The year 2015 came and went. But what did it bring to or take away from Malawians? There cannot be any consensus on what the year was like to the country. But let us dissect the remains of 2015 and attempt a post-mortem.
Bad beginning The country started the year on bad note. Flashfloods washed away homes and even lives of fellow Malawians in 17 districts, across the country. The floods, which were followed by a dry spell, also destroyed vast swaths of crop fields, leaving over 2 million Malawians hungry.
The impact of the angry waters and the dry-spell, disturbed Malawi’s economy: tobacco did not do well while the farmer had nothing to eat.
Forex became scarce thereby pushing up the cost of imports. Banks adjusted their lending rates, perching them at a dizzying 50 percent. Because of high cost of borrowing, many enterprising Malawians lost valuable hard earned assets such as buildings and vehicles.
Ray of hope Government launched a few initiatives that attempted to give meaning to life for Malawians. For instance, there was the Malawi Investment Forum where government sold its economic blue-print to investors from across the globe.
The only challenge is that government is good at coming up with innovative ideas whose follow up often ends on an anti-climax. Some ideas are outright questionable as well. While the world is talking of doing away with the use of coal due to climate change issues, the government is courting investors into coal powered projects in Malawi. One would have expected the government to consider green sources of energy, such as wind and solar, which are abundant in Malawi.
President Peter Mutharika launched the community technical colleges programme in all the regions.
If properly run, the colleges would help a lot of young adults to be on their feet. The initiative would ensure that the youth should not depend on being employed but become employers at their own level. Graduates from the colleges would also, likely, get established within their communities.
This would help stem migration from rural to urban areas. If the youth stop trekking to the urban centres, development projects will spread evenly to all districts of the country.
Then there was the issue of subsidies which refused to be properly tamed. The Farm Input Subsidy Programme (Fisp) proved disastrous this year. Government changed the selection criteria from relying on traditional leaders to depend on computer system. The change might have addressed issues of corruption which some traditional leaders engage in. Related to Fisp is the Decent Housing Programme popularly known as the Malata and Cement Subsidy Programme.
Up to now, some deserving Fisp beneficiaries are yet to receive coupons or the inputs themselves. But farmers have already received early rains and most of them have already planted. This shoddy way of handling Fisp foretells doom for the programme.
Malata Subsidy Programme has its own share of problems. Some would be beneficiaries waited in vain for supplies until they gave up. Government then came in and said they would still give the targeted people the items that would have a shortfall in their projects.
Not all is lost Although the prospects look gloomy, we can change course if we properly adjust the sails.
Malawi has the most important factor for an environment conducive for a vibrant economy: peace. Yes we are poor and clearly have no sense of vision but we can redeem our destiny if we take out greed in our national endevour.
We are also on course in bringing to book those who dipped their long and dirty fingers in our national coffers.
The prosecution has been systematically done in such a way that conviction on one level leads to voluntary confessions on another level. Convicted civil servants pointed fingers at colluding contractors.
The contractors have named corrupt authorizing officers who, in turn, are implicating some god-fathers.
All said, 2015 has defied the proverbial wisdom of bad start means good ending.
The year started off on a bad note and has ended on another bad note as Malawians have lost their buying power and self worth.
May you have a Happy and Prosperous 2016!
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