An economic commentator says the Malawi economy is failing to grow because of the tendency among Malawians to replicate business ideas.
The analyst says this practice is unsustainable and will cause Malawi to lose out on economic growth as the country will not be able to offer valuable products and services to Malawian as well as international consumers.
According to the analyst, Nelson Mkandawire, most Malawians go into business only to get their daily bread and not with the long-term goal of seeing their businesses grow to a point where they also create jobs for others.
“People are not even taking the effort to explore consumer needs outside the Malawian market. We are limiting ourselves to what other are offering instead of doing market research even beyond our borders to find out what services we can offer,” he said.
Mkandawire says Malawians also lack creativity when deciding on what businesses to do choosing instead to just follow the crowd.
“We need to be adding on to what others are doing. We need to find how we can complement the products and services that are already on the market instead of just duplicating what is already there because if we do that our economy cannot grow,” he said.
Most people point to high capital gearing as well as high interest rates as being the major stumbling block to explore new business ideas in Malawi.
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