The Southern African Development Community is now accepting applications for its Secondary School Essay Competition to raise awareness among the youth
SADC Secondary School Essay Competition 2025
Deadline: 31 May 2025
The Southern African Development Community is now accepting applications for its Secondary School Essay Competition to raise awareness among the youth to research and articulate issues to support the process of SADC regional cooperation, integration and socio-economic development.
The future prosperity of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region lies in the hands of young people. Following a Decision of the SADC Council of Ministers in Windhoek, Republic of Namibia in 2000, SADC introduced the annual SADC Secondary School Essay Competition. The SADC Secondary School Essay Competition is open to all Secondary School learners in the SADC Member States.
Learners are required to submit their essays to their Ministries responsible for Education through their School head teachers. The Ministry responsible for Education selects the best three essay winners at national level to compete at regional level.
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Objectives
The objectives of SADC, as stated in Article 5 of the SADC Treaty are to:
- achieve development and economic growth, alleviate poverty, enhance the standard and quality of life of the peoples of Southern Africa and support the socially disadvantaged through regional integration;
- evolve common political values, systems and institutions;
- promote and defend peace and security;
- promote self-sustaining development on the basis of collective self-reliance, and the inter-dependence of Member States; achieve complementarity between national and regional strategies and programmes;
- promote and maximise productive employment and utilisation of resources of the region;
- achieve sustainable utilisation of natural resources and effective protection of the environment; and
- strengthen and consolidate the long-standing historical, social and cultural amities and links among the peoples of the region.
Topics
The topic for the 2025 SADC Secondary School Essay competition is; “How can innovation enhance SADC industrialization and sustainable economic growth and development?”
The topic is derived from the theme of the 44th Ordinary SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government held in the Republic of Zimbabwe, which is; “Promoting Innovation to unlock opportunities for sustained economic growth and development towards an Industrialized SADC”. The theme seeks to recognise that innovation is a fundamental instrument with significant potential to drive priority sectors of manufacturing, mineral beneficiation and agro-processing to enhance industrialization and economic growth of the SADC region.
Prize Information
The winning entry will receive a once off prize money which will cover the outright payment of the Intellectual Property Rights of the essay. The monetary prize will be accompanied by a certificate signed by the SADC Chairperson.
The prizes at regional level are as follows;
1st prize: USD1500
2rd Prize: USD1000
3rd Prize: USD750
the top 10 winners will all receive certificates signed by the SADC Executive Secretary. The top three (3) winners travel to the Member States hosting the SADC Summit to receive their prizes during the official opening ceremony.
The prizes at national level are as follows;
1st prize: USD500
2rd Prize: USD300
3rd Prize: USD200
the top 3 winners will all receive certificates signed by the Minister of Education and the SADC Executive Secretary.
Eligibility Criteria
All secondary school going students from all 16 Southern African Development Community (SADC) Member States are welcome to participate in the Competition.
Judging Criteria
- Uniqueness: unique in its genre or create something entirely new, exciting, original material that stands out from the pack.
- Creativity: Creation of new dimension, twist to a style of writing and great new spin.
- Communication: Communicating positive message of the region, with brilliance, creativity and imagination in use of words.
- The brief: The essay type, subject and content focus, word limit and any other set requirements, conformity to the guidelines
- Knowledge and understanding: Assessing how well one has understood the question and how much they know and articulate the subject matter, and see breadth and depth of knowledge.
- Argument and critical thinking: To get the good grades, this is an area to give attention to convincing the reader of your argument, and how one uses information to tell the story or make your point.
- Use of sources: These examine all types and range of sources used in the construction of your essay to demonstrate analysis beyond any core texts to include current, respectable works, and maybe even discuss controversial ones
- Style and presentation: This is how one manages to package substance and content, e.g. such as spelling, punctuation, grammar and sentence construction, etc.
- Note: The essay should not depict violence, sexually explicit language, or substance abuse, profanity by substituting symbols or words, and should be overly sensitive on matters of race, culture, tribe, religion and freedom of association.
Marking Criteria
In marking the essays, Adjudicators expected participants to demonstrate clear understanding and complete analysis of the topic, showing originality of ideas and expression and an awareness of expected length of the discussion, scope, and audience. Even though there was no mark allocated to accuracy of language, per se, Adjudicators still expected participants to write essays which showed clear organisational and logical structure, and demonstrating mechanical accuracy of the language.
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