The Southern African Development Community (SADC) and its economic indicators 1961-2017

Abstract

The economic blocks have the purpose of grouping countries with the finality of obtaining benefits such as free circulation of goods, services and productive factors; a common commercial policy and coordination of macroeconomic and sectoral policies. However, there are disadvantages, due to the disproportion in territorial extension and availability of resources, as well as in the asymmetries of productivity determined by the level of industrialization and internal configuration of each country. The African continent is considered the poorest on earth for its economy, although in terms of natural resources it is on par with or superior to the wealth of Latin America. In this sense, the economic bloc of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is composed for 15 countries. Based on the secondary information related to the economic indicators and the use of descriptive and inferential statistic, the behavior considered before and after the signing of the agreement was analyzed and compared (year 1973).The objective of this paper is to describe the behavior of the economic indicators in the SADC member countries considering the before and after signing the agreement.