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Understanding the role of physical space and spatial structures in economic growth is crucial to ensuring equitable development takes place in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.
Despite a lack of readily packaged spatial economic growth and development data, a recent CSIR scoping study presents a first-cut spatial development perspective on southern Africa. The study highlights the need for placing emphasis on and coordinating spatial planning, including activities regarding human settlements and urbanisation, for all 14 SADC member states. Such activities would be part of other SADC activities that aim to provide relevant spatial data to prospective investors, policy makers and other stakeholders for informed decision-making.
The CSIR recommends that the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) engages with the SADC secretariat and its development partners about hosting the interim spatial planning office, with the aim of the eventual formal acceptance and establishment of a permanent platform.
The DBSA contracted the CSIR to undertake the research, which took the form of interviews with key role players, project workshops and intensive desktop analyses, particularly with reference to Lesotho, South Africa, Zimbabwe as well as other SADC states where data were available.
The study scanned levels of poverty and inequality, infrastructure provision, regional integration and development impact. Researchers investigated and subsequently enumerated key elements needed to ensure southern African responds sustainably to socio-economic development needs.
The study confirms that development benefits and impacts are not uniform throughout the SADC region. Accessible and high-economic opportunity areas such as cities, rich agricultural areas, mining corridors, fisheries and the wildlife industry are better developed compared to remote, resource-poor rural and peri-urban areas. Starting with existing corridors, member states could cascade socio-economic development endeavours to adjacent areas to ensure direct benefits and spin-offs are shared. In this regard, a serious need exists for substantial infrastructure investment, for example in transport (roads, rail and ports) and information and communications technologies.
Outside of South Africa, more than 70% of SADC comprises predominantly rural dwellers. A major finding of the study is that rural development in all SADC member countries is a prerequisite for socio-economic advancement.
Given the synergies between urban and rural areas, the CSIR recommends that the DBSA supports infrastructure development in existing urban and rural nodes with development potential, as these promote efficiency, for example, in labour and resource utilisation, spatial distribution and differentiation in the SADC space economy.
The CSIR hopes to undertake a much more detailed, on-the-ground study of the region to generate spatial data profiles and packages for better informing decision-making and development.
Enquiries: CSIR Communication
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