Chairperson, hon members, South Africa stands out as a peace-seeking and peace-loving country that seeks to follow the principle of live and let live. While South Africa shot out, like an adolescent who shot out of his clothes in comparison to her neighbours on the continent, our country is striving not to play big brother.
There are a number of memoranda of understanding that have been signed with the Republic of Congo to change Africa's energy sector and the provision of electricity utility. The Mountain Kingdom has entered into an agreement with South Africa to cater for digital migration, cyber security, home and away roaming, postal services and broadband.
It is worth noting that South Africa and Namibia are great economic partners with Namibia, two-thirds of their foreign trade being of South African origin. While there are partners and friends of good will, the same cannot be said for Swaziland, which has turned out to be too parasitic on the Republic. But if they are not propped up, the fear is that they will invade our country.
It has to be borne in mind that South Africa plans to create the South African Development Agency, which will drive development partnerships to build innovative, proactive and sustainable partnerships to advance African development. One would realise that we are trying to confine ourselves strictly to Africa.
The Republic is turning into the catalyst driving the economy on the continent. This is attested to by holding the Common Market for Eastern and Southern African Tripartite heads of state, which resolved to address the challenges associated with facilitating the movement of businesspeople across regional economic communities, together with infrastructure development.
It is trite to ascribe the resurrection of the Burundian economy to South Africa. Except for the defence co-operation that is in place, South Africa has economic co-operation and a bilateral co-operation in the fields of sports and recreation with that country.
The memoranda of understanding on ICT, economic and technical co-operation, tourism, co-operation in the fields of oil and gas, the waiver of visa requirements to holders of diplomatic and official passports are in place between South Africa and Ghana, which also ensure that the economic situation is improving. All these measures have been put in place to enable economic activity between our countries and all these other countries.
Finally, South Africa is the pivot around which the economy of the African continent will revolve for some time to come. I thank you.