Development in the SADC region is greatly hampered by unfair terms of trade, corruption, plunder, environmental damage, declined states, ever-increasing debt, and ineffective economic adjustment policies. NiZA’s Economic Empowerment Programme (EEP) aims to address these hampering matters together with its civil society partner organisations in the SADC region.
The objective of the EEP is:
to support civil society organisations in SADC countries that are active in influencing and improving the socio-economic development policies of their countries to be socially and economically balanced.
The objective of the PPP Sector Plan is:
to enable the people in Angola, Botswana, the DRC, South Africa and Zambia to have an effective say in the appropriation of the benefits of natural resource exploitation and the reduction of the negative impact of this exploitation. By means of supporting selected partner organisations in above mentioned countries to become effective stakeholders in the decision making processes with their governments and with their
extractive industries operating in their countries during the four year running period of the sector plan.
By monitoring the mining of minerals and the drilling of oil and its side effects, as well as the way revenues are being managed, civil society can hold governments and companies accountable for their actions and ensure that revenues won by the exploitation of resources will be used for the benefit of the population, instead of feeding conflict and corruption. The participation of civil society in the economic process can be enlarged by the reinforcement of lobbying and advocacy capacity through enhancing the capacity of organisations’ human resources and their organisational and institutional development.
NiZA intends to develop the PPP Sector Plan that focuses on five countries: Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Africa and Zambia. The significance of natural resources for the economies of these countries grants disproportionate and inequitable political influence to the foreign- or state-owned companies exploiting these natural resources. Furthermore, the extremely unequal division of revenues from the exploitation of natural resources, and the serious consequences of mining for the livelihoods of people in the regions bordering the extractive area, aggravate the potential for instability and the flare-up of conflicts. A countervailing power is needed to make sure that economic actors act as a ‘force for good’ rather than as a cause of further collapse. It should be emphasised that this is a summary of the identification proposal for the PPP Sector Plan. The CSOs visited in the 5 countries have provided input for this proposal in interviews with NiZA staff during the orientation missions. During the stages of development for the PPP Sector Plan input and feedback from CSOs will lead to further specification, extension and adjustments. The stages of development for the PPP Sector Plan and the PPP Sector Plan itself are considered and utilised as a flexible learning mechanism for both NiZA and the participating CSOs.