Malawi Malawi on July 6 this year clocked 62 years of independence without fanfare after President Peter Mutharika earlier directed that State-funded celebrations shouldn’t be held as part of austerity measures in a bid to resuscitate an economy on life-support machine.
This is not the first time we have foregone independence festivities, but it comes at a defining moment. As the President stated in his national address: “Our mission is not yet complete, the next frontier is economic independence.”
The critical question remains: how do we finally achieve economic freedom?
Malawi attained political independence in 1964, but is yet to gain economic freedom as it remains aid-dependent. This is the major challenge worth surmounting.
From Vision 2020 to Malawi 2063 (MW2063), Malawians have aspired to be economically better than they have been over the years. In Vision 2020, developed after consultations in the 1990s, the aspiration was “to transform Malawi into a God-fearing, secure, democratically mature, environmentally sustainable and self-reliant nation” while MW2063 seeks to make Malawi “an inclusively wealthy and self-reliant industrialised upper-middle-income country by the year 2063, so we can fund our development needs primarily by ourselves”.
In both visions, the desire is to be better off than we are today. However, the reality on the ground has been different. Targets have been missed, largely due to poor coordination coupled with external shocks, including climate-induced disasters and other headwinds like geo-political tensions in key regions supplying essential commodities.
Malawi has faced mixed fortunes in the past 62 years where poverty, hopelessness and a general lack of direction have loomed large. MW2063 is already off the rails if the National Planning Commission’s earlier assessment in 2024 is anything to go by in the face of paltry economic growth rates of below three percent. The economy needs to grow by at least six percent consistently to achieve the MW2063 First Ten-Year Implementation Plan targets of lower middle-income country by 2030. However, to achieve that Malawi now needs to grow its economy by a consistent 10 percent between now and then or wait 15 more years.
Beyond preaching the need for economic independence, I feel we need to ask further questions such as why is Malawi where it is today? Why has the country failed to be where it should be at a time its peers are making progress?
Honest introspection points to a single root cause: leadership. Leadership sets the tone for either progress or failure and in most instances, our leadership has failed to fundamentally transform people’s livelihoods. The type of leadership in any set up sets the tone for either progress or failure and, unfortunately for Malawi, in most cases the leadership has failed the country.
Mutharika’s fresh call to drive towards economic independence is a breath of fresh air because it sets the right tone. However, the sentiments should be backed by action to make a difference.
Poor policy coordination, corruption, and a lack of fiscal discipline have dragged us backward. Ask African Development Bank immediate-past president Akinwumi A. Adesina is on record as having said: “The era of aid is gone.” African nations must build self-sustaining wealth through investment discipline. Malawi desperately needs increased trade, not aid. Trade is the golden key to ending global poverty, driving innovation and raising incomes.
Malawi needs increased trade and not aid, to develop. Trade is the golden key towards ending global poverty because countries that are open to international trade tend to grow faster, become innovative, improve productivity and provide higher income as well as more opportunities.
It is time to make a fresh start. We must work together, but true progress requires proactive leadership in the driving seat to deliver on our promises—working collaboratively toward our common goals until the job gets done as the Nation Publications Limited core value on teamwork states “we will work together like ants towards a common goal till the job gets done”.
