Malawi tumbles on human development
Despite improving by five steps on the 2022 Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance, Malawi is still struggling on human development, especially on access to health and education.
The 2022 ranking shows that Malawi moved from position 23 in 2020 to 18 in 2022 due to higher scores in the areas of security and rule of law, but underperformed on poverty reduction and social protection.
The latest report released on January 26 2023 ranks Mauritius first in the overall governance category, with its Indian Ocean neighbour, Seychelles, coming second. Tunisia, Cape Verde, Botswana, South Africa, Ghana, Namibia, Senegal and Morocco follow in that order. On the other hand, Somalia, Eritrea and South Sudan are ranked last.
In the report, Tanzania and Rwanda showed overall improvement over the last decade while Burundi was “bouncing back”, according to the report.
Reads the report: “Only five countries, Guinea Bissau, Malawi, Seychelles, Somalia and Zimbabwe have improved in the four underlying subcategories of Security and Rule of Law since 2012, with none managing to sustain progress in all over the last five years.”
Africa’s overall governance score has flattened since 2019, and in 2021 much of Africa is less safe, secure and democratic than in 2012, the report said.
Reacting to the report, Human Rights Defenders Coalition chairperson Gift Trapence said Malawi is not doing well on the Mo Ibrahim Governance Index because of poor implementation of its otherwise good policies.
He said: “Malawi has been lacking visionary political leaders who are radical enough to champion the needed development that can turn around things on the worsening poor access to education, health, social protection, including poverty alleviation.
“We can improve if government agencies are able to reflect on this poor performance and come up with better solutions. Citizens are frustrated with political leaders who are not bringing any positive changes.”
On the improved score on rule of law, Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation executive director Michael Kaiyatsa said by arresting and firing Cabinet ministers for their involvement in corruption, Malawi has demonstrated that it is on the right path.
He said: “Those arrests were a good indicator of progress in the area of rule of law. However, we have seen ordinary citizens, including online users and journalists being arrested simply for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
“The administration also appears reluctant to promote the inclusion of certain marginalised groups such as lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender community.”
But Minister of Information and Digitisation Gospel Kazako on Thursday said government will continue building on the progress made so far.
“Institutions that look at this government without bias are able to see lots of positivity in what we are doing. We will continue to build this country. It is a painful process but we will get to where this country deserves to be,” said the minister, who is also the official government spokesperson.
The Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance monitors overall governance performance in African countries.
It collates 17 years’ data for 54 African States‚ using criteria such as security‚ human rights‚ economic stability‚ just laws‚ free elections‚ corruption‚ infrastructure‚ poverty‚ health and education.
Malawi achieved its highest category in 2013 under the Joyce Banda leadership when it was ranked 16th out of 52 nations and the worst performance was in 2009 during the Bingu wa Mutharika reign when it was on position 23 out of 53 nations.
