SADC ESSAY WRITING COMPETITION FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS, 2015

SADC ESSAY WRITING COMPETITION FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS, 2015

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat has organized the SADC students essay writing competition for the year 2015. The essay writing competition is intended to broaden knowledge of the secondary school going population on SADC activities. The competition is open to all students from Form 1 to Form 6. The students are required to begin researching on the topic prior writing and submitting the same to their Heads of School. 

The 34^th SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government deliberated and agreed that the topic for the year 2015 be: "Leveraging the Region's Diverse Resources for Sustainable Economic and Social Development through Beneficiation and Value Addition". Discuss how this would result in Sustainable Economic Development.

The following set of questions below are meant to guide students when responding to the question above. Thus, on answering the question, students should answer all the questions listed below as follows: 

1. Discuss the abundant natural resources versus economic development in the SADC Region as a whole expounding the issues of ownership, monetary values and benefits accrued from them on annual basis over the past five years? 
2. Has the SADC Region ultimately benefited from its abundance of natural resources since the complete democratization with the fall of the Apartheid regime in South Africa in 1994?
3. Discuss the Beneficiation and Value Addition with concrete proposals for SADC Region on ownership and processing of mineral/natural resources and how they benefited SADC citizens if at all and what can be improved to maximize benefits to the SADC citizenry?
4. How should the SADC Region go about implementing the 34th Summit Theme in order for it to benefit the whole region including some of its Member States that might not have as much natural resources as the others?
5. What role should be played in the operationalization of the 34th Summit Theme by non-state actors in the SADC Region, thus, private sector, Non Governmental Organizations, Traditional Authorities and Local Communities?
6. As a secondary school learner, what do you think should be the education sector's role in the operationalization of the 34th Summit Theme to benefit the education sector in the whole region? 

Heads of schools are supposed to ensure that the students adhere to the following guidelines: 

1. The essay should not be longer than 2000 words and not shorter than 1000 words.
2. Where students have access to computers, they are advised to type their essays and submit both the soft and hard copies.
3. Students who will type their essays will have to sign and initial the hard copies to make sure that they have not altered.
4. The essay shall be written in English language.
5. The front or cover page will display the name, sex, class, school address and stamp, Headmistress/Headmaster's email address, signature, phone number, region and country.
6. The title of the essay should be written on the cover page and students should not paraphrase the title.
7. The Handwritten essays will be written on one side of the A4 paper with double margin of two centimeters.

Students are expected to begin writing immediately and submit their essays to their Head of school. The Head of school will then be expected to constitute a marking panel which will choose best essays of the school. The panel should go though the essays without marking them and choose three essays to be submitted to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education and Vocational Training not later than 15th April, 2015. The National Adjudication will take place from 2^nd - 11^th May, 2015 in order to get three entries which will be submitted to the SADC Secretariat in Gaborone, Botswana.

The same information can be found at on these websites: www.sadc.int; www.moe.go.tz; and www.pmolarg.go.tz 

*** Wishing you and your schools best wishes ***