Ministry moves to categorise councils

Ministry of Local Government says it plans to categorise district councils based on their geographical positions and their shared economic potential to create a competitive environment to spur economic growth.

Minister of Local Government Blessings Chinsinga said this yesterday after leading a meeting between officials from his ministry and Traction, a United Kingdom (UK) based non-profit making organisation, in Lilongwe, on categorisation of councils to improve decentralisation and investments in Malawi.

Writing on his official social media pages after the meeting, Chinsinga said the exercise will ensure that district councils with similar economic potential are grouped together and share ideas and complement each other in the initiation of numerous developmental activities.

He said: “The categorisation will, for instance, look at existing economic opportunities such as agriculture, tourism, mining, among others, thereby moving away from the essentially one-size-fits-all approach.

“I believe that the grading of the district councils according to their economic potential can inform effective decentralisation and investments.”

He said that this would be reflected in the district development plans that reflect each district council’s quest and pathway for growth based on their unique potentials, which different investors such as development partners, non-governmental organisations, the private sector, ministries, departments and agencies would invest in.

Chinsinga also said this is also in line with aspirations of Malawi 2063 (MW2063), which entails that councils should leverage on their economic potential, to contribute to the first Malawi Implementation Plan (MIP-1) and to graduate from being a developing country to a middle income economy by 2030.

MW2063 is the country’s long term development agenda which is built on three pillars of agriculture and commercialisation, industrialisation and urbanisation and science and technology.

The development agenda aims at making Malawi an inclusively wealthy and self-reliant nation by the year 2063. President Lazarus Chakwera launched the agenda on January 19 2021.