Malawi Government’s spending on children has declined with published data showing that Treasury will only spend K92 per child in the 2024/25 fiscal year from the previous year’s K121.
Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs data quoted in the Unicef 2024/25 Child Protection Budget Brief indicates that the 30 percent reduction in per capita spending follows a 27 percent decline in child protection budget from K1.2 billion the previous financial year to K895 million in the current fiscal year.
In real terms, the reduction is more substantial at 43 percent and is primarily attributed to a general decline in the budgetary allocation to various programmes under the Ministry of Gender, Social Welfare and Community Development.
Reads in part the brief: “This low spending will potentially force the government to prioritise immediate response of child protection issues over preventive measures, widening child protection issues like poverty, community education and family support initiatives, violence, and child labour, ending child marriage and birth registration, among others.
“Persistent fiscal constraints, marked by high debt servicing costs, which currently account for a substantial portion of the national budget severely restrict the available resources for other critical areas, including child protection.”
The data further shows that the child protection budget remains largely concentrated at the central level with 92 percent of the 2024/25 budget being centrally managed and only eight percent being planned transfers to local councils.
On average, each district is expected to receive K2.5 million in 2024/25 fiscal year to implement child protection services, out of which about 70 percent is utilised for administrative costs, according to the report.
In a written response on Friday, child rights activist Amos Chibwana described the trend as “worrisome” in safeguarding child welfare.
He said: “The collapse of the budget allocation has affected the lives of children; hence, encouraging most of these children, especially those from the rural settings, to be involved in the risky jobs for their lives. Some have opted for child labour, child prostitution and early marriages in order to earn a living.
“At the same time, efforts to help curb this have been paralysed due to lack of enough funding. The serious question we may ask is, what could we have done as a nation if development partners were not interested in the work of children affairs?”
The 2023 Child Poverty Report indicates that at least 70 percent of children in the country experience different forms of socio-economic deprivations that classify them as multi-dimensionally poor.
The figure is an increase from a similar survey in 2018 which found that about 60 percent of Malawian children were multi-dimensionally poor.
Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Welfare officials were yet to respond to our questionnaire.
But Economic Planning and Development Principal Secretary Patrick Zimpita said the National Youth Policy of 2023 spells out interventions that government would like to implement to make sure that there is adequate investment in the youth as Malawi goes forward.
He said the interventions include the school feeding programme aimed at retaining learners in school
