Introduction to special issue on regional growth opportunities

This issue contains seven articles addressing the major changes underway in the integration of economies in southern Africa. In the first article, Channing Arndt and Simon Roberts map out the changes in trade flows, which demonstrate the extent to which South Africa's diversified exports to Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries have grown, and provide an overall policy synthesis drawing from the articles in this issue and other sources.

The spread of major supermarket chains across southern Africa is assessed in two articles. Reena Das Nair maps the growing reach of supermarkets in southern Africa; this is changing the way food is purchased, with implications throughout the marketing chain. Supermarkets enforce tight quality and timeliness requirements and can have substantial power over suppliers (as they are the route to consumers). Shingie Chisoro, Reena Das Nair and Francis Ziba evaluate supplier capabilities and point to the importance of policies to support supplier upgrading and linkages with supermarket networks to access the growing consumer markets across SADC. In contrast, failure by local suppliers to link to supermarkets implies continuous undermining of local production.

Regional value chains are further considered in two articles that assess the poultry value chain from production, including links to feed, on to processing, cold-chain logistics and retail. Paul Samboko, Olipa Zulu-Mbata and Antony Chapoto explain the factors which have underpinned the rapid growth of poultry and related activities in Zambia. They highlight the potential for linked investments to realise the agricultural potential in landlocked areas with good rainfall, such as Zambia, to competitively supply rapidly growing urban poultry demand across the region. Phumzile Ncube maps out the investments made by large multinational corporations across the region at different levels of the value chain. Vertical coordination is frequently a feature of poultry value chains, permitting tight coordination but also potentially market power.

Efficient transport networks are key to success of regional value chains. Thando Vilakazi explains the high intra-regional road freight rates in southern Africa. A combination of regulatory restrictions and anti-competitive arrangements are undermining a more competitive regional freight industry that could facilitate increased regional trade. As with the overall regional integration agenda, there are very important political challenges if countries are to recognise the interdependencies in their economic development and the need to stand up to the lobbying by special interests.

Judith Fessehaie and Zavareh Rustomjee focus on understanding backward linkages from minerals to industrial production of machinery and other mining inputs. In essence, South Africa possesses substantial mining capabilities sitting on an already heavily exploited resource base, while Southern Africa sits on an array of mineral resources but is short on mining capabilities. With the appropriate policies, a regional approach can underpin mutually beneficial development.

ORCID

Channing Arndt http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2472-6300