• UK
  • 22:54 25 Nov 2009
  • |    Pretoria
  • 00:54 26 Nov 2009
 

What have we achived so far?

  • The Least Developed Countries’ Group in the World Trade Organisation represents the poorest countries in the world. The Regional Trade Facilitation Programme (RTFP) has supported them to help increase their “voice” and resulted in commitments from developed and developing countries for duty free and quota free market access;
  • COMESA, East Africa Community and SADC have agreed to reduce and harmonise all trade regulations.  This will slash trading costs and time from South Africa to Egypt and overcome some of the problems of overlapping regional groupings;
  • RTFP support agricultural exports have increased by over 1500 million tonnes in the past year. Our new Regional Standards Programme intends to increase the amount of horticulture products South African and European food retailers.
  • The first One-Stop Border post at Chirundu, between Zimbabwe and Zambia was agreed in August 2007. When implemented, border-crossing times could be substantially reduced from 3 days to 3 hours;
  • Through the Making Commodity Markets Work for the Poor (ComMark) Programme, jobs in Lesotho’s vital textile industry have risen from 38,000 in 2005 to 47,000 in 2007.
  • The Employment Promotion Programme (EPP) helped the South African Government, Business and Organised Labour agree to establish a Regulatory Impact Assessment  Unit , making it easier to create new jobs;
  • FinMark supported South African banks in implementing the Financial Sector Charter ensuring that over 3.3 million poor people have opened bank accounts;
  • The biggest HIV prevention intervention in South Africa, Soul City has had an impact on the significant decline in HIV prevalence rates amongst young women in the under 20 age group: it was 16.1% in 2004, 15.9% in 2005 and had dropped to 13.7% by 2006;
  • The Apparel Lesotho Alliance to Fight AIDS (ALAFA) Programme has seen 50% of garment workers gain free access to HIV education and prevention, and 25% have access to comprehensive HIV and AIDS treatment;
  • Established a Trilateral partnership with South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology to transfer tissue culture technology to Lesotho;
  • Signed up with other donors in a Joint Financing Agreement around SADC’s HIV and AIDS Business Plan;
    With AusAid, co-funded a centre of excellence on Hunger and Vulnerability Analysis in Southern Africa.
  • The HMG Africa Conflict Prevention Pool, helped to establish a Peace Mission Training Centre (PMTC) that will improve peace support operations;
  • Contributed £1,5m to the deployment of a South African peace-keeping force to Burundi;
    Supported work on transparency in oil revenue management in Angola through the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI;)
  • With UNDP and Irish Aid we helped the independent electoral commission in Lesotho to produce a credible voters roll.
  • Established a Behaviour Change Communication programme adapting SouthAfrican expertise in communicating responsible sexual behaviour, through expanding successful  initiatives such as Soul City


Share this with:


Address:

Department for International Development
2nd Floor Sanlam Building
Cnr Festival & Arcadia Streets
Hatfield 0083

Contacts:

Tel: 0027 12 431 2100
Fax: 0027 12 342 3429

Back to top