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Message: [QUOTE="Nehanda, post: 29123, member: 2262"] Next week, a big meeting is going down in Victoria Falls. It's called the 40th SADC Technical Barriers to Trade Cooperation Structures meetings. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is putting it together. They want to get rid of trade roadblocks and beef up economic teamwork in the region. The meeting will last five days, from March 24 to 28, 2025, at the Peniel Retreat Centre in Victoria Falls. The SADC Secretariat and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce are organizing it together. They're bringing in key players from all over, like government reps, regulatory bodies, and industry experts. The main goal is to speed up the matching of standards, improve quality control, and smooth out trade across the 16 countries in the group. The SADC Protocol on Trade is a big deal here. It's all about making trade easy by getting rid of pointless regulatory speedbumps. They're gonna zero in on the main parts of the SADC TBT Cooperation Structures. These are the teams that handle stuff like standardization, accreditation, legal metrology, technical regulations, and getting stakeholders on board. They work hard to make sure regional standards line up with international ones, crank up how they recognize conformity assessments, dial in measurement compliance for fair trade, and get policies in sync for a clear regulatory setup. The meeting will also check in on how the SADC Secretariat has been helping Member States implement the Standardisation, Quality Assurance, Accreditation, and Metrology (SQAM) Programme. They will discuss where they are with reviewing the TBT Annex and how they will align regional policies with worldwide trade requirements in the future. Intra-African trade has been picking up steam, especially with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in play. This SADC move is a big step towards making a market more competitive and connected. By cutting back technical barriers, the bloc wants to attract investment, boost industrial growth, and help local businesses break into international markets. Delegates from all SADC Member States and representatives from regional and international organizations are expected to attend. What they discuss will shape how trade looks inside SADC and set the stage for wider conversations with global trading partners. [/QUOTE]

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