Dr Alex Vines OBE
Alex Vines, I’m the Director of the Africa Programme at Chatham House and it’s my great pleasure this morning to be hosting and chairing His Excellency, Dr Lazarus Chakwera, who is the President of the Republic of Malawi. He – the President is going to talk about “Malawi’s Priorities for Inclusive Prosperity”. This is a physical meeting, but it’s also a hybrid meeting, so we have people who have logged in on Zoom, but also on Facebook Live. Those of you on Zoom, you will be able to send us questions, so, do, do that, if you want to, when we get to the Q&A session. I’m afraid of – those of you who are on Facebook Live, you won’t be able to submit questions, but we’re very glad that you’re able to join us today. We do know that we have a global audience. As I told His Excellency, we have some 400 registrations internationally and that also doesn’t include some of the people on Facebook Live.
So, Malawi has now passed its first year under an Executive following the rerun of the Presidential election from June 2020. I, myself, remember meeting Dr Chakwera when he was waiting for the court judgement of whether there needed to be a rerun of the election or not, in late 2019. And as you know, in February 2020, the Court in Malawi ruled that there needed to be a rerun of that election, which ran last year in June and Dr Chakwera was elected President of Malawi.
So, much has happened, including COVID and many challenges, and so, we’re in a lucky position, I think, both to hear from the President of Malawi, in terms of the challenges of Malawi and how it’s coping with COVID and the impacts on its economy, but also, how to develop prosperity and particularly inclusive prosperity, in Malawi. The President was here for the Education Summit, so I, myself, will be interested in hearing the importance of education for Malawi, given the level of young people in Malawi, and I do recognise, also, that the Minister of Education of the President, as well as the First Lady, are here in the first row, so you’re both welcome.
President Chakwera, you’re not the first President of Malawi to be here. We have engaged with three of your predecessors and in the corridor, you will see there’s a photo of Hastings Banda, but also some of you, if you go upstairs, you’ll see on the wall a quote by Joyce Banda. So, I would say that this is almost a second home for a Malawian President. There is a – you’re most welcome.
Well, with no more ado, I’m going to now invite you, Excellency, to give your presentation and then, I will give a few more instructions afterwards, in terms of how we’re going to engage in the Q&A, particularly with our virtual audience who are watching us today. So, Excellency, thank you very much for finding time in your busy schedule to come here to Chatham House and I hand over to you. Thank you very much.
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
[Pause] Mr Vines, I’m extremely thankful for you making me feel at home. Ladies and gentlemen, just over a year ago, the Malawian people elected me as their President. But behind that unassuming fact of history is a story about the triumph of democracy, a story about the power of active citizenry and strong institutions, a story about what it takes to defeat corrupt systems. It is a story as remarkable as Malawi itself. The Presidential election had been slated for third Tuesday of May 2019 and I had the formidable task of facing, not only one, not two, but three incumbents, in a manner of speaking. Not only was I to run against the incumbent President, but against an incumbent Vice President, as well, following a falling out between the two a year prior. Then, there is the fact that a Senior Cabinet Minister in the administration also presented himself as a Presidential candidate, backed by a former ruling party. And of the four of us, I was the only one to campaign as a private citizen, with no state security or assets to lean on and was regularly dismissed as a ‘political lightweight’ by those who belittled my background as a Theologian. Against these odds, one can forgive those who dismissed Malawi’s journey to my Presidency as a ‘pipedream’.
Secondly, despite our efforts to safeguard the vote at the 5,002 polling centres across Malawi, we had the disadvantage of participating in an election managed by corrupt officials. Downstream, in the constituency centres, where the results are tallied, Returning Officers doctored over 1,000 result sheets with correction fluid, among other irregularities. While upstream, in the Electoral Commission itself, arrangements had been made to endorse these documents and declare the incumbent President the winner. And to complete the conspiracy, the international observers who saw that votes had been cast peacefully, were on the hand – on one hand, they rushed to declare the election free and fair, before determining if the votes had also been counted properly, on the other hand. Against these odds, one can forgive those who dismissed Malawi’s journey to my Presidency as ‘fool’s errand’.
Thirdly, when I and the Vice President filed separate petitions in the High Court – to the High Court, contesting the legality of the election and the credibility of the result, we had the voices of history and memory cautioning us against our quest for justice. No Presidential election had ever been overturned in our nation’s history. No Presidential election had ever been overturned anywhere in the world, except Kenya. And our petitions to overturn the election was to be examined by the courts in a country that had lost faith in the same, due to the many times Malawians had seen justice aborted by bribery and political interference, which we now know were attempted in our case. Against these odds, one can forgive those who dismiss Malawi’s journey to my Presidency as wishful thinking.
To add salt to injury, during that court case, we endured insults at home, from the shouts of our own compatriots, both for our petitions and for our peaceful protests. We endured insults abroad, from the whispers of Diplomats deriding us as “sore losers and enemies of democracy.” And when that case was finally ruled in our favour by a unanimous decision of the Constitutional Court, when that ‘Tipp-Ex election’ in the Court was finally overturned, when a fresh Presidential election was finally ordered and when that ruling was upheld by a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court, we still had to endure the insult of claims of innocence by the Electoral Commissioners, whose incompetence had been judicially certified and whose Chair had refused to resign.
In all that time, I was immersed in long and difficult negotiations with eight other parties to form an electoral alliance that took ten months to consolidate. In all that time, I was immersed in campaigning nationwide, not having settled whom the alliance would field as a candidate, not having settled a date for the polls and not having settled who would be eligible to vote. In all that time, we were up against COVID-19, resulting in declaration of a state of disaster in our attempt to lockdown the country, which required an intervention from the courts to keep the country open and from the Malawi Defence Force to keep the election in play. Against these odds, one can forgive those who dismiss Malawi’s journey to my Presidency as a ‘lost cause’.
The only reason Malawi’s journey to this moment was successful, the only reason Malawi’s journey to this moment is now celebrated worldwide, is because the Malawian people stood up for their rights and never gave up the fight. That is why their recognition by Freedom House as “the only people in the world whose democracy improved during the pandemic,” is deserved. The recognition of their Judges by the Chatham House Annual Prize is deserved. The recognition – their recognition as the Country of the Year 2020 by The Economist is deserved. Their recognition by the Annual Prize from the Africa-America Institute this year is deserved. It is to the Malawian people and the God in whom they trusted, that I owe my allegiance, my service, and many thanks.
Admittedly, with a public debt of over $4 billion and an economy in freefall from years of climate change, many months of mass demonstrations and many weeks of pandemic, all combining to shut down businesses and destroy thousands of jobs, the socioeconomic situation I have inherited as President is dire. It is so dire that delivering my agenda has become as painstaking as I warned it would be in my inaugural address. A stark contrast from the high expectations generated by the sweet outcome of the revolution, the court case and election. That outcome belies the arid conditions and the broken governance framework that were always going to force us to adjust the timing in delivering our agenda. Still, it is an agenda that my partners and I are determined to deliver, though we’re now just so aware of the bumper – bumpy terrain our economy is passing through.
We are currently battling a third wave of COVID, which has thus far, killed 1,588 Malawians. We face the prospect of dealing with the adverse effects of this year’s – of this for years to come. Its impact on public health has been an immense – as immense as its decimation of livelihoods, with their secondary impact of COVID with the general economic downturn, hits to specific sectors of our economy, on which jobs and prosperity depend, blows to our tourism sector and challenges of seeing our country unfairly placed on the red list of many countries, despite that the total COVID death toll for Malawi to date is equal to the daily toll – death toll of other countries.
When combined with policies barring Africa from producing COVID vaccines for its own people, the net effect on our people and economy is crippling. The fact remains that there can be no global recovery from the ravages of the pandemic, without equitable access to vaccines. Low-income countries have vaccinated just 1.32% of their people, while high income countries have vaccinated over half of theirs. That cannot go on. While we lobby for this inhumane inequality to end, we are stepping up our efforts to secure vaccines because we have found the current supply through COVAX woefully insufficient.
The fruit of these efforts is that we have just over one million doses of various vaccines coming our way between now and the end of September. We will continue to push for more doses, but what Africa really needs are the rights to produce the vaccine in Africa for Africans. As I take on the chairing of the Southern Africa Development Community, SADC, I want to push for the economic integration of the region and its implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area, under which Malawi and South Sudan have become the first to sign a bilateral trade deal. But to move with speed, we need most of our citizens of working age vaccinated.
A second challenge to our agenda of economic transformation is governance. My administration has prioritised the strengthening of governance institutions and democratic norms as a critical accelerator to development. To what that end, we have fulfilled the constitutional requirement for the President to appear in the National Assembly to respond to questions. We have strengthened the asset for future unit to recover and forfeit to the state all unexplained, or illicitly obtained wealth. We have enacted new legislation for increased financial and political autonomy for the Anti-Corruption Bureau, ACB. We have operationalised the Access to Information Act, to enhance public accountability in tendering, procurement and recruitment. We have initiated the establishment of a new Financial Crimes Court to speedily prosecute and dispose of financial crimes related cases. We have closed all avenues used in the past to syphon public funds from public institutions into the coffers of their political parties. We have reconfigured the procurement process of government ministries, departments and agencies, to empower local small to medium enterprises. We have replaced dozens of Controlling Officers and Ministers in departments where their appointment was either irregular or nefarious, and that is work ongoing. We have embarked on a crusade of public finance accountability by conducting forensic artists to form the basis of prosecutions against illicit transactions.
A third challenge to delivering these – the three priorities, are job creation, wealth creation and food security, is the climate crisis. My country and our region are particularly vulnerable to the devastating impacts of climate change. We are still coping with the catastrophic damage caused by Cyclone Idai. Our people are having to contend with erratic rains and increased drought and having – and living with the consequences of climate change is a daily affair. This places roadblocks on our path to sustainable early regeneration and our capacity to meet our commitments on the International Climate Change Agreements to reduce global emissions. I’m, therefore, engaging our development partners to work with us in advancing our agenda of mitigation and adaptation and I’ll look forward to making further progress, in that regard, at the forthcoming COP26 in November.
Now, taken together, these three challenges mean that Malawi’s moment of opportunity is also a moment of risk. We cannot afford to make the wrong decisions or to be side-tracked by selfish interests. We are focused on pushing for our national priorities and my priorities are clear and my agenda’s simple, in the next four years, I want to deliver three things for the people of Malawi: jobs, wealth creation and food security. These are foundational to our quest towards becoming a middle-income economy of inclusive prosperity by the Year 2063.
To do this, we are steadily reforming our agriculture and related sectors to become an engine for jobs and growth, wealth creation and food security. Malawi has long been over-reliant on the production of a few core commodities, primarily tobacco, but also maize, tea and sugar. Three in four Malawians live in rural areas and are heavily dependent on these few commodities. Since most of these are grown for subsistence, we are at the mercy of weather patterns. Since they are exported raw, we are at the mercy of prevailing global market prices and conditions for these commodities. Both these realities make it difficult for small-scale farmers to plan ahead.
Add to this the fact that tobacco is in a permanent decline around the world, at a time we need at least ten years to wean our economy off tobacco, you see both our predicament and urgent need for agricultural diversification and industrialisation. We are pushing for that to leverage our huge potential to produce industrial cannabis, for which we have already sent a bill to Parliament and establish a regulator authority with licensing protocols underway, which are already in high demand. We also intend to diversify into the production of groundnuts, soya and macadamia, based on global demands. But even with a diversified and industrialised agriculture, we are mindful of the need to keep production levels high. That is why we introduced the Affordable Inputs Programme, AIP, to increase production of all crops amongst small-scale farmers. The success of the AIP, seen in the good harvest we have had this year, the highest on record, shows the power of Malawian farming. This is a programme we will maintain, however, with better targeting.
Diversifying our economy will require investment. In the private sector, we are making Malawi the best place to do business in Southern Africa. We are doing this by reforming our land laws to attract commercial developments. We are doing this by replacing the office of the Registrar companies with companies and Intellectual Properties Office, the legislation for which goes to Parliament this coming November. And we’re doing this by cutting the red tape in the process for registering a business through the Malawi Investment and Trade Centre. In the public sector, we are chasing private sector investment by those willing to create value and jobs in Malawi. Despite the concerted efforts by some to paint a gloomy picture about our prospects of success, most of the world has goodwill towards Malawi and I’m confident that investments we are pursuing will materialise.
Our special interest is to secure investments in infrastructure, governance and human capital. The sectors of focus for infrastructural investment are energy, mining and transport. In energy, we are seeking investments to add 2,000 megawatts to the grid and to popularise green technologies. In mining, we have established a Ministry of Mining and are establishing a mining regulatory authority to leverage our country’s regimental base for development and in support of this end, the Central Bank has already begun serving as a structured market for the purchase of our country’s gold. And in transport, we are resurrecting our railway system and expanding our road network to ease the movement of goods. For investments in governance, our desire is to see the whole government digitised and reformed to improve its capacity to deliver our agenda, using my newly established Presidential Delivery Unit as a key driver. And for investment to human capital development, this is where education comes in and the fact that we need a mindset change and we need to depart from Afro-pessimism, to real hope, this is our desire to revolutionalise the health and education sectors, which enjoy a lion’s share of our national budget.
Toward these ends, I am determined to go to the ends of the Earth in search of strategic partnerships. We are calling for supporting partners in the rollout of vaccines, in the auditing and reforming of our institutions to end corruption, in private sector and public sector investments, in making Malawi a green economy, in building centres of excellence for the transfer of skills and technologies and in educating our youth for tomorrow’s opportunities. We value partnerships to level the playing field in a world that is rigged against us. The world is rigged against us by economic inequalities, vaccine inequalities, policy inequalities, legal inequalities, and institutional inequalities, but none of these things move me, because I am a Malawian. I have learned that to be a Malawian means to come from a people who know how to stand up to rigged systems and win against all odds. There is no doubt in my mind that we shall overcome. Thank you for listening [applause].
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Thank you, your Excellency, President Chakwera. What we’re going to do now is invite for questions and just to remind those who are with us on Zoom, you are able to ask a question, so if you want to do that, please use the ‘Q&A’ function and submit your questions. Participants will need to specify whether they want their written question to be read out by me or whether they’d like to ask a live question. So, please do specify that. A reminder, again, send your message through a ‘Q&A’ function if you’re on Zoom. Also, just a reminder that if you do want to tweet, that’s absolutely okay and please use #CHAfrica if you’d like to do that.
So, we’ve also got the opportunity, this is the first time, Excellency, we have an audience in a room here for a long time, like this, so we’re going to have a roving microphone going around and please do not feel shy. This is a great opportunity to ask His Excellency a question. So, I’ll go, first of all, to the room, before we get some questions coming in, and the gentleman right there. So, a microphone is coming to you, sir. If you could take your mask off when you ask the question, so we can hear you really clearly, that would be great. Thank you very much.
Adrian Hewitt
Mr President, Adrian Hewitt from ODI in London. Congratulations on becoming the Chair of SADC, I think on Sunday, as you mentioned. Are you going to use your powers in SADC to help its biggest member and maybe you, as the MCP, to help your fellow Congress Party to sort out South Africa and the ANC?
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Okay. We’ll go, at the moment, question by question, Excellency, ‘cause we’ve still – we’ve got reasonable time. So, if you’d like to answer that question, then we’ll go to another one.
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
That’s a great question. We are acting as a bloc and we’ve taken decisions as a bloc and I believe that I’ll continue with that understanding when I take over the chairmanship of SADC next month, God willing. It is true that we face many challenges, and our Congress Party has its own challenges, as well, so do the parties within the SADC region. What we want to make sure we do is consolidate democracy, pursue development and make sure we put people’s dignity at heart, and in pursuit of these wonderful goals, it is because we have an Africa we all want, we have a region that we want to see industrialised, developed and able to do within a context of peace, the business of delivering prosperity to all of our peoples. So, that is what we will pursue, thank you.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Thank you very much. So, there’s another question here. There’s plenty of hands, this is great, please go ahead.
Chidi Okeke
Thank you so much, Your Excellency. I’m Chidi Okeke, I represent the UNDP. As you assume your role as SADC Chair, what would be a complementary strategy beyond the current preoccupation on military interventions in Cabo Delgado? And is Malawi prepared for any poss – potential spill over effect of the current crisis in the region?
Dr Alex Vines OBE
So, there may be some more questions on Cabo Delgado. We can cluster them. I think there was one over there. Yeah, please go ahead and I saw you – your pen go up. Introduce yourself and ask your question.
James Murphy
James Murphy from Coventry University. Just following on from that question, I was just wondering who do you believe is behind the insurgency, who’s behind the violence? Is it a specific group or – and, yeah, as you said, like, what’s – what are your priorities as SADC Chair to stop it from spreading across borders? Thank you.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
There you go, President, two questions on Cabo Delgado.
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
Thank you very much. This is a challenge that is too close to home. You know, in SADC, we have had issues that continue to bedevil us. Tanzania, Malawi, South Africa have contributed troops and continue to contribute troops to the peacekeeping efforts in DRC, which is part of SADC. As Africa Union, we have resolved to silence the guns, so that we create a climate of peace on the continent. These are efforts that each one is willing to contribute their knowhow.
Now, with regard to the insurgency in Cabo Delgado, SADC leadership has met several times, and continue to do so, in order that we come up with a concerted response and the response that would meet this challenge and mitigate the problems that it – I have ensured, humanitarian issues. So, we have established a Humanitarian Office that is helping with the people that are being displaced, but we also decided that we would have a force to help deal with this insurgency. And we have worked with our current Chair in SADC, the Mozambiquan President, His Excellency Jacinto Nyusi, and we have also respected their right, as a sovereign state, to help us give direction as to how they want the response to shape out.
And so, I cannot speculate as to who is behind the insurgency, except to acknowledge the fact that the insurgency is there and there are issues to do with the intel, in terms of how these matters rollout. My desire, as incoming Chair, would be to make sure that we are in full view of this problem and are able to take decisions that would be informed by what is actually on the ground. Thank you.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Okay, we’ll take another question. I’m – very tall hand there with an even taller finger, please. Nice to see you after a long time. Go ahead.
Nick Westcott
Thank you, Alex. Mr President, I’m Nick Westcott, from the Royal African Society. You supported the concept for regional trade integration and the AfCFTA. In the past, ambitions for SADC and COMESA have never quite achieved their goals. Why, and what will Malawi do, and you as Chair of SADC, to make the AfCFTA different this time, in terms of achieving that regional trades integration? Thank you.
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
I appreciate that. The Royal African Society, we are truly optimistic with regard to doing trade amongst ourselves. Regionally, all of the blocs on the continent are in full agreement. When we all signed up to this, and the 1st of January this year, we said, “Let’s move away from mere talk. Let’s begin to do something.” And in SADC, we are even talking about trading amongst ourselves and making sure that instead of countries importing rice or maize from as far away as even outside the continent, why we could supply these things amongst ourselves and do trading, like Europe mostly does amongst themselves.
And so, we have a resolve that this is a new day for Africa and one of the reasons that we – you know, particularly because we had such a high yield in Malawi this year, because of the AIP programme, so that we have the sufficient reserves to even sail, we were determined to establish this because our friends need help in South Sudan and so we signed that memorandum of understanding. We will kickstart this. It is with full support of the African Union, full support of the [inaudible – 36:08] Bank and pretty soon, we will kickstart this, and that is all to demonstrate the fact that we mean business when we say, “Let Africa trade amongst itself.” It’s time we did it and inasmuch as there’s been issues in the past, COMESA have had its own issues, we want to focus on the future rather than derail the past that has not served us as well. Thank you.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Okay. I’m going to read out a couple of questions and then I’ll come back to the audience here. So, it’s not surprise to you, Excellency, that Malawians in Malawi are following what’s happening here today.
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
Wow.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
So, Chimnuka from the Campaign for Dual Citizenship for Malawi has emailed in a question to you, which is the following: “When you came into power, Excellency, your government inherited a bill for dual citizenship for Malawi that was already passed in Parliament. When will you complete the procedures to make this functional, so that Malawians with dual nationality can fully engage with the country in education, business and trade without being treated as foreigners and contribute to Malawi’s priorities for inclusive prosperity that you have just outlined in your speech today at Chatham House?”
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
Wonderful. I’m so glad to hear from my friends with regard to the Campaign for Dual Citizenship. Yes, I was there as Leader of Opposition when we passed that legislation and we supported it fully, because we had also campaigned on the same. What is remaining now, after the law has been enacted, there are a few things that you need to put in place in order to operationalise it, just like we did now with the acts to Information Act, because there were requirements we needed to do. We are positive that you should be telling a different story not eve – just this time next year, but probably by the end of the year, as we still have to meet in November. And so – and we are hopeful that everyone will be free and the whole intent is truly to make sure that those in diaspora can hold this as a trump card, in order for them to be sure that when they invest in Malawi, they are not losing out, because they will be both Malawians and wherever they are, holding citizenship right now.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Thank you very much. I have another question and as you know, Excellency, the home countries of the UK, particularly Scotland, has a soft spot for Malawi, and we have a question from Rebecca Hinton, who’s a PhD student at the University of Strathclyde. So, she’s asking you, Excellency, “I’ve enjoyed reading about Malawi’s vision for the future of agriculture in Malawi 2063. However, I would be interested in hearing from you about the vision for smallholder farmings over the coming 40 years, with the increasing commercialisation of agriculture.” In other words, how does smallholder farming fit your vision for Malawi becoming an inclusively wealthy and self-reliant nation that you just mentioned in your speech?
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
Thank you so much, Miss Rebecca. I really appreciate the fact that we can even hear from Scotland. We have truly such a wonderful historical link. Most Malawians, like I said, 80%, even more, live in the rural areas and they are subsistence farmers. We want to move away from subsistence, because we want ‘em to understand that farming is big business. And how do we intend to do that? We want to introduce mechanisation. We want to introduce small-scale industries across the country and wherever, you know, different crops are produced, so that we add value to such. But we want the farmers to come together in co-operatives or clubs, so that they are able to access financing and they are able to do this in a way that frees up most of their time, so they can do other things, other than spend all of their season doing one thing that pays them once in a year. This is what we are planning to do. So, when we talk about mechanisation, we talk about commercialising, and we want the smallholder farmers to be the beneficiaries of that which they produce.
Currently, there’s been huge exploitative ways of ripping these farmers off, and so, when we’re talking about adding value, when we’re talking about making sure we have markets, ready markets for them, we want to be sure that they are the best beneficiaries of what they produce and that will obviously, then, make it possible for them and their income and their livelihoods to improve, because many of the poorest of the poor live in the rural places and yet, they are hardworking. We want to help them make sure that they reap dividends of their hard work in a way that is structured. And so, we will have them in groups, and we will not only concentrate on commercial farming, with regard to huge farms, which is okay, but we want to concentrate on this large population that needs to get up and so that they are not necessarily getting handouts, but a hand up, in order for them to be truly self-reliant.
So, our goal to make Malawi a self-reliant nation, our goal to make Malawi, you know, a country with inclusive wealth, has to consider them as priority and that’s why even in our first year, we wanted them to know that we placed our emphasis on their welfare.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Thank you very much. So, just a reminder to those of you that are on Zoom that you can still send in your questions, use the ‘Q&A’ box function and indicate whether you want to ask a live question or have me read them out, as I’ve been doing so far. So, I’m coming now into the hall here. So, gentleman here, let’s go here, we’ll take your question. Please do introduce yourself. There you go, sir.
Ahmed
My name is Ahmed, I’m from the Republic of Sudan. I’m especially interested in the education experience of Malawi, I mean, and there sounds there’s some kind of conference which is being held, too, about this question. Can you give us some information on this, who is taking part in the conference, what is the results if it has been held, and then, generally about the prioritisation of education in Malawi, which is really good and important? Thank you.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Is anyone else wanting to ask a question about education? So, let’s go there. Excellency, we do have your Minister of Education in the front row. I don’t know if you want to delegate her to…
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
No, I…
Dr Alex Vines OBE
…answer the question?
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
Yeah, I mean, what is the use of having help and not using it?
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Yeah, so…
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
So, yeah.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
…she’s there. But let’s get the question there, please sir, please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Member
Thank you and thank you, Your Excellency. I’m a member of an Irish charity working in Malawi, on Education Culture Fund or Foundation, and it was just specifically, just, are there any – can you give any indications as to any specific reforms that are going to be happening to the education system? Specifically primary and secondary is what we’re interested in. It’d just be really interesting to hear your ideas on that. Thank you.
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
Wonderful. Miss Agnes Nyalonje, you want to…?
Dr Alex Vines OBE
We can bring the microphone to you, if you want.
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
Yeah.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
So, if we pass a microphone to Her Excellency, the Minister, yeah, so then she can contribute.
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
Go ahead.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Thank you very much.
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
Go ahead, thank you.
Agnes Nyalonje
Thank you very much for those questions. The first question is asking about a Global Education Summit that we’ve just attended, and asking what has been some of the take home for Malawi and how useful has it been for us to have been here, our President and myself? First of all, let me say this Global Summit on Education has been the most successful on record, according to the organisers and we, as Malawi, came to it to attest to the need for prioritising education globally, but also for us, in Malawi. Because in Malawi, we already prioritise education. However, what we hadn’t expected was that this summit would be this successful, so in raising the magnitude of resources that this summit has raised. The expectation was to have raised – to raise US$ 5 billion over the coming year, or the years, for the next five years. That 4+ billion has been raised up to this point that we’re talking about. That means that my country, Malawi, stands to gain significantly from that.
What are our priorities for which we’re looking for these resources? We have a huge deficit in school infrastructure, both in primary education, but also in secondary education, where we’re missing in primary education, for example, we have less – we’re about half of the classrooms we need. We need 90,000 plus classrooms, we only have about 47,000, which means we do need places, safe places, quality places, from which to teach our children. We need more Teachers and we need to introduce a viable platform for open and distance and eLearning and all that and we believe will be made more possible now that we have aligned ourselves with the global community in both raising funds, but also prioritising education, ‘cause yesterday, when we met our pledge as a country to raise our hand for education, we did it for the children and the Teachers of Malawi.
Coming to reforms that we, ourselves, are undertaking right now, primarily they’re linked to secondary and primary education. We have a number of reforms to do with how we manage Teachers, to do with how we train Teachers, because we know that without due care of how we recruit, train and deploy Teachers, we cannot achieve quality education. We also have our plans to enhance the ownership and governance in schools. What we’re discovering is that when it comes to schools, whether it’s primary or secondary, the issues of discipline are key and without discipline, you cannot have quality education. We’re also looking at various issues that will help us to improve the school environment. For a long time, Malawi has had a deficit in Teacher’s houses. We’re talking about Teachers.
Let me take a moment to talk about that. We often talk about what motivates a Teacher. What we find is that when a Teacher has a good house, a quality house, the Teacher is much happier to go to school and teach. We have a significant deficit in School Teachers’ houses and so, as a country, we are hoping that our presence at the summit will also help us to begin to address that deficit, so that we can have well motivated Teachers who also were looking to improve the training. Up to this point, the majority of our Teachers in this primary sector and secondary, have certificate qualifications. What we want is to make a diploma the minimum qualification, going forward, and to have more Teachers having degree qualifications. So, we have our work cut out for us, but we believe we can do it. Thank you very much.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Minister, just keep the microphone there, because you’ve suddenly got interest, including from Burkina Faso. So, I’ve got a question that’s just come in from Ougadougou for you. So, just for your information, President, we have something here at Chatham House called the Common Futures Conversation Project, which is a centenary initiative that uses a bespoke online platform to provide a space for y0ung people in Africa and Europe to share perspectives on key global issues and engage with policymakers. And we’ve just received a question in from one of them, who’s Eimer Sawadogo from Burkina Faso. So, I think we’re going to unmute, no, so that Eimer can ask the question? So, please go ahead, Eimer, ask your question to the Minister. I’m hoping the tech works here. Otherwise, I’m going to read it out, ‘cause I’ve got it in front of me. Yeah, you can hear the birds of Burkina Faso.
Eimer Sawadogo
Hello.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Hello, please go ahead, Eimer, please ask your question.
Eimer Sawadogo
Okay, thank you. I am Eimer Devickitt [inaudible – 49:55] Sawadogo from Burkina Faso and I participate in the renewal for [inaudible – 50:01] projects. And dear President, how do you plan to change the education system to train job creators and not mainly jobseekers in order to fight against unemployment? Thank you.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
There you go. So, I don’t know if Your Excellency or the Minister wants to answer the question…
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
Well, I…
Dr Alex Vines OBE
…or both of you?
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
…could put in one sentence, but I would want her to go ahead in response. Is it – well, one of the things – merci bien, mon frere – one of the things to understand is to know exactly why education, it must be a preparation for life? And if you can get educated and know – don’t know how to live and don’t know how to prosper and don’t know how to manage yourself, then you are too educated for nothing. We want education that will prepare Africa for the Africa they want. Go ahead.
Agnes Nyalonje
Thank you very much, all the way from Burkina Faso. A very key question. I think it’s a question that’s at the heart of the relevance of our education systems. In Malawi, as well as looking to provide safe spaces for learning, we’re looking to see how can we review our programmes, both at primary, and some would say, even any childhood subsector, primary and secondary and even vocational and then, higher education, to look at what we teach and see how relevant are these to what we now, as a country, have adopted as our blueprint for development in Malawi 2063, where we seek to achieve a Malawi that is inclusively and – inclusively wealthy and industrialised by 2063.
What we find is that, first of all, we need to shape a new kind of citizen, a kind of citizen that’s capable of aspiring for something better and something better that means not just aspiring to be educated and get a job in an office. The new kind of citizen will be aspiring to be self-sufficient, because that’s the other part of what our vision is about, inclusively wealthy and self-sufficient, self-reliant. So, what we are looking to do, for example, in higher education, is that every university, every institution should, as well as training for the core subject areas, whether it’s engineering or whatever, they should also incorporate entrepreneurship training. So, as we speak, most of our programmes are incorporating that. But in addition to that, we recognise that there are a lot of young people already qualified who have the wherewithal to stand on their own feet, but who don’t have the capital to get them going. So, our government, under the leadership of my President, has put in place a fund that makes young people independent by providing capital that can get them started, so that instead of expecting to be employed, they should, themselves, become employers. Those are just some of the things that we’re doing at the moment. Thank you very much.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Thank you very much. I’m going to read out, Excellency, two more questions and then I’ll do a round – a cluster of questions from the audience here and then we’ll finish. We might be slightly over the time, but not very much, maybe by five minutes.
So, I have two questions here. One is from Linos Muffo, who is in Addis Ababa and works for the UN Economic Commission for Africa. So, Linos says, “Greetings, Mr President. Thank you for your great presentation. You rightly talked about climate change and there must be a serious global action to respond to climate change, which is serious affecting Africa, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. As Africa goes to COP26, what do you expect as a success for Africa and what should be a just transition for Africa, as you plan to increase Malawi’s electricity capacity to 2,000 megawatts? What lessons have you learned from the global response to COVID-19 on how Africa should deal with global response to climate change?” That’s question number one.
The second question, Excellency, is again from Scotland, and it’s from David Hope-Jones, who’s the Chief Executive Officer for the Scotland-Malawi Partnership, and David writes, “Scotland looks forward to welcoming Malawi’s delegation to Glasgow for COP26 in November. As one of Malawi’s oldest and closest friends, we will do all it – we can to support Malawi’s full participation and help amplify Malawi’s voice at the conference. This is a – clearly a crucial moment for Malawi to be heard on climate change, represented both its own priorities and those of the wider, least developed countries, LDCs, blocs and SADC, in tangible terms.” So, in tangible terms, his question is “What does Malawi wish to get from COP26 ensuring genuine climate action and how can the Scotland-Malawi Partnership assist you in Glasgow?” Thank you, Mr President.
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
Thank you so much. I can see how, from Addis, all the way to Scotland, the questions are similar, and it is what does Africa intend to gain from COP26, what would success mean? And for Malawi, what would Malawi’s expectation be at this aid conference? And Africa has probably, well, until recent times when we are seeing effects of climate change affect, everyone else across the globe, I think, just like COVID, this thing has brought us to the realisation that multilateralism partnerships in handling similar issues is the way to go, because we have but one planet and future of this planet needs to be managed by all of us. It is not a hidden fact that developed nations have so developed using means that have really contributed to the destruction of our planet, and developing nations are having to bear the brunt of it. But what do we do now, because we all need to save our planet in order that our children and grandchildren live a better life than we have been able to?
So, in terms of Africa, we see desertification, we see the destruction of forests everywhere. Malawi has experienced the same and it is because, usually, we have used wood for fuel and how do we move away from that? We have large deposits of coal, but now, we can’t use coal, because of the bad effects that it has, and so, building greener, building a greener Malawi, building a greener Africa, what would that entail? This is where we want to share technologies so that we are able to help our people understand that there are better ways of cooking the local dish, Nsima. There’s a better way of cooking Nsima, rather than cutting down a tree to have your fuel. And if we can invest heavily in biomass, in fuels that will not destroy the environment, this is where we want to go. This is what we would want to get and if we can have investors, you know, partnering with Malawians to produce this same on large scale.
We have seen examples of how you can make briquettes, you know, so people can use that for wool – you know, fuel. Or in the villages, if you can make – and some have come up with ingenious of ways of coming up with stoves that they can use that does not have to use the kind of fuel they’ve been used to. This is where we want to go. We want to find ways of making sure that we – the programme we have for reforestation in Malawi, for example, continues, so that we have good cover.
When Malawi hosted over a million refugees and that time, it was the only country having such large numbers of people. A lot of forests were destroyed because of that, because people needed to have fuel for food to – for cooking, and so, when you go further north and you are seeing the effects of the desert expanding, you say, “How can we push this back?” and we want to find technologies of doing that. And so, we are going to COP26 with the expectation that, just like multilaterally, we are finding solutions to cope with issues, we will take one or two things to go home with us in order for Malawi to continue to develop.
We have relied on hydro, and we were going to – yeah, a full study had already been done to use coal to produce more power. We want to go the way of solar, we want to go, if we can use wind. We have plenty of these things in our country and if we can go that way and we have investment that goes that way, that means, then, we can’t be forced to go the other way. Now, Western Europe has used coal all these many years and now, we are finding we are hand – our hands are tied because they don’t want us to do that. Well, we have those things. We can, therefore, come together and say, “How best do we do this? Because you destroyed it, help us fix it.”
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Okay, so, we’ve got – I’m going to take a cluster of questions now, so quick and succinct. You first, sir. Please take your mask off, also, so we can hear you read clearly. Thank you very much.
Jorge Medina
Your Excellency, thank you so much for taking the time out to speak to us. A few months ago, Zambia defaulted on its loans to China and a lot of countries in the region have actually taken up investment from China. How can you – especially Malawi. How can Malawi prevent itself from becoming vulnerable in this type of situation from accepting investment from ever increasing China, especially wanting to expand its power in the region?
Dr Alex Vines OBE
And just tell us who you are, so we know.
Jorge Medina
Oh, I’m sorry. My name is George Medina, I’m from King’s College London.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Right, okay, and there’s a question here. Yeah, please go on.
Jonathan Rosenthal
Thank you. Jonathan Rosenthal from The Economist. Excellency, you described the very long and difficult path that you had to walk to get to this position and that one of the obstacles in that path was that election monitors falsely certified the election as free and fair. You’re not the only country, or Democrat, in the region that has suffered that, whether it is Zambia, Zimbabwe, DRC. Why are the regional mechanisms so broken, whether it’s SADC or the EU, in certifying elections, and how does one fix that? Thank you.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Okay. Emmanuel, just behind you, there was a gentleman with a hand up and then there’s one down here and that’s it. Go ahead, sir.
Julian Harper
Oh, Your Excellency, thank you for your comments. Julian Harper, Tico Capital Management. A very quick, but difficult, question, what is the path towards broader vaccination for SADC countries? Is there a collective strategy or is it country-by-country? And what is a reasonable timeframe to expect vaccination rates to hit, you know, 50%, let’s say, as a benchmark?
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Okay, and the final question is just here, and that’s it. Okay, well, we’ll get you, also, and that’s it. My apologies for those on Zoom that we haven’t had time to – we’ve had so many questions, Excellency, we could go on for hours. Please, go ahead. Over to you, Excellency.
HE Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera
Thank you. Defaulting on loans and you gave Zambia as an example, which way Malawi? You know, I believe that what we’re embarking on by way of making sure we have both sides of the formal sector and the formal sector in our economic equation functioning right and making sure that farmers are doing the right thing, it’s no longer just subsistence, it is now commercial, and making sure that that base for tax revenues is broad enough. Malawi’s able to do what it can do to develop, without having to go into all of these debts that will keep generations of – to come in bondage. I believe we could do that. Sometimes, even through study, it has been demonstrated that a fourth of – budget, that would come from development partners. It’s because of a fourth of that budget has been abused or stolen, or through corruption, gone in ways that has not serviced Malawians.
Now, if we continue with our fight in making sure that every kwacha does what it’s intended to do, if we continue to be involved in the investment that brings Malawi up there, whether you’re talking about mining or tourism and agriculture, we will have the resources to be a self-reliant nation. That’s our goal, not to be a nation of defaulters.
What about the election monitors you mentioned? Because in all of that region, it’s a similar problem that sometimes happens and then, elections are ‘endorsed’, when actually, a lot of other things happen in the process. The process of democratisation is one that needs to be pursued and not given up as a result of failure here or failure there. I think with a leadership that says this is the way to go and we encourage one another, then even when we have elections in a country and we have so-called international observers – by the way, the election that was hailed in Malawi, we had no international observer at all. It is possible, therefore, to do something right for once and not just for once, but forever. This is what we need to push. We need an Africa that has created an involvement in which you do not have to choose between a dictatorship and democracy, in order for you to have development. You can have both, not either/or. That is my firm belief.
“What is your collective strategy for vaccination?” Like I said, our Former Chair of the African Union, who represented us well at the G7, spoke about all of these intellectual rights, all of these inequalities, and I have repeated similar calls, even today. There are certain countries, according to CDC Africa, who have the capability, even as we speak, of producing these vaccines. Let us produce these vaccines for Africans, so that we don’t have to always say, “Where can we buy them?” and so forth. And that’s what we are wanting to pursue, not just as a region, but as a continent, which centres can be used?
In fact, if Malawi had the wherewithal and somebody wanted to invest in this, we would go onto it, because for years, the world – the COVAX facility, for example, in terms of children’s immunisation and so forth, we have all co-operated. But now, it looks like this particular life and death issue, all of a sudden, has become politicised, all of a sudden, has become a huge divide. We want to make sure let’s get prepared if there’s outbreaks in future, what can we do as a region? That’s one of the things in building back, what can we do in the context of COVID? In fact, in two weeks’ time, or three weeks’ time, when we do meet at SADC, this is part of what our discussion will be. And I am open to ideas right now and so, we will be looking for answers to see how we can proceed.
Yes, I did mention the fact that I was blessed to grow up in a context of Dr Banda’s, our founding father’s first regime. Now, sometimes this is what happens. When you go to one extreme, and the extreme at that time was the human rights record that wasn’t right, to correct that, we went to the other extreme, where even the good policies of Dr Banda were thrown out, like they say, “Throwing out the baby with the bathwater.” And now, people are realising that hey, we can take strengths from the past and use those things that work, rather than the things that didn’t work, or if they worked, they worked under such, you know, heavy burdens placed on the people. We don’t want to repeat that. And so, here I am saying, “Well, if there was an economic pro – you know, programme that really worked, what can we learn from it?” Because the first ten years of – after our independence, Malawi’s economic motion was going this way. Then, after another ten years, we had tethered off and we were going backwards. And then, sometimes people say, “Well, you know, we can help you fix this” and structural adjustments are proposed, and you will say, “This is the way to go, yeah, I think now we’ve got a solution.” But 57 years later, what solutions are supposed to work are not working. They are just keeping Malawi barely alive and not dead, but not able to get out of poverty trap.
And so, we want to say what is it that we can learn, in order for us not to just maintain, not to just survive? We need to thrive, and we need to become a better country. That’s the things we need to learn from the past. Not the dictatorship that would put burdens on people and remove their freedoms and silence them to where they no longer have a voice, but to say, “What still can be done in terms of discipline?” Sometimes we say, “Oh, we would want to be like a Singapore. We would want to be like – in Africa, like Rwanda. We would want to be like this.” But nobody wants to pay that price. It cannot have – or it cannot be, you know, “I want this,” and yet, you just want to stay lazy and “nobody should be asking me how to be accountable.” No, we need to have the kind of discipline that says if I want my business to work, then I must follow principles that work that business.
And what is the best way, or message, for investment in Malawi? I like that. There’s peace, come. We want to follow a rule of law so that everyone is protected, their investment protected, and we want to be sure that we remain the one part of Africa where everyone is welcome and we say, when you come, not just feel at home, but “Be at home.” We want to be an environment in which the red tape is cut and an environment in which you don’t have to visit several people and give them, each one of them, money in order for you to get your paper, which you should have gotten the first day that you needed to get it. We want to cut out that, because there’s too much corruption going on and we want to be a country that is corrupt free, a country that follows the rule of law and a country that says, “Here’s our open arms, welcome.” Alright.
Dr Alex Vines OBE
Thank you very much, Mr President. It’s been a fascinating hour and 15 minutes with you. I wish we could have more time. Again, my apologies to those internationally whose questions we could not take on this occasion.
Two things, first of all, I think we need to show the President our customary appreciation for his time with us today, and secondly, please remain in the hall, but stand up when the President leaves. But let’s, first, give him the applause that the President deserves [applause].
