There is something special in the budget. Since I was introduced to the waiting and listening of the speech in the early 2000s, I have, like a child waiting for their birthday or Christmas present, waited for the budget speech every year. So whether it is Robert Mkwezalamba, Goodall Gondwe, Matthews Chikaonda or Friday Jumbe, I listen to the budget speech, strive to get a copy of the speech to study it and assess the government based on what is contained. Not that this is the best way to assess any government, but what other tools do I have?

When I get the budget statement or some bits and pieces, I try to relate the money allocated to various expense line to the overall development document prevailing. We are for instance, living in the era of the second Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS). I also relate the budget to other related documents such as the Ministry of Health’s Health Sector Strategic Plan (HSSP) 2012-2016, the National Education Sector Plan (NESP), the Abuja Declaration that stated what percentage of the national budget should go to health, the Dakar (Education) and Jomtien (again education) agreements and declarations.

I could go on and on about the budget. However, I also know that the budget is a guide. Depending on who is in charge, the budget can be a roadmap for the next or current financial year or it can be just one of those documents government tries to produce, talk about it and do as it pleases. Following the national budget, not many of us follow up to check how much money government ends up mobilising, how much it dispenses to its departments, what are the gaps in disbursements and what departments end up getting more than their fair share. This may happen because of new imperatives that change the original imperatives to the budget or because the budget itself had just been presented to fool one another.

There are certain aspects of the 2014 to 2015 budget that deserve mention. First is the budget allocated to the establishment of the Mombera University or University of Mombera (however it may end up being known). When things like these are discussed in political circles, the first thing that comes to mind among all of us is brick and mortar. Where will the university be located, how big is it going to be, when is construction going to start? These are good questions to ask. Because these are simple questions that anyone can ask, I have no intention to expand on these. But the critical questions are what sort of (education) programmes the university is going to offer? If we know the answer to this question, when are we starting to train future faculty of this university of we do not currently have the expertise? Universities are complex animals and teachers for the kind of programmes that emerge in universities are hard to come by. But we can start training now.