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The Trade, Development and Co-operation Agreement (TDCA) between the European Union (EU) and the Republic of South Africa has been signed on 11 October 1999 in Pretoria and it partly and provisionally came into force on 1 January 2000.

The TDCA, although a bilateral agreement between the EU and South Africa, will have large political and economic implications for the entire Southern Africa region. Given the fact that Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland (BLNS) share a common external tariff with South Africa through the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), the agreement will move them to enter into a de facto free-trade agreement with the EU. In addition, as South Africa is also a member of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe), the TDCA has broader significance for other countries in Southern Africa.

Our research in this area provides a detailed analysis of the most important and controversial issues in the EU-South African relations and the economic consequences of the agreement for both the EU and the Southern African countries.