More threats to MW2063 targets

Days after hinting that Malawi was unlikely to become a lower middle income economy by 2030, the National Planning Commission (NPC) has warned that lack of accountability by duty-bearers poses another threat to set targets.

Speaking after opening the first Mzuzu University (Mzuni) National Research Dissemination Conference yesterday, NPC head of research Andrew Jamali said in an interview the country can transform within record time if duty-bearers commit and discard the casual approach to implementation of the Malawi 2063 (MW2063) goals.

He lamented delayed roll out of megafarms, saying by now the country should have been reaping their fruits.

Said Jamali: “On the megafarms initiative, there are studies done to indicate the kind of value chains which are already having markets lucrative enough to augment Malawi’s base in the agricultural sector.

“We need to move with a sense of urgency. All these countries that are developing have put in aggressive steps. Megafarms need to be functional. By now, we could have been talking about products from these farms. Someone is not doing their job right.”

His sentiments come a week after NPC director general Thomas Chataghalala Munthali said the 2030 target to attain lower middle income status may only be reached 15 years later if the country remains on the current lethargic path.

In an update to the Budget and Finance Committee of Parliament in Lilongwe, he cited a series of external crises that have spilled over to Malawi and internal catastrophes that have derailed the local economy from growing at the desired six percent minimum to reach the promised lands.

During interview, Jamali said the absence of tangible megafarms on the ground indicated that there are inept duty-bearers who are not being held accountable for their non-performance.

“The public, including organisations, have the authority to track down where we are. Everyone seems relaxed about it. Can you point at something that is on the market from the megafarms? People must be accountable for things they have committed to do,” he said.

And delivering his official speech, Jamali dared researchers to question and think hard about what the country is not doing right in its path towards social-economic development, observing that Malawi is good at conceptualising than execution.

In his remarks, Ministry of Education director of science and technology Dr. Chomora Mikeka said where duty-bearers fail to account for their deliverables, the citizens should rise and replace them.

He said leaders should be reprimanded and dismissed for their failures and must be reconfigured with competent people who can deliver on the position.

“We need to tell people to move aside and find someone else instead of waiting on the same people who have failed. Let us be able to do configuration and after assessing that there is no movement, there is need to reconfigure,” said Mikeka.

Measuring the country’s performance in science and technology towards MW2063, the country’s long-term development strategy, Mikeka said Malawi is operating on a 2.5 percent human capital capacity.

In information and communications technology, he said the country is at 8.8 percent and 30.1 percent in terms of engineering and mathematics.

Mzuni Vice-Chancellor Dr. Wales Singini stressed the need for researchers to ensure that their respective works are in line with the national research agenda outlined in the MW2063.

“We have research and innovation at the centre of our strategic plan. But we have now changed our approach slightly. We are now emphasising on linking the university with industry. We want to do research that is industry driven,” he said.

Singini said the conference attracted 118 research abstracts from Mzuni, but only three quarters of that will be presented during the two-day conference attended by academics from both public and private universities.

In January 2021, the Malawi Government launched MW2063 as a successor long-term development strategy to Vision 2020 that had expired.

The new strategy envisions Malawi to be “an inclusively wealthy and self-reliant nation” by 2063 driven by three inter-related and inter-dependent pillars of agricultural productivity and commercialisation, resource-based industrialisation and urbanisation.