The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) has begun a movement to establish a universal basic income for citizens across southern Africa.  The SADC consists of members across the southern half of the African continent, from Congo to Tanzania to South Africa.

This area sees high levels of unemployment, food insecurity, and high income inequality.  At the same time, however, this region holds tremendous levels of mineral wealth with high reserves of platinum, gold, and diamonds.  For centuries this mineral wealth has been extracted from Africa without using the generated wealth to invest in the local regions.  Because of this history of extraction without investment, the SADC wants to implement a SADC-wide universal basic income grant scheme to be funded by a tax on extractive industries.

This SADC-wide movement is being organized by the SPII (Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute) based out of Johannesburg, South Africa.

To read more, the SPII’s post on the basic income grant is online at: https://spii.org.za/index.php/projects/ser-programme-2/sadc-big/

To learn how to get involved, go online at: https://spii.org.za/index.php/projects/ser-programme-2/sadc-big/get-involved-sadc-big/

The SPII is starting a movement for a SADC-wide basic income grant (Logo source: SPII)