REGIONAL INDIC ATIVE STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT PL AN 1 5 2.3.3 Accelerated Economic Growth and Improvements in Macroeconomic Performance and Policy Management Member States. According to the 2000 SADC Regional Despite that significant improvements have been categories of human development. Seven Member States achieved in the area of macroeconomic management and fall in the medium human development category, with an performance, a lot still remains to be done if SADC is to index value of 0.500 - 0.799, whilst six are in the low human make a dent on poverty in the next decades. Clearly SADC development category with an index value below 0.500. Human Development Report, the average HDI for the SADC region in 1998 was 0.538 in comparison to 0.568 in 1995. The majority of SADC Member States fall within two broad GDP growth rate has to accelerate to a level above 7 The Report further revealed that on average, the SADC percent if the region is to achieve the MDG of halving region experienced a decline of about 5 percent in its HDI poverty by the year 2015 as recommended by the United between 1995 and 1998. The decline was attributed to a fall Nations. The foregoing discussion has also shown that in all the key variables of the human development index, other macroeconomic indicators such as, inflation, fiscal with real per capita income and life expectancy at birth deficits, current account deficits, resource gaps in savings accounting for the largest decline of 7.8 percent and 5.6 and investment and the burdens of external debt remain percent respectively. The reduction in life expectancy is far from the desired and sustainable levels which could largely due to the impact of the HIV and AIDS pandemic, set the appropriate stage for a successful cooperation and integration process. To accelerate economic growth, SADC Member States individually should intensify their efforts to implement comprehensive economic and social reforms within the NEPAD development framework, pursuing poverty reduction oriented policies, addressing good governance issues, infrastructure and production capacity constrains. At the regional level, guided by the RISDP, SADC should strive to implement the priority activities in the main intervention areas of regional cooperation and whilst the low economic growth was the major contributory factor to the drop in the real per capita income. Notwithstanding the above-mentioned overall declining trend, positive changes were registered in the three key variables other than life expectancy by some Member States. Seychelles and South Africa recorded about 25 percent and 17 percent growth in gross enrolment respectively. Adult literacy increased by between 6 and 15 percent in Namibia, Mozambique, Botswana, Tanzania and Lesotho. Real per capita income integration. SADC should also improve linkages with grew by about between 6 to 14 percent in Botswana, regional and global marketing networks and maximise Zimbabwe, Mauritius and Lesotho. in the opportunities brought about by international The SADC HDI is much lower when gender disparities economic partnership agreements (such as AGOA, and are factored into the three key components of human Cotonou Agreement), as well as developments in the development through the Gender-related Development area of ICT. Index (GDI). This gender disaggregated index stood at 0.536 in the late 1990s and declined by 0.87 percent from 2.4 SOCIAL AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT SITUATION AND INDICATORS the mid-1990s. This was mainly due to a fall in life 2.4.1 Overall Situation and Indicators 2.4.2 Poverty Situation The levels and rates of growth of human development, as Poverty in all its dimensions is one of the major measured through the Human Development Index (HDI), development challenges facing the SADC region. The which incorporates life expectancy at birth, combined gross poverty situation in the region is largely reflected in the enrolment ratios at all levels of education, adult literacy, low levels of income and high levels of human depri- and real per capita income, vary and fluctuate among SADC vation. Available statistics indicate that about 70% of the expectancy, adult literacy rate and combined education enrolment ratios.