Plans seem to be moving on towards a Southern African Development Community. This is a lot more than opening up borders, there is talk of a common currency.

Zimbabwe's current state of affairs seems to be a problem. All other parties have fairly stable economies and reasonable growth.
Lesotho Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili, chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), said it was developing programmes that would offset any spill-over from Zimbabwe's economic crisis.

"... we should not be seen in the light of just the one member state out of 14, [so] that people will use that as a pretext not to invest in our region because one member of the family is 'unacceptable' to them," he told reporters.

"That is unacceptable to us. We are saying we need to be seen in total as a region, instead of the outside world singling out the one member and saying because of member X we will not invest in SADC."

Southern Africa's economies have flourished over the past few years, thanks to soaring commodity prices and growing political stability.

However, Zimbabwe is battling inflation of more than 1 000% and crippling shortages of foreign currency and fuel that are partly a result of its isolation by Western countries in protest against what they call rights abuses by President Robert Mugabe's government.
full story from M&G here
When the Euro was introduced, there were strict targets that had to be met by the participating countries. Let's hope this happens here, otherwise we could end up financing Robert Mugabe's bad management.