Not even in a hundred years
For hundreds of years the nation of Israel waited for a special messenger of God, who would come to introduce a reign of peace and prosperity, thereby changing the fortunes of every citizen of that nation. They called that special messenger the Messiah. While Christians believe Jesus was that Messiah, adherents to Judaism do not accept that and still await the coming of their Messiah.
The Messiah would be endowed with divine powers to successfully usher in a new order, a feat which would have been impossible for any mortal man to accomplish. Certain things are beyond the ability of mere man.
In Malawi, we have been waiting for a version of the Messiah, yes our own human Messiah to take us out of the economic malaise, which pervades our nation. We are waiting for some strong man or woman to single handedly sort out our mess. At least that is the impression you get when you talk to all manner of people in the country.
I neither am nor would want to be a prophet of doom, but I feel duty bound to inform everybody that we shall not have this kind of person to lead us any time soon. Thank God for the legacy of people like Magufuli next door, but I do not see a Magufuli equivalent showing up here. Not in a hundred years!
The Malawi situation can only change by a collective effort. Agreed, we need a leader with a sound mind, a morally upright orientation and exceptional capabilities to galvanise us into action but every one of us must do what we can to contribute to the uplifting of the country from the economic abyss we seem to be in. It is foolhardy to think that we will have a leader who will be the panacea to our problems. Not a single individual or group of individuals can be the total solution to the problems that beset Malawi.
In my last article I expressed optimism over what we can do together to tackle the huge forex problem. If we all act with one mind to reduce our appetite for imported goods, it will not be long before our forex situation improves significantly. Let the authorities restore and maintain fiscal discipline while we, the private citizens, engage in production and responsible consumption. We should innovatively promote activities that can earn us a little forex and curb those that will drain it needlessly.
Our biggest imports are the two f’s: fuel and fertiliser. We can, and should, decisively deal with both of these. We will have to endure some inconveniences to get any meaningful results from our attempts to deal with them.
I will reiterate here what I have stated a number of times before, namely that we need to forget imported inorganic fertilizer and use organic alternatives instead. Unlike inorganic fertilizer, organic fertilizer can be made from local materials. Anything made from local materials should be treated as treasure because its acquisition will not involve any foreign exchange. It is for this reason that I think Tsirizani Phiri’s innovative bionitrate fertilizer, made from human urine, can be a game changer. For millennia we have, knowingly or unknowingly, wasted a very important resource: our urine. Some people will quickly trash Tsirizani’s innovation as an indecent and worthless one, the type you would get from unschooled rookies in the field of Science. So far as I am concerned, turning something that has traditionally been regarded as waste into a useful resource that can change people’s fortunes is a great achievement. By the way, I have across well researched scientific papers on the use of urine as fertilizer on the Internet and am convinced that we are not wasting our time considering it as a viable alternative to inorganic fertilizer.
As for fuel, I still maintain that Malawi is uniquely positioned to switch to biofuels but we have inexplicably chosen not to take any strides in that direction. Government has not done what it should have done to operationalize the research undertaken at Lilongwe Technical College some years back. If the project had been given the nod, we would by now have gone a long way is reducing the importation of fuel into Malawi. Some people have expressed doubt regarding the capacity of ethanol producers in Malawi to meet the huge petrol demand. This is a genuine concern but we can start small and grow the sector over the years. Molasses, the principal raw material in the production of ethanol is a product of sugarcane. By increasing the production of sugarcane we can significantly scale up the production of ethanol in Malawi.
