“Services cover a wide variety of economic and social activities. They embrace communications, transport, finance, energy distribution, construction and business services (intermediate services), as well as final-demand services such as tourism, recreation, education, health and environmental services. This paper explores the challenges surrounding the liberalisation of movement of natural persons in Southern Africa. In particular, it assesses progress in facilitating intra-regional trade through the liberalisation of cross-border movement of natural persons as service providers within the Southern African Development
Community (SADC).First we provide some background information on how WTO members, including SADC states, have generally responded to the need for liberalisation of temporary movement of service providers. We then give an overview of the barriers affecting the movement of persons, including services providers, within SADC, and the general intra-region migration trends. We then examine current regional integration policies that have an impact on Mode 4 liberalisation in the region, and how the countries concerned are implementing them or responding to the challenges they pose. The final section sketches out recommendations and conclusions based on this study.”
