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Trade in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) region experiences imbalances due to South Africa’s dominance and fragmented communication. This study aims to highlight communication's strategic role in enhancing trade policy, logistics, and cooperation within SACU, focusing on digital platforms, ICT, policy alignment, and transparency. A qualitative, literature-based methodology is conducted, employing thematic analysis of academic and institutional sources to explore how communication strategies influence trade facilitation and integration within SACU. Five key themes are identified: Uneven ICT infrastructure, Economic impact of clear policy communication, Trade imbalances due to information asymmetry, Underutilised digital trade platforms, and Urgent need for communication capacity building. Communication’s crucial role for SACU integration includes institutional coordination, private sector engagement, and crisis management. It identifies missed strategic opportunities like dashboards and localized messaging. Addressing gaps in communication capacity, ICT infrastructure, digital platforms, and policy communication is vital for equitable, efficient regional trade integration. Policy proposals include investing in infrastructure, consolidating digital platforms, standardizing protocols, and promoting inclusive consultations. The study emphasizes adaptive governance and integration with regional value chains to ensure inclusive, efficient trade facilitation and equitable economic development across all member states.

This paper re-construct the roadmap adopted by China to dominate global trade and market share space with reference to SSA. Specifically, this paper characterises the nature of China's practice of political economy where the country does business. Literature was reviewed to collect data used in the re-construction of the model. This paper found that indeed China has a clearly set roadmap (figure 1) for its global trade and market share space acquisition and dominance. China's dominance of the economic and market space in SSA has an assortment of intertwined complexities for the region. Sub-Saharan Africa needs to excercise caution on China because signs are there already that China would not be any different from the Western economies who had exploited the region for decades for their own gain, not the region's gain.