If you are reading this column early enough in 2022, you might want to add to your New Year’s resolutions list – that list of realistic and attainable goals – a desire to join your local chamber of commerce and industry. Before rejecting the suggestion out of hand, you might want to take a brief pause and contemplate.

Have you ever wondered just how old the chamber of commerce and industry movement is? Well, if you have been reading the financial press, you might say 101 years. This is because, on November 16, 2021, the International Chamber of Commerce, better known as the ICC, celebrated its one-hundred-and-first year of existence.

The ICC considers itself to be the voice of world business, representing the interests of over 45-million members in over 100 countries. Its mission is “to work for everyone, every day, everywhere”. It is evident that there is a chamber of commerce and industry in almost every country and in nearly all major cities and centres of the world.

But the chamber of commerce and industry movement is not 101 years old. Its origins can be traced back to 1599, when the term ‘chamber of commerce’ (chambre de commerce) appeared for the first time, in the coastal city of Marseille, France. That is 422 years ago. By the way, South Africa, as a country, has existed for only 369 years.

The Marseille Chamber of Commerce was established in reaction to the challenge that pirates were posing to the city’s businesses. The decision was taken that, as a collective, the chamber would drive pirates from the city’s shores. At the Port of Marseille’s entrance is the rock-crop island of Château d’If, with François I’s sixteenth-century island castle and former prison. If its significance is not immediately apparent, it is the setting of The Count of Monte Cristo, and, as rumour has it, where The Man with the Iron Mask was imprisoned by Louis XIV, popularly known as the Sun King.

Towards the end of 1999, the ICC celebrated the 400th year of existence of the Marseille Chamber of Commerce, which I was privileged to attend.

Although the chamber movement was established to address individual interests, it soon moved beyond individual-focused interests to become a collective group with a much broader focus. Soon, the establishment of chambers of commerce provided merchants, traders, craftsmen and industrialists with a public forum to discuss issues facing them as a business community. As a consequence, the representation of common interests became, and to this day remains, the foundation of the worldwide chamber movement. Country dependent, membership of the chamber movement can be through a voluntary association or a mandatory association.

But a chamber of commerce does not operate in isolation; it needs to gain the acceptance of public authorities and to establish itself as the legitimate and institutionalised common voice of business. To this day, the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SACCI) has as its motto ‘The voice of business’, just as its predecessor, the South African Chamber of Business, did.

There are essentially four major chamber organisations in South Africa. SACCI is a national body that aims to protect and promote business interests. The Afrikaanse Handelsinsituut (AHI) is a multifaceted business organisation that is actively involved in most major economic sectors. The National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry is a federated chamber comprised of over 20 industry-specific economic sectors. The Foundation for African Business and Consumer Services promotes the advancement of small black-owned businesses in the country. Then there is the South African Chamber of Commerce, an umbrella organisation and conduit for trade, community and investment into and out of South Africa.

If you are in business, you should, at the very least, be a member of your local chamber of commerce.