Southern Africa is made up of 14 countries with a total population of 207,8 million people, the third most populated region in Africa after, West and East Africa respectively. Like most regions south of the Equator, this region is predominantly of Christian faith with a strong English influence, except for the two Portuguese former colonies of Angola and Mozambique.
Like most regions Southern Africa is also diverse in its ethnic distribution, however most business is conducted using English in most territories, which is a Legacy of British colonization in large parts of the area.
All the countries in this block are part of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). There have been certain moves to drive integration among certain countries within the community, such as the use of the South African Rand in a few countries like eSwatini, Lesotho, Namibia, and acceptability of the currency in certain parts of Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The community will need to be more deliberate with driving uniformity in this regard and push for a single currency for the entire region, if not a continent wide one.
It is clear from examples of various common monetary areas that exist in the world that this is the only way to go to foster intra-regional trade. The road infrastructure connecting Southern African countries is largely well developed, with a lot of goods moving in long haul trucks across borders.
Under the Free trade agreement the movement of these goods will need to be made easier, with the removing of borders to enable easier flow. This however would need to be supplemented by the upgrading or development of rail infrastructure that connects the region for the movement of large goods.
The main economic activity in the region includes agriculture, tourism, financial services, mining, diamonds, vehicle manufacturing, fisheries, oil and gas. The economies are largely consumer driven with industrial capacity having significantly reduced with the global over reliance on China starting to catch up, with industrial jobs diminishing.
Southern Africa has very well developed broad band infrastructure which has been rolled out over the last few years and the Telecommunications infrastructure is world-class. Telecommunications providers have already started testing 5G technology and in some case have launched the latest generation of mobile technology which promises to provide super high speed internet connections in excess of 100 Megabytes per second (mbs) in download speeds.
This infrastructure is set to drive the growth in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, knowledge and information driven economy and interconnectedness within the region and globally. The price of achieving broadband access across Africa is $100bn.
SADC should move with speed to integrate, building on it existing attributes and infrastructure. Infact on the continent Southern Africa should be among the leading regions in the integration stakes if the physical barriers to trade and movement of people are dismantled. Forming a common monetary union should be a priority at a continental level and emerging technologies (i.e. Fintech and Blockchain) should be explored to achieve this end.
Regional review concluding notes
Based on our analysis of the regions Africa can build itself up again through unity from the ground up. Each of the five regions reviewed in this blog can become autonomous almost self sustaining provinces of the greater African continent, operating regionally, borderless, trading among each other and with a common monetary union in the entire continent (a single African currency).
An additional region that has been identified is the African Diaspora also totaling a significant number of approximately 170 million people living outside of Africa. This is called the sixth region of the African Union. The Diaspora have acquired skills and resources over the years that can be applied back home in Africa to kickstart the ‘Africa Rising Project’. This way all the money the Diaspora sends back home for consumption, can now be used to invest in Africa!
The table below illustrates the human resource that Africa has at her disposal to rebuild Africa for Africa, starting today:
| Region | Total Population (in millions) |
| East Africa | 293,2 |
| West Africa | 397,3 |
| North Africa | 189,6 |
| Central Africa | 153,2 |
| Southern Africa | 207,8 |
| African Diaspora ’The Sixth Region’ | 170,0 |
| Grand Total | 1 411,1 |
