New World Bank Country Representative Pays Courtesy Call on SADC Executive Secretary

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has been engaging and collaborating with the World Bank in a number of areas such as infrastructure development, statistics, finance and investment, development of value chains, disaster risk reduction, energy, and water, SADC Executive Secretary, Her Excellency Dr Stergomena Lawrence Tax, has said.

H. E. Dr Tax said this during the virtual courtesy call by the New World Bank Country Representative to Botswana, Mr Guido Rurangwa, on the 7th December, 2020. She congratulated Mr Rurangwa for the recent appointment and warmly welcomed him to Botswana and SADC.

She said industrialisation remains among the key priorities of SADC, and Value Chains in agro-processing, mineral beneficiation and pharmaceuticals have been profiled, and called upon the World Bank to collaborate with SADC on the development and operationalisation of specific regional value chains in these sub-sectors. She further requested the World Bank to support SADC in the areas that can enhance competitiveness and trade facilitation, through among others, energy and connectivity projects, and development and operationalisation of the One Border Post concept.

Mr Rurangwa thanked the Executive Secretary for the warm welcome and reiterated the World Bank's commitment and desire to work closely with SADC Secretariat and Member States in advancing the aforementioned potential areas of cooperation.

He pointed out that the World Bank's portfolio in the SADC region is large, covering economic diversification, human capital development, trade and transport facilitation, and capacity development which are implemented at both national and regional levels. These also include support to individual countries that are SADC Member States.

The meeting was also attended by Senior Programme Officer-Project Management Support, Mr Joseph Kamwenyi, the Executive Secretary's Assistant, Mr Alex Banda, and Resource Mobilisation Officer, Mr Andoniaina B. Andriamiandrisoa.