Malawi to remain poor for the next 50 years- Scholars

By: Happy Arnold Soko

University of Malawi (UNIMA) has expressed worry over the country’s failure to implement various targeting ideas by different scholars aimed at ensuring equitable access and continued development.

Making his professorial inaugural lecture on Friday in Blantyre, The Polytechnic Professor, James Kamwachale Khombe, said Malawi has a body of evidence that indicates potential effective principle policies are ineffective in implementation.

He added that there is evidence which suggests that Malawi could have performed better if ideas by professors were used in the solving the country’s problems despite the challenges we face.

“Perhaps if we say Malawi should ‘celebrate’ is not exactly the right word. The Country’s experience with industrialization over the past has actually been disappointing,” he worriedly said.

According to Khombe, the private sector is an engine of the nation’s economy in terms of its contributions towards the provisions of employment, purchase of raw materials and other inputs. However, Malawi has witnessed a slowdown of business transactions and massive closure of some it’s very important companies, especially in the manufacturing sector for the past 2 decades.

In an interview with The Malawi Star, he said, “Regrettably, the closure of such companies has brought in so many socio-economic ills including the retrenchment of the working class.”

The Umunthu Sustainable Business (USB) model suggests how it can strategically be applied to analyze and address the challenges we are facing.

The process requires the need for Malawians as a community to seriously and collectively rethink its vision and mission, redefine its implementable long term goals and accordingly formulate strategies for the nation to move out of this socio-economic quagmire as the only way forward.

Khombe advised that strategic thinking should be articulated through National Development Framework spanning for a period of 50 years.

In his remarks, Chancellor for Exploits University, Dr. Kingstone Ngwira said there is a need for public-private partnership to ensure total policy delivery.

He said Malawi should redefine its vision and start thinking beyond success in order to develop.

“We need long-term strategies as well as making the right recommendations for those strategies so that they don’t flop. Those in positions of power and infuence should support proposals by scholars,” he explained.

Malawi is among the top five poorest countries in the world.