndicesINDEx PREVIOUS TODAY MOVE CHANGE

INDUSTRIAL 160.69 160.59 -0.10 POINTS -0.06%

MINING 68.11 68.11 0.00 POINTS 0.00%

Stocks Exchange

13 AFRICA STOCKS

Botswana 8,664.65 -11.96 -0.14% 12July

Cote dIvoire 256.50 -1.58 -0.61% 02Jan

Egypt 8,942.65 +16.07 +0.18% 04Jan

Ghana 2,287.32 +26.30 +1.16% 02Jan

Kenya 5,117.43 +4.78 +0.09% 02Jan

Malawi 14,886.12 +0.00 +0.00% 02Jan

Mauritius 6,795.35 +24.31 +0.36% 31Dec

Morocco 9,643.19 +23.08 +0.24% 02Jan

Nigeria 34,657.15 -27.17 -0.08% 31Dec

Rwanda 143.39 +0.20 +0.14% 02Oct

Tanzania 2,602.19 -30.74 -1.17% 28Oct

Tunisia 4,624.39 -39.32 -0.84% 07Mar

Uganda 1,942.77 -12.69 -0.65% 10Dec

Zambia 6,160.66 +12.17 +0.20% 31Dec

Zimbabwe 162.57 -0.22 -0.14% 02Jan

African stock round up Commodity Prices

Name Price

Crude Oil 1,300.91 -0.21%

Spot Gold USD/oz 1,292.63 -0.26%

Spot Silver USD/oz 19.38 -0.46%

Spot Platinum USD/oz 1,421.25 -0.33%

Spot Palladium USD/oz 798.50 -0.64%

LME Copper USD/t 6,770 -0.18%

LME Aluminium USD/t 1,780 -1.17%

LME Nickel USD/t 18,230 -1.73%

LME Lead USD/t 2,095 -1.41%

Quote of the day — "SuccESS IS gEttIng what you want. happInESS IS wantIng what you gEt." - Dale Carnegie Globalshareholder.com

14 INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Gold held below a three-week high after sinking oil prices and equities spurred the longest run of daily gains since October as investors awaited minutes of the Federal Reserve’s last meeting for guidance on U.S. mone-tary policy.

Bullion for immediate delivery lost as much as 0.4 percent to $1,214.17 an ounce, and traded at $1,214.92 at 12:56 p.m. in Singapore, accord-ing to Bloomberg generic pricing. The metal rose for a third day yesterday to $1,223.19, the highest since Dec. 16, on oil’s rout and concern Greece may drop the euro.

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index headed for the highest close on record before today’s release of the minutes of the Dec. 16-17 meeting, when the bank said it will be “patient” when considering the timing of the first rate increase since 2006. Gold priced in euros rose to the highest since Sep-tember 2013 before inflation data that may prompt the European Central Bank to start buying sovereign debt. Global shares lost 3.2 percent this year as crude oil tumbled to the lowest since

2009.

“Gold continues to benefit from risk aversion,” said Zou Lihu, an analyst at Citics Futures Co. in Shenzhen, a unit of China’s biggest listed broker-age. “Gold has moved higher despite the dollar’s strength and while buying interest has been good, the Fed min-utes may impede the rally.”

The minutes precede data due Jan. 9 on U.S. payrolls for last month, which are expected to show employers added 200,000 or more jobs for an 11th month, according to a Bloomberg sur-

vey. Monthly gains averaged almost 241,000 from January through Novem-ber, up from the prior year’s 194,000. The 2.7 million workers added to pay-rolls are the most since 1999.

SPDR Declines

Gold for February delivery slid 0.4 percent to $1,214.90 an ounce on the Comex in New York, after futures climbed yesterday to $1,223.30, the highest price since Dec. 16.

Holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust, the largest exchange-traded product backed by bullion, fell yesterday to the lowest level since September 2008, after expanding on Jan. 5 for the first time in two weeks.

Silver for immediate delivery dropped 0.5 percent to $16.4598 an ounce, after prices advanced yesterday for a third day, rising to $16.7091, the high-est level since Dec. 15.

Spot platinum traded at $1,219.63 an ounce from $1,219.44 yesterday. Pal-ladium was little changed at $803.45 an ounce. — Bloomberg •

Gold trades below three-week high before Fed releases minutes

By Kizito Sikuka

This year has provided an opportunity for southern Africa to consolidate gains and make plans to advance broader socio-economic independence and inte-gration as a region.

A major milestone for 2014 was the decision by the 34th SADC Summit held in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe to prioritise industrialisation in the ongoing review of regional plans under the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP).

Industrial development has been iden-tified as one of the main drivers of the integration agenda in southern Africa as the region moves away from an eco-nomic path built on consumption and commodity exports onto a sustainable developmental path based on value addition and beneficiation.

SADC Member States acknowledged that industrial development is central to the diversification of their economies; development of productive capacity; and the creation of employment in order to reduce poverty and set their econo-

mies on a more sustainable growth path.

However, the RISDP, which is a 15-year blueprint for SADC regional integra-tion and development, currently under review, was previously silent on the matter. As a result,the SADC Ministerial Task Force on Regional Integration was directed by Summit to develop a strat-egy and roadmap for industrialization in the region.

In this regard, an Extraordinary SADC Summit is planned for early 2015 to discuss industrialization, and ultimately approve the Revised RISDP.

With regard to infrastructure develop-

ment, the year 2014 saw the vision of southern Africa as an emerging econ-omy with infrastructure that works coast-to-coast, move closer to reality when the region approved a declaration that aims to strengthen cooperation in the development of regional infrastruc-ture projects.

When regional infrastructure such as roads, rail and energy transmission lines are in good condition, this lays the basis for numerous other benefits, includ-ing the smooth movement of goods, services and people across the region, thereby increasing intra-regional con-tacts and trade.

The SADC Declaration on Regional Infrastructure Development pays par-ticular attention to the transport needs of landlocked countries, which, “due to their geo-political circumstances, have special needs for transport and transit services and bear high costs for capacity and access to external markets.”

The declaration builds on the Regional Infrastructure Development Master Plan that was launched in 2012, targeting a total of 418 infrastructure projects to be

implemented by 2027.

These cross-border infrastructure projects cover the priority sectors of energy, transport, tourism, water, infor-mation communication technology and meteorology. On agriculture, SADC made significant progress towards food security by approving a regional food and nutrition strategy to ensure its cit-izens have access to both adequate and nutritional foods.

To be implemented from the period 2015-2025, the Regional Food and Nutrition Security Strategy aims to serve as a regional mechanism to facilitate the attainment of universal physical, social and economic access to safe, health and nutritious food to ensure the wellbeing of the people of southern Africa.

It is historic that SADC adopted the strategy in 2014 – a year that was declared by the African Union as the Year of Agriculture and Food Security. The SADC region also witnessed a major step towards the promotion of sustainable use and management of the environment, through the approval of the Protocol on Environmental Man-

15 aNalysis

2014 IN RETROSPECT: Driving regional integration

15 ANALYSIS

agement for Sustainable Development.

Previously, SADC had several protocols dealing with various aspects of the envi-ronment, most of which were sectoral in nature and did not take a holistic approach towards sustainable use and management. Therefore, the adoption of the Protocol is an important step in the process of harmonizing the laws that deal with environmental issues.

With regard health, the region inten-sified preparedness and response to monitor and prevent the spread of Ebola – a deadly disease that has affected parts of West Africa.

Among Member States, only the Dem-ocratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has reported Ebola cases, which were quickly dealt with, while none has been reported in the other 14 SADC Member States. However, medical specialists note that the strain of Ebola in DRC is different from that in West Africa, and has not spread from there, but is a sep-arate strain that appeared in the 1970s.

On the political situation in the region, southern Africa witnessed positive developments with five countries hold-

ing national elections — Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa.

In Namibia and Mozambique, these were transitional elections that pro-duced new presidents Hage Geingob of the ruling SWAPO party and Filipe Nyusi of the FRELIMO respectively, as the pre-vious Heads of State are standing down after a fixed term of office. Stability also returned in Lesotho, with support from its neighbours in SADC.

Lesotho has experienced some political challenges that worsened in August in the wake of the suspension of Parlia-ment and an alleged coup plot.

SADC, through its facilitator Cyril Rama-phosa, who is the South African deputy President, facilitated a dialogue among Lesotho’s political parties to address the challenges facing the mountain king-dom. The stakeholders have agreed to bring forward the General Elections to February 2015 from its original date of 2017, on a date to be set by King Letsie III.

The year 2014 also saw SADC lift its suspension on Madagascar following the

restoration of constitutional order under a SADC mediation process.

The island nation was suspended from SADC in 2009 when the country slid into a political turmoil after the opposi-tion leader sized power from the then president. However, noting the pro-gress in resolving constitutional order in Madagascar, SADC invited the country to resume its participation in all SADC activities. 2014 was mostly stable from a political perspective with relative peace in the more unpredictable parts of the region such as the DRC, although latest developments in the east of the country remain a cause for concern.

With regard to trade, SADC together with other regional economic communi-ties — the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the East African Community (EAC) moved closer to signing a historic agreement to establish an expanded market covering 26 countries.

The agreement will boost intra-regional trade, increase investment and promote the development of cross-regional infra-structure, as the so-called “Grand” Free Trade Area (FTA) has a combined popu-

lation of some 600 million people and a Gross Domestic Product of about US$1 trillion, covering half of the member states of the African Union, spanning the entire southern and eastern regions of Africa – from Cape to Cairo.

The Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe became the SADC chair in 2014, taking over from his Malawian counterpart, President Peter Mutharika, at the SADC Summit held in August. Mugabe will be deputized by Botswana’s President Seretse Khama Ian Khama, and as such the 2015 SADC Summit will be held in Botswana.

Presidents Armando Guebuza of Mozambique and Hifikepunye Pohamba of Namibia also bid farewell as southern African leaders at the SADC Summit.

Both leaders are serving their sec-ond and last terms in office as per their national constitutions, have been instrumental in pushing the regional integration agenda forward, and are firm believers in the notion that SADC member states have a lot to gain from working together. - Sardc.net •

16 aNalysis16 ANALYSIS