A week or so ago, I was watching the BBC Focus on Africa in which three Malawians were featured, a young lady who was directly in touch with the BBC announcer, a young man who was introduced as an expert on the problem to be discussed and a gentleman who took a grin view of the problem in question.
The issue was about the benefits and harms of the second-hand avalanche into Malawi. As it turned out, the second-hand clothes flood other African countries as well. It is a continental problem.
Should imports of second-hand clothes be banned? The young man gave a non-committal answer by saying, there should be a balance. Perhaps, he was talking about the interests of those who grow cotton and those who have set up textile industries on the one hand and the importers and buyers of second- hand clothes on the other hand.
When you are vague as to what you ought to do, you will end either doing nothing or doing anything that will give you no satisfaction of any type. We ought to crystallise the current and impending economic problems of Malawi.
Malawi’s development is top-sided and needs diversification if the economy is to avoid extremes of stagnation and poverty.
First, there must be diversification within the agricultural sector. Tobacco as the cash cow of the economy is under a death sentence of the World Health Organisation (WHO). We know that tobacco is a sunset industry, but we do not seem to do everything necessary and possible to replace it by an industry with a brighter future.
The second type of diversification is between sectors, primary, secondary and tertiary. It is true that agriculture has in the histories of many countries been the spring- board of economic development. However, countries that have tallied too long on agriculture have been left behind by those that have ventured into industrialisation.
Most of the latter have started with textile industries partly because they are labour intensive. They do not require the importation of capital goods of unusual and expensive type.
If we are serious about setting up secondary industries in Malawi, we must shield our textile industry from destructive imports such as the second-hand clothes and the junk from newly industrialising countries.
The history of industrialisation or economic growth and development is the history of what Harvard University professor Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. To create a new industry, you must destroy an existing one, which does not fully satisfy current needs. To make an omelet, you must break an egg.
From Malawi’s own economic history we can cite cases of creative destruction. In the period before the 20th century, loads were carried on men’s shoulders and women’s heads. Those foreigners who were setting up new centres of activity in Malawi such as missionaries and government officials used to hire hundreds of people to bring loads from Mozambique ports. When in 1908 the Shire Highlands Railway was completed, all the amtengatenga and the porters or carriers lost their jobs. But some managed to find alternative jobs on the railway and on estates. A new industry usually creates new jobs in place of the old ones.
The latest example of creative destruction is the advent of the mobile phone, which has made telegrahists redundant. But they have found alternative jobs.
There should be no such a thing as ‘balancing’ whatever this means. To industrialise Malawi, the importation of second-hand clothes should be steadily phased out. First raise import duties on second- hand clothes and use the proceeds to subsidies the cotton industry. All forms of dumping should be kept out of the country.
So long as the textile industry is growing, new jobs will be found for those who depend on the selling of second-hand clothes.
Prima facie the second hand stuff has improved the common person’s attire. But it is indirectly a weapon by developed countries to kill textile industries in Africa. From past experience, the growth of textile in India and Japan ruined textile industries in Britain and elsewhere.
There is no dignity for an individual or a nation surviving on left overs of other people or countries.
