Namibia Embassy Berlin -

• Your Excellency, Comrade Robert G. Mugabe, President of the Republic of Zimbabwe and Chairperson of SADC;

I am honoured to join this august gathering in Gaborone, where my delegation and I have received excellent hospitality since our arrival. I thank my brother, Lt. Gen. Seretse Khama Ian Khama, President of the Republic of Botswana, for making us feel at home.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

As a pan Africanist, and coming from a country that suffered the brunt of colonial rule, it is with great joy and pride that I present my maiden statement to this august gathering. For us to deepen regional integration, we need to revisit the road, which we have traversed. The origin of our regional integration forms part of the broader pan Africanist agenda, which is rooted in the struggles of Africa against the scourge of slavery, racism and colonialism.

To locate my statement, I would like to delve in the historical context of our organization and the broader concept of Pan Africanism. Most of us recall the historic Casablanca and Monrovian blocs. The former led by Kwame Nkrumah, who advocated for the immediate formation of a union Government of Africa, while the latter was led by Senghor of Senegal and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania who were the first to advocate for economic regional integration. This was the birth of Regional Economic Blocs such as SADC, ECOWAS, COMESA and others.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

SADC has come a long way since its establishment. Starting off as a solidarity movement, then referred to as the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), whose main aims were to advance the cause of national political liberation in Southern Africa and to lessen dependence on Apartheid South Africa.

On this day, 17 August 1992, exactly 23 years ago, the SADC Treaty was signed in Windhoek. It is no coincidence that I deliver my maiden speech at this historical conjuncture. The region continues to make great strides towards a common vision of regional cooperation and integration. We have a lot to celebrate in SADC. Our people are free from the yoke of colonial rule and a strong democratic culture has been entrenched in our countries. Our economies have been stabilized and we have deepened economic integration through adoption and implementation of various protocols.

The fiscal positions of our economies are strong and debt has been well contained. We can, therefore, confidently say that democratic and macroeconomic architecture is firmly in place.

On the political front, African democratic institutions have matured, civil wars are no longer the order of the day, and our President's retire in dignity. Those who assume power through coup d'etats are not recognized and our elections are free and fair.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen

While we celebrate our successes and achievements with respect to our political and economic architecture, we also take note that poverty levels remain high. Many of our people lack basic needs. This is painful for a region abundant in natural resources. Our people do not eat natural resources. Our people do not eat democracy. Our people do not eat good constitutions. Democracy is however a condition sine quo non to provide our people with their basic needs.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The focus of our Summit on industrialization and how to bring it about is timely. We must act with a sense of urgency to ensure that value addition becomes the mainstay of our economies. Exportation of raw materials simply means exportation of jobs. In effect, it denies us the opportunity to industrialize our countries and to fully develop our human capital. We need to bring a halt to the existing trend by which we trade in goods that we do not consume and consume goods that we do not produce.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

For our economies to industrialize, reliable electricity supply is critical. Regional cooperation will be key to ensuring that SADC urgently resolves our electricity deficit. Another burning issue requiring regional cooperation is the severe drought affecting our region.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen

To reduce income inequalities and promote the welfare of our people, we declared full-scale war on poverty in Namibia. To this end, we have created a Ministry of Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare to ensure focus and coordination of all poverty alleviation and eradication programs. One of the first steps taken after my inauguration was to increase the old age grant by 66%. This had the immediate effect of reducing the childhood poverty rate. In the spirit of "No Namibian will be left out", we recognize that poverty eradication is not possible if we leave our female population behind. Women constitute half of our population and in this regard, Namibia benefitted from the SWAPO Party's internal reform of its party list system, to include, 50/50 representation of women. Following SWAPO's victory at the national electoral polls, female representation in Parliament increased from 24% to 47%. The top four in government are also 50/50 with our first female Prime Minister and a female Deputy Prime Minister who is also the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation.

Women occupy strategic portfolios such as Home Affairs, Urban and Rural Development and Education, with both ministries responsible for lower and higher education headed by female Ministers and Deputy Ministers.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen

In Namibia, our debt is well contained at 25 percent as a ratio of GDP, and we are able to fund Government operations entirely from domestic resource mobilization. We borrow externally only to fund development projects. It is due to this prudent macro-economic management that Namibia is able to retain its triple B plus rating.

If we would like to see sustained and broad based economic development in our region, we need to reduce our dependency on official development aid, and we must safeguard our economic sovereignty. No matter how meager our financial resources may be, I believe that if we pull together in the spirit of Harambee, we will achieve our objective of an industrialized and prosperous region.

We must equally work hard to reduce our dependency on traditional sources of revenue and lending. We must diversify our domestic revenue sources, and create well-capitalized local and regional financial institutions to fund our developmental agenda.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen

Discrepancies in income both across nations and within nations are on the increase. The rich seem to be getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Our region is not immune to this trend. However, for our prosperity to be sustainable, it must be shared prosperity.

With the Post-2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the African

Union 2063 Development Agenda, and our own Regional Policies on Development, the necessary frameworks are in place to take our Region to greater heights.

With these remarks, I thank you for welcoming me to this SADC Family, and I look forward to working closely with all of you to build a strong and prosperous region where no SADC citizen will feel left out.

I thank you.