Matters arising from Unima’s 50 years

Hon. Folks, as University of Malawi (Unima) commemorates its golden jubilee this year, it is “right and proper”, to quote the official parlance, that there be honest debate, especially on its readiness to help address developmental challenges of the next 50 years.

There is no denying that Unima, the first public university in Malawi, has been the major anvil where Malawian leaders have been “scooped and polished” to borrow from poet Jack Mapanje.

Its animated curios are in high offices today, steering both the public and private sectors. In a small way, I am one of them. But the question still remains: What is there to show for it?

Dr. Naomi Ngwira, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Malawi, last Friday challenged her fraternity to accept they could have done better to help avert the stagnation rocking the economy.

A day later, Ben Kaluwa, professor of economics at Chancellor College, took a swipe at politicians for usurping the role of economists. Kaluwa was contributing to the debate on whether or not to legalise the use and sale of industrial hemp, a decision which ultimately hinges more on the whims of those with the political clout than on an informed economic decision.

Weeks earlier, APM and his fellow legal experts also engaged in an interesting, albeit stormy, debate on how best they could use their knowledge and expertise for the betterment of their fraternity and the country.

Unima’s golden jubilee coincides with Malawi at 50. At the last but one census we were eight million. Now we are 16 million and our population growth rate, at about 3 percent, is among the highest even by African standards.

Compared to the size of our land, our population density is not much of problem. Taiwan has a population size that’s 50 percent more than Malawi’s crammed in a space a third the size of ours, half of it mountainous.

But while our per capita income, at $250, is arguably the lowest in the world, the Taiwanese are among the world’s most prosperous in terms of the economy and human development.

I believe the difference between the Taiwanese and Malawians is that the former have the knowledge, resources and capacity to produce more than the latter. They also have a better appreciation of the need for using their natural resources in a sustainable manner

While our curse has been the political mediocrity Kaluwa has alluded to, our people also lack the capacity to generate wealth from the abundant resources God gave us in a sustainable manner.

Take farming, for example. What has changed in the past 50 years? It’s still done at the subsistent level, involving the 85 percent of the population and using the hoe.

Despite our being blessed with an expanse of fresh-water running along the entire length of the country from Karonga to Nsanje, we still largely depend virtually 100 percent on rain-fed agriculture and are sure to starve in the year of drought or floods.

The farming—be it of food or cash crops, animal husbandry or fruit farming— is riddled with high production costs and yields that are below the Sadc average. As if all this is not enough, 40 percent of the food crop yield is lost to weevils and other pests every year!

How about the civil service, the largest employer of university graduates? Who can point to one major local project perfectly done within set deadlines in the past 21 years of multiparty politics?

Where in government is the budgetary allocation used efficiently and strictly for the intended purpose? I bet this does not happen even within Unima itself!

Bad governance in Malawi has even rocked Church-run NGOs and only weak enforcement of the Company Law that helps shield from the rot in the private sector.  But our weaknesses are laid bare for the world to see when we dare delve in regional or international trade. To which country in the world does Malawi exports more than it imports from it?

A turn-around strategy from our woes can only  be informed by academic research (this is where Unima and other public and private universities play a role) adopted and funded by government and its donors and owned and executed by the citizens, the sector that generates wealth.

As Unima celebrates 50 years of existence, we can only humbly remind it’s doyens that Mother Malawi, which has spent quite a fortune running the institute of higher learning, is still in need of informed ideas on how to tackle abject poverty which is the talk of the world.