Spill-overs and Sustainable Development in Southern African Development Community (SADC): The Case Study

On the background of Balassa’s theory of economic integration quoted by Fioramonti & Mattheis [12] and “overlapping regionalism” (Panke & Stapel, [19]) in macro-regional terms with regard to SADC as a representative of African regionalism, interpretation of spill-overs as “impacts on other countries” (Sachs et al. [24]) is adopted in our book chapter with respect to sustainable development. The aim of our book chapter was to address the issue of international spill-overs in terms of sustainable development, with territorial scope represented by SADC countries, and temporal relevance to the pre-COVID-19 as well as the COVID-19 time period. The World Bank [38] ascertained that, overall, the “cross-border spill-overs have disrupted financial and commodity markets, global trade, supply chains, travel, and tourism” and, resting on the fact that Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries have been severely affected by the economic fallout linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, SADC [28] itself identified trade, tourism, transport, the hospitality industry, just like wholesale and retail trade as key areas of employment loss. Our analysis combined quantitative and qualitative research methods when measuring and interpreting trends in sustainable development, with findings of two-fifths of SADC countries demonstrating more sustainable development, and two-thirds of SADC countries with minor spill-overs.