Winner — Government category Sindiso Ngwenya
Sindiso Ngwenya, the secretary general of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern African States (Comesa), is a driving force behind a new and exciting move — creating what will be Africa’s largest free-trade area.
He has been instrumental in bringing together the region’s three economic blocs — Comesa, the East African Community and the Southern African Development Community — into a tripartite association. This is resulting in the three communities working rapidly towards trading as a single market of about 600-million people, leading to more political stability and prosperity.
Ngwenya says his ultimate goal is “to merge the three regional economic communities and contribute to the establishment of an African Economic Community”. Africa has been struggling to establish a viable economic group since the 1950s.
In post-independence Africa a number of regional integration entities were formed — there were at least five between 1975 and 1985. The main challenge has always been for the groups to work together, because most countries in Africa already belong to at least two regional groups on a continent with more than 10 regional groups.
Ngwenya is working to bring together the three biggest groups in the Southern African region, with 19 member states. He is the third secretary general since Comesa was transformed from the Preferential Trade Area in 1994, 13 years after its founding.
He was appointed in June 2008 and has more than 27 years of service in the industry, at the regional and multilateral levels. He played a key role in the design of the Comesa Customs Union and Common Investment Area.
He was also part of the team that crafted the Comesa Treaty and oversaw the transformation of the Preferential Trade Area into Comesa in 1994. Before his appointment as Comesa secretary general, Ngwenya spent 10 years as assistant secretary general in charge of programmes, responsible for overseeing their development and implementation.
And he has played a role in turning the secretariat into a dynamic and implementation-oriented institution. But it is his role in getting the three competing secretariats to reach an agreement for the benefit of the subcontinent that is seen as a major accomplishment.
They have agreed on a programme to harmonise trade arrangements, to the free movement of business people and on a joint implementation of inter-regional infrastructure programmes. The biggest commitment was the agreement that the three should start to merge into a single regional economic community.
However, according to Ngwenya, a quick realisation of the tripartite vision has one big challenge — the inability of member states to build political consensus with stakeholders in each country. “This is because the involvement of civil society and the private sector in regional integration has not been robust,” he says.
Nevertheless, he has faith in the support of the governments involved, saying that they have strongly supported it in political pronouncements, as evidenced by the summit declarations of the three regional organisations. “At a practical level, the governments are undertaking consultations with different stakeholders,” he says.
He believes the people in the region are ready for one big economic group “because the countries have espoused a pragmatic approach of economic integration as opposed to that of establishing a political federation or the united states of Africa”.
Ngwenya’s mission is to achieve sustainable social and economic development and to uplift the living standards of Africans through regional cooperation and integration, transforming and modernising the economies of Comesa member states, individually and collectively.
The judges singled him out as a driver of change for African economic development. “His dedication to poverty eradication and equitable development in Africa through enabling access to broader markets by businesses in the region is commendable,” the judges said. “Through his leadership, a future is being crafted for Africa that looks promising.”