The 38th meeting of the of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Council of Ministers opened in Lusaka, Zambia Saturday with officials putting emphasis on the theme of next week’s Summit "COMESA: Towards Digital Economic Integration.”

Michel Sebera, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, represented Rwanda at the Ministerial meeting.

According to the regional bloc’s Secretariat, the theme for this year’s Summit scheduled for July 18 to 19 is designed to rally member States towards the full adoption of digital technologies.

The focus is on establishing seamless processes across the 19-member region to enable ease of doing business or trade and to enhance regional integration using ICT as a tool.

The outgoing Secretary General, SindisoNgwenya, said the theme is timely on account of the fact that three elements – knowledge management, learning and innovation – in the 21st century will define competitiveness of nations and regional economic blocs.

"The process of globalization has and continues to be aided by information communication technologies and software application,” he said.

Sindiso Ngwenya, the outgoing Secretary General of COMESA. Courtesy.

Ngwenya also highlighted the key drivers for the rapidly evolving digital global economy that will underpin the fourth industrial revolution which is disrupting the Henry Ford model of mass production to customized production.

"These are artificial intelligence, 3D Printing and Nano Technology to mention but a few”.

With respect to trade facilitation, Ngwenya said, digital applications will see the 21st Century move from national processes and controls to virtual regional and global processes that eliminate fragmented national border controls through application of block chain technology which essentially "is a distributive ledger for sharing information among different parties in real time”. 

"The ledger which has been used by book keepers and accountants since the thirteenth century, has thanks to modern technologies, become a veritable instrument for ushering in a borderless economy within COMESA and indeed the rest of the world”.

The Vice President of Zambia, Inonge Wina, told the Council of Ministers that the theme of the meeting is timely as it stresses the importance of embracing ICTs in all regional integration programmes in the wake of digital economic integration.

"These realities have compelled the COMESA to adopt digitisation to entrench information communication technologies in its delivery of programmes,” Wina said.

The drive towards digital economic integration within COMESA was advanced in November 2017, in Zambia, during the previous Council of Ministers meeting where delegates stressed the need to embrace digital technologies in the implementation of regional integration programmes.

According to Wina, it is encouraging to note that the momentum on the topic has been maintained and escalated for detailed discussion during the latest session.

"There is no doubt that technology is essential for driving growth at national and regional level. There is strong evidence that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) fueled global productivity throughout the 1990s and has remained a key driver of growth since then,” she noted.

Wina said ICT ranks high as one of the transformative breakthroughs in this decade.

"Quick, reliable and versatile technologies have supported increased efficiency in among other sectors; agriculture, trade and trade facilitation, finance and health by providing improved broadband networks and knowledge management”.

Earlier this week, Zambia’s acting Minister of Commerce and Industry, Matthew Nkhuwa, said that since the establishment of the bloc’s Free Trade Area in 2000, intra-COMESA total exports increased from $ 1.5 billion in 2000 to $ 9.6 billion in 2015.

However, a slight decline of $1.6 billion was recorded in 2016 due to, among others, drought, which affected most of the countries.

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