Editors PickWeekend Investigate

Buy Malawian campaign: A hit or miss?

In this three-part series our reporter BOBBY KABANGO examines the role the Buy Malawi Strategy (BMS) has played since its launch in March this year.

On March 18 this year, President Peter Mutharika launched the Buy Malawi Strategy (BMS) in Lilongwe and asked every Malawian to prioritise local products over imported ones and be proud of the country’s heritage by supporting local industries.

Kubalasa: More needs to be done on BMS
Kubalasa: More needs to be done on BMS

“We have dedicated this day to make a sincere promise to our dearest country by launching Buy Malawi Strategy. This is an oath of patriotism, pledged to our country. And we have no other country to be proud of except Malawi,” said the President at the launch.

“The Buy Malawi initiative is at the heart of my government. We pledge to buy Malawian because we are proud that Malawi can produce fine products and services worthy our pride and money. Malawi is set to take her place in the world. And we will succeed.”

It was a powerful statement that energised local manufacturers both small and large.

Still selling like hot cakes: Cooking oil from a cooperative in Salima being sold on the market in sachets
Still selling like hot cakes: Cooking oil from a cooperative in Salima being sold on the market in sachets

Further, the President declared that March 18 be commemorated as Malawi Day when Malawians should wear, eat and use local products.

“It’s a day Malawians shall celebrate our uniqueness and send a message to the whole world that we are Malawi,” he said.

The President also announced that civil servants and public servants in all government ministries, departments, agencies and parastatals should, on Fridays, be wearing clothes produced locally.

He said: “All public procuring entities will buy at least 30 percent of their goods and services from Malawi-based enterprises. Those that cannot manage because of the nature of their business should give plausible reasons and seek a waiver from the office of the Director of Public Procurement (ODPP).

“I request all hospitality facilities to set aside at least one day in a week to serve Malawian dishes. Let us be the proue of Malawi.”

But, 10 months down the line, the BMS pomp and fun fare has almost fizzled out and the come under heavy attack from some civil society groups, economists and consumer rights activists.

For example, the Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) executive director John Kapito predicted doom and gloom for BMS. He said it is unlikely that the strategy will successed considering that consumers, who are critical to the successful implementation of the strategy, have not been incorporated in the process of setting up the policy.

Kapito says it is unfortunate that consumer choices and needs are not considered when establishing initiatives that directly affect them.

He believes the strategy is being rolled out on the assumption that the authorities and producers will come up with mechanisms to change buying patterns among Malawians even without consulting them.

So, is BMS a poorly-planned campaign?

But Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism Cliff Chiunda remains optimistic that in the long-term BMS will produce expected results.

“We cannot expect a miracle to happen overnight,” he says.

Chiunda contends that it is true that SMEs cannot compete on the local and international market because of poorly produced and packaged products, but with BMS he expects things to change.

“Government is losing billions of money each year to importation of products that we can produce locally such as cooking oil. BMS is here to address these problems, and to encourage Malawians to consume locally made products,” he explains.

Chiunda says Malawi can save an equivalent of K3 billion annually which is spent on importing cooking oil.

“We hope to see a reduction of imported cooking oil. And if our SMEs scaled up production and improved quality of oil they produce the K3 billion money we spend importing cooking oil can be reduced,” he says.

But Chiunda cautions that continued production of substandard and poor quality products pose threat to BMS.

Improving products

However, Malawi Economic Justice Network executive director Dalitso Kubalasa insists that BMS lacks proper direction.

He believes government could have done better by working on the market first. He says sometimes “we act as a confused country in that we don’t know what we are doing”.

Said Kubalasa: “If we were told to buy things produced in the country, then it was like to tell us that the market is producing things of good quality which is not the case.

“I have seen that on Friday people are wearing things being produced in Ghana, can we say we have achieved our plans? A lot need to be done if we want to achieve the BMS campaign launched by the President, otherwise it will be just be a dream with no results.”

Further, Kubalasa says SMEs could have done better than this to move with plans to win the market.

He adds: “The speech by the President was to tell them [local manufacturers, SMEs and cooperatives] that the market has been opened and that they were supposed to invest more so that they prove to be the best.

“Do they want to be told what to do? That is not on, it is their turn then to improve on the quality so to make profits. Government cannot do everything for them.”

But industry experts observe that  in the past such policies failed to empower small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and cooperatives to produce high quality products.

They say SMEs need economic empowerment to produce high-quality products to meet the expectation of the consumer.

“The major concern is that currently, SMEs do not work as cooperatives; hence, have no capacities to produce high value products. Some SMEs even fail to convince a customer to buy their products and standards are often not followed, one observer said.

Apart from these challenges, he says a lot of SMEs fail to pass the Malawi Bureau of Standard (MBS) test and remain uncertified. While some SMEs even fail to participate in trade fairs, exhibitions, quality improvement and marketing due to lack of financial muscle.

Joseph Chikusa, a consumer-based in Blantyre says most Malawi-made products are poor, a waste of money and time.

Recently, in the spirit of BMS, he bought a bottle of cooking oil produced by one of the SMEs.

“When I used the cooking oil, the taste of the food changed and it was yucky. It was so bad. When I shook the bottle, it was foaming…kumapanga thovu. I was so disappointed,” Chikusa says.

He says even the bottle was poorly labelled.

Making inroads

But despite all these concerns, SMEs are happy with BMS; sales have improved and more Malawians are slowly embracing the BMS.

Talimbika Agro-Processing and Marketing Cooperatives Society in Salima produce Sunpower cooking oil.

The cooperative’s factory manager Pharison Chiwoko said customers have been disappointed in the past due to poor standards, but with BMS they have upped their game in anticipation of increased demand.

“At first we were not even certified by MBS. We still selling our products without certification, but now we have put our house in order so that our products and packaging can compete favourably on the market,” he said.

Another cooking oil producer, Madisi Agro-Processors Cooperatives had no certification and had to improve their products to live up to the goals of BMS.

Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism spokesperson Wiskes Nkombezi says in the past, products from many SMEs and cooperatives had problems understanding standards and quality requirements for both local and international market.

“This was due to many factors such as limited access to information on quality and standards and issues of capacity. In addition, it has not been easy getting cooperatives to focus on value addition and business linkages,” he says.

Nkombezi further says when the President launched the BMS, a lot of small scale producers such as SMEs and cooperatives still looked at it ‘as a strategy for large scale producers.’

“They also viewed issues of standards and quality as being too sophisticated and a reserve of the large enterprises.

“At first, we had very few cooperatives and SMEs that were aware of issues of standards and quality, and business linkages were weak. It should also be known that Malawi has had no centre of excellence on value addition for oil seeds,” explains Nkombezi.

Nkombezi insists that if quality is to be observed, then BMS should be a must to everyone, but if not then it will be very difficult to a person like Chikusa to go for local products. n

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