JB urges transformation partnership in lecture at Texas State University
Malawi President Joyce Banda has said new patterns of development must be based on partnerships shaped by common interests, and shared purposes.
Banda was delivering a lecture at Texas State University in United States on how transformative partnerships are driving Malawi’s development.
The Grosvenor Centre’s 15th Annual Distinguished Lecture on Thursday comes ahead of the 68th United Nations General Assembly scheduled to take place from September 24 to 28 in New York where President Banda is expected to make a case for the need to “shift” and create a new way of looking at partnerships globally.
At Texas State University in her lecture on the theme ‘Transformational Partnerships in Malawi’ Banda said if [development partners] are serious about achieving a better and fairer world, [they] cannot continue to do business as usual.
Said Banda “We have to challenge the status quo, change the rules of the game, and seek more effective ways of engaging with each other.”
She indicated that poor people are not sitting back, waiting for hand outs; poor as they are, they want to be engaged in finding solutions to their problems.
“I recall going out in the most remote districts of Malawi and finding women who literally had no money but were rich in hope, determination and ideas. I worked with these women to grow their ideas and hope, helped them access micro credit, and in no time these women were growing their own businesses, controlling their own income, and had moved from not knowing where the next meal will come from to being providers of their homes,” she told the audience.
The Malawi leader told the gathering that local communities and institutions know their situation better than external players.
“I have, therefore, always encouraged foreign organisations to draw on the knowledge of local institutions when they design and implement their projects and programs. Too often the result of not doing this is that resources are spent on the wrong priorities,—and sometimes—, the tragedy is that these arrangements weaken the local systems and do not aide sustenance of action.
Banda said that is why when foreign organisations leave the country, local institutions still do not have the capacity to continue with work started.
The President said she thought of lecturing on ‘Transformational Partnerships in Malawi’ because she believes that most of current problems would be best addressed through collective action and, better modelled relationships that are mutually beneficial and empowering.
Banda’s working definition for transformational partnerships is that these are partnerships that help to drive positive and long lasting change and are based on shared vision among the multiple stakeholders.
The lecture was co-sponsored by the Gilbert M. Grosvenor Centre for Geographic Education, The Meadows Centre for Water and the Environment and the 100 x Development.
President Banda left the country on Monday for Texas, US where she had several engagements and will be going to New York to address the UN General Assembly whose theme is on centred on the Post-2015 development agenda.
From Texas, Banda travels to Montegomery, Alabama where she will speak on women issues in Malawi at Rosa Parks Auditorium on September 20, before proceeding to New York for the UN General Assembly on September 21.
