Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries this week agreed to seek private-sector cooperation to reduce the cost of communicating across the borders within the region.

This followed a meeting between SADC Communications Ministers in Johannesburg this week to discuss postal services, mobile roaming, broadband and digital migration between the regions, where a progress report on the “roam like a local” project was examined.

“It was agreed that within the policies and laws of the respective countries, regulators and, where appropriate, Ministers will seek to get greater cooperation of the mobile operators for this programme,” said Communications Minister Yunus Carrim.

“Given the considerable interdependence of our countries in the Southern African region, we agreed to cooperate more effectively in strengthening the information and communications technology (ICT) sector in the region,” he noted in a statement.

Carrim pointed out that broadband, mobile roaming charges, postal services and digital migration, which were all linked, remained crucial to the ICT sector’s contribution to economic growth and development in the SADC countries.

The Ministers also agreed to accelerate progress towards universal broadband access and “harmonise” policy and regulations for effective use of spectrum and frequency allocation plans to increase economies of scale and meet growing demand for broadband services.