It would be hard to disagree with UN Resident Coordinator Mia Seppo\u2019s sentiments, made during the launch of the 2016 Human Development Report on Wednesday, that Malawi has no business bracketed in the same category as countries which have experienced war at one point or another.<\/p>\n
For many Malawians and others who have lived in the country long enough, it is not hard to put a finger on where things went\u2014and are still going\u2014wrong.<\/p>\n
For starters, the report\u2019s Human Development Index (HDI), which measures human development in terms of healthy life, access to knowledge and decent standard of living, ranks Malawi 170 out of 188 UN-recognised countries.<\/p>\n
Not that Seppo said anything new, but hers was a sobering reminder of just how this country, despite enjoying peace, continues to be run in a business-as-usual manner.<\/p>\n
No one really cares; we all live like we do not care about tomorrow. The widening gap between the rich few and the many poor is so frightening.<\/p>\n
This country is among the 20 low human development countries by choice due to a passive citizenry and largely due to our selfish leaders and their appetite for politics of self-aggrandisement.<\/p>\n
One regime after another, our leaders take politics to a sickening level where even technocrats, who elsewhere conceptualise and drive the economic agenda, are forced to join the bandwagon of politicians just for survival.<\/p>\n
Despite all the peace, no project or initiative in Malawi can be pursued by anyone without someone using their political power.<\/p>\n
And that is the biggest problem because politicians\u2019 instinct is survival and they use all tactics in the book to consolidate their power even when doing so compromises development.<\/p>\n
For example, just to construct a school block we need politicians to get credit. To construct a road, politicians influence the bidding process, thereby compromising the quality of the work and, sometimes, even the cost. All this sums up how sick as a nation we have become.<\/p>\n
Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe\u2019s reaction to the HDI offered little encouragement as he rejected the notion that Malawi has not done anything in the past 50 years because urban areas have changed since 1964.<\/p>\n
While it is true that the country has made some strides in some sectors, the larger picture is that, as Seppo pointed out, we are moving at very slow pace and there is need for practical ways of developing this country.<\/p>\n
Indeed, we are good at launching one initiative after another while implementation remains zero.<\/p>\n
In other words, if Malawi were a baby born in 1964, you would have expected it to be an adult by now. Unfortunately, this country is crawling instead of walking.<\/p>\n
Babies need spoon feeding all the time and should we be surprised that we struggle without donor aid?<\/p>\n
That stunted growth should be a source of concern for our leaders and indeed the citizens.<\/p>\n
But there is little hope that this template of running the country will change any time soon as the citizens are also guilty by default for being so passive to a fault.<\/p>\n
Malawians grumble and suffer in silence; they just cannot stand up and tell the leaders that \u2018enough is enough\u2019.<\/p>\n
Actually, Seppo should have reminded us that there are countries that are at war, yet the majority of their people are relatively better off in terms of access to the basics.<\/p>\n
It is true that this country is not poor but the people are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It would be hard to disagree with UN Resident Coordinator Mia Seppo\u2019s sentiments, made during the launch of the 2016 Human Development Report on Wednesday, that Malawi has no business bracketed in the same category as countries which have experienced war at one point or another. For many Malawians and others who have lived in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44432,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44426\/revisions\/44432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}