SADC’s geopolitical moment will not wait

The Durban summit identified the right economic priorities, but a geopolitical strategy and credible regional security approach are lacking.

Published on 21 August 2026 in ISS Today

By

Priyal Singh
ISS Senior Research Consultant and Signal Risk Geopolitical Analyst

This week’s Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders’ summit in Durban struck several high notes. These included President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to focus South Africa’s SADC chairship on infrastructure development, and the summit’s emphasis on using critical minerals to accelerate industrialisation and regional integration.

But have the region’s leaders fully grasped why these priorities matter so much now?

The Durban communiqué acknowledged an ‘evolving global geopolitical and economic landscape’ and urged member states to leverage emerging opportunities. It commended South Africa for convening a SADC foreign ministers’ retreat on geopolitical developments, which produced an implementation plan and roadmap.

But it didn’t say what exactly has changed and where the opportunities lie. Or how leaders will use this to drive industrialisation, integration and development.

Many of the answers lie in how major powers are engaging with the region. Washington is linking infrastructure investment in Zambia to critical mineral supply chains and the Lobito Corridor, while competing with China for strategic resources in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The European Union has deepened its critical minerals partnership with South Africa. Days before the summit, India revived preferential trade negotiations with the Southern African Customs Union, with access to minerals among New Delhi’s interests. Saudi and Emirati investors have meanwhile pursued Zambian copper assets.

SADC plays it safe with a consensus approach that often produces the lowest common denominator outcomes

This competition presents SADC with a fleeting opportunity. The region’s platinum, copper, lithium, graphite and rare-earth potential are increasingly viewed through national security and industrial policy lenses in Washington, Beijing and Brussels. These minerals are vital for future industries, with major powers competing to gain a strategic edge.

SADC leaders should define the terms for granting greater access. A regional framework could guide local processing, technology transfer and skills development and prevent states from competing with one another and undermining collective leverage.

The region’s geography is becoming more valuable too. The ongoing Middle East conflict has shifted maritime traffic around the Cape of Good Hope, benefitting bunkering hubs in South Africa, Namibia, Mauritius and potentially other countries.

But the summit said little about how these developments affect Southern Africa, let alone what a regional response would look like. Regional priorities should focus on port modernisation, customs efficiency, ship repair and bunkering, and better maritime domain awareness and security cooperation across the region’s eastern coastline.

SADC’s corridor development agenda similarly requires greater specificity. While Ramaphosa alluded to key corridors in his pre-summit address, the final communiqué did not. Nor did it note projects or reforms to accelerate their development. How the benefits of corridor development will be distributed among SADC countries also remains unclear.

This is where SADC’s long-standing institutional culture is a constraint. The bloc plays it safe with a consensus-based approach that too often produces lowest common denominator outcomes. No country will object to the communiqué’s text because nothing is presented as a challenge requiring immediate, tangible, collective action, or as a binary choice confronting the region. And no country is singled out for not pulling its weight.

The summit’s greatest deficiency was in security, notably the lack of a review of SADC’s failed DRC mission

The summit’s most serious deficiency, however, was in peace and security. The communiqué expressed solidarity with the DRC, welcomed developments in Mozambique and referred Madagascar to regional mediation mechanisms. But little was said on what SADC had learnt from the crises in these countries.

The absence of a public review of the failed SADC DRC Mission is especially troubling, considering its shortcomings in logistics, equipment, financing and political cohesion. The SADC Mission in Mozambique, despite stabilising some parts of Cabo Delgado, revealed weaknesses in intelligence, air support, logistics and coordination. Both should have prompted a rethink of how SADC designs mandates, generates forces, funds deployments, builds political strategies and determines exit conditions.

This is becoming more urgent as international appetite for large peace operations contracts. United Nations peacekeeping faces acute financial pressure, while South Africa aims to withdraw over 700 personnel from the UN’s DRC mission by year-end.

For now, external actors are largely filling the vacuum. Washington has become central to peace-and-minerals diplomacy in the DRC. In Mozambique, Rwanda remains the decisive external military actor in Cabo Delgado, with Europe helping sustain the broader security effort.

This should worry SADC leaders, who seem peripheral to pressing conflicts in their own backyards, while external actors determine these crises’ trajectories and outcomes. This blind spot is all the more apparent considering that no mention was made of how SADC works with the African Union’s (AU) peace and security architecture, or how important this is for sustainable African-led responses to insecurity.

SADC leaders seem peripheral to regional conflicts, while external actors determine these crises’ trajectories

The communiqué instead welcomed the SADC Panel of Elders and Mediation Reference Group – mechanisms that have faced criticism for privileging incumbent stability over political accountability. Their response to Madagascar’s 2025 coup, for example, was softer than the AU’s suspension of the country.

Governance is the other elephant in the room. Botswana’s 2024 peaceful transfer of power, modest improvements in Seychelles and Lesotho, and South Africa’s comparatively resilient constitutional order sit uneasily alongside democratic regression in the DRC, Tanzania, Eswatini, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Madagascar.

This emerging bifurcation matters for regional integration as railways, electricity grids, industrial corridors and shared value chains deepen material interdependence. They also make the effective functioning of a neighbour’s courts, customs administration, procurement systems, policing and economic governance increasingly consequential.

SADC cannot pursue deeper integration without treating governance concerns through a regional lens. A more integrated region would naturally require a more transparent, accountable and people-centred political culture.

Southern Africa has rarely possessed so many geopolitical bargaining chips at once. South Africa’s SADC chairship offers an opportunity to reconcile all of this into a more deliberate regional strategy.

Whether South Africa and SADC can move quickly enough remains to be seen. Without a robust collective approach, mineral supply chains, infrastructure finance and external trading arrangements will be locked in on fragmented bilateral terms, as external pressure for regional access mounts.

SADC needs to confront hard truths around its peace and security failures, and break with traditions that have made consensus a substitute for a truly impactful regional strategy.


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