Wrong deals contribute to poverty

This week, I reflected on the presidential runningmates debate of March 7 2019 at Bingu International Convention Centre (Bicc) in Lilongwe which raised a number of pertinent issues on Malawi.

One of them was about why Malawi has not achieved much on foreign investment. This is very true. While foreign investors are successfully engaged in neighbouring countries, Malawi is totally failing.

It can be said without any form of contradiction that Malawi is not poor considering natural resources the country has. On the other hand, it is the greedy type of leadership, which Malawi usually has, which has indeed made the country and its people poor.

Honestly speaking, due to corruption by mostly those in the positions of power, Malawi Government can hardly come up with foreign investment deals that can benefit its people.

So far, it seems most deals are made at personal level, especially at leadership positions, then rubber-stamped by some relevant authorities.

This could be the reason those in leadership positions are extremely rich while the rest of Malawians remain extremely poor.

Unfortunately, there is no political will to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.

Meanwhile, there are many examples in Malawi of unproductive deals.

The most memorable one is the Kayelekera Uranium Mine in Karonga. This created a lot of hype and great expectation as politicians talked highly about the expected riches that Malawians would get from the investment.

Sadly, nothing worth talking about came out of it. Instead, there was so much destruction of the natural resources. Therefore, there were calls from Malawians that the mine must just be closed.

Surprisingly, some Cabinet ministers could be heard saying the Kayelekera Mine was a very viable project and a good deal.

One wonders how such ministers expected their sentiments to be supported by Malawians who saw nothing tangible coming out of the mining deal.

With such unproductive deals government, too, had no choice but to later say they get nothing out of it.

The problem here is that government seems to strike deals first and look at formalities later. One cannot be completely wrong to suggest that people who negotiate deals know very well that they may flop. Therefore, they get their share under the carpet before the deal is signed.

Malawi being a democracy, people should know all the deals and agreements the government signs and, above all, people should know what their take is.

Due to the habit of making wrong deals by government, the country is failing to find meaningful investors. Just imagine this country has held so many investor conferences. At the end of each conference the minister of Trade and Industry comes up with a positive statement that many investors had shown interest to come and invest in Malawi.

Unfortunately, this just ends up as some kind of wishful thinking, which does not help anybody. So far, in place of meaningful investors Malawi has seen an influx of petty foreign traders.

This shows how weak Malawi laws are. What type of licences and permits are such people given? On countless times, Malawian small business persons have complained about the unfair competition they get from these foreign petty traders. But government seems not to listen.

Meanwhile, the most obvious reasons investors shun Malawi is unreliable power and water supply.

One can only hope that the Tonse Alliance administration will quickly fix the problems.

Above everything else, the government should use experts to negotiate meaningful deals to benefit all Malawians.