The SADC Secretariat in partnership with the SADC Business Council and the government of Malawi have began preparations for the 5th Annual SADC Industrialisation Week (SIW). The event will take place at Bingu wa Mutharika International Convection Centre, Lilongwe, Malawi from 22-26 November 2021. This year’s event will allow for both physical and virtual participation due to COVID-19. Only 200 participates are permitted to participate physically.
After a pause in 2020 due to COVID-19, the 2021 SIW event will follow the successful SIWs held in the Kingdom of Eswatini, Republic of South Africa, Republic of Namibia, and in the United Republic of Tanzania over the last six years.
The SIW is an annual public-private engagement platform aimed at fostering new opportunities for Intra-African trade, developing cross border value chains and identifying investment opportunities in Southern Africa.
Annually, the SIW brings together leading private sector expects, regional and global policy makers, Development Finance Institutions, SADC officials, donors, civil society and leading industrialists and captains of industry in SADC and in the continent to identify investment opportunities, industrialisation bottlenecks and jointly recommend solutions.
These events outlined the main challenges faced by businesses when conducting trade in the region and produced declarations whose outputs were fed into the SADC Heads of State and Government summits for actioning.