The National Electoral Commission (CNE) of Angola is hosting the Electoral Commissions Forum of the Southern African Development Community (ECF-SADC) at the Diamante Hotel in Luanda from 13th to 17th March, 2023.
The event in Luanda is an Executive Committee meeting of the Forum whose role is to implement the policy decisions of the Annual General Conference. The CEOs of electoral commissions will also meet in the same period and will make recommendations to the Executive Committee for consideration.
ECF-SADC is an independent organisation in which each country in the SADC region is represented by its electoral management body. The mandate of ECF-SADC is to strengthen co-operation amongst Electoral Commissions in the SADC region.
ECF-SADC members include 15 Electoral Management Bodies of 14 SADC countries- namely, Angola, Botswana, DRC, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Seychelles, Tanzania, Zambia, Zanzibar and Zimbabwe.
The Forum has been in place since July 1998 and it has played an important role in ensuring that the management of elections in the SADC countries is improved and in building the capacity of election management bodies to fulfill their roles. The Electoral Commissions Forum of SADC Countries was launched in Cape Town in July 1998.
Namibia is currently the Chairperson of the Executive Committee of the ECF-SADC and assumed the two-year role in 2022.