The Southern African Development Community (SADC) on Monday launched a conflict management centre at its headquarters in Botswana, Mozambican State media reported.

Mozambique's President Armando Guebuza inaugurated the centre as head of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Organ on Politics, Defence and Security, reported Noticias newspaper on Tuesday.

"Today, we can congratulate ourselves for having a system that will enable us to detect signs of different kinds of threats before they become a reality," Guebuza said at the SADC headquarters in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana.

The centre will study early indications of crises, conflicts and natural disasters. It will link national crisis management centres of SADC member countries and also use internal centres within the organisation, such as the South African Regional Climate Outlook Forum, which studies climate change.

Guebuza challenged the centre to work proactively in studying threats, so that it would not "be dependent only on contributions from member states for its work", the newspaper reported.