Malawi, by all standards and definitions, is an impoverished nation. Accounting to the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report for 2009, about 74 percent of the population still lives below the income poverty line of US$1.25 a day and 90 percent below the US$2 a day threshold. Unemployment levels are high and the few that have a job cannot even afford a decent living. In fact, a United Nations Special Reporteur on the right of food, Olivier De Schutter, who recently visited the country, bemoaned the absurdity of the country’s minimum wage, which falls far below the living needs of the employees’ households.
It is relatively outlandish and piteous though that, a country that has been independent for 49 years should still mire in dire poverty. Going through the 2010 statistics of rural poverty in Malawi, one would find the figures to be shocking. Our total population is around 14, 900, 841. The statistical report further indicates that the number of people living in rural areas is at 11, 950, 475 while 6, 680, 315 of these are the rural poor. These are 2010 statistics and this is 2013. I do not think that the situation has changed for any better. If anything, it must have gone worse off now. In my presumption, I consider the entire population to be over 15, 000, 000 as of now, while that of the rural poor is [in my premised presumption] estimated to be at about 8, 000, 000.
When I heard about President Joyce Banda’s Mudzi Transformation Trust I was excited.
For once, I felt like the president had found the panacea for poverty and affliction among the rural poor. In my mind, I was envisaging the lives of the rural poor being transformed and uplifted. For a moment, I thought like poverty was going to be arrested through this Mudzi Transformation Trust idea. But when the programme started rolling out, and the proper terms of reference were made public, where it was indicated that the rural poor will be helped by putting a metal roof on their heads, some economics started dawning in my head.
I reflected on the rural in areas where people still draw water direct from rivers and unprotected wells. This is where people cannot afford the luxury of three meals a day. Food production has drastically dwindled, a situation harboring hunger and escalating the poverty in the process. These are the people who are hard working, but their main problem is input resources. And I asked myself a question: how many of the 6, 680, 315 who are classified as poor people living in rural areas would benefit from the Mudzi Transformation Trust houses? When this project enters a generally impoverished village, is it going to be the entire village benefiting or selected households? How much would be used towards such? How about using that money and providing the necessary resources to the people so that they can sustainably uplift their lives?
That is when it dawned upon me that the President’s initiative is either ill-advised, narrowly perceived or it is just to make people believe that something is being done about their miserable lives. I keep asking myself in what way will moving these people from grass-thatched houses into corrugated iron sheet roofs improve their lives. Will iron sheets on their heads bring food on their table? Will the brick house and the corrugated iron sheets on their heads take away their misery and tattered clothes on their bodies? Won’t they end up removing the iron sheets and selling them to buy food for their households? This is where I feel President Banda’s Mudzi Transformation Trust has ill-conceived objectives.
When I heard about the concept, what was running through my head was the idea of empowering the rural poor to be able to stand on their feet economically and be able to fend for their households. I thought instead of putting the dollars on the rural poor’s heads, the President would find means of uplifting the rural poor through some kind of entrepreneurial training and provision of seed capital to put them on their feet. I was thinking of seriously considering implementation of the Green Belt Project briefed by the previous administration.
Come to think of it in this way: government will have to import the iron sheets in order to put a roof on their rural poor’s heads. Put it simply, it is like the government will take some forex and put it on these people’s heads where it will just stay idle without profiting even the people it is covering. President Banda and her government would have profited the rural poor by using the money to create some jobs and ensure that the money multiplies and reaches out to more people. This is why I am not keen on supporting the programme at least considering how it is being rolled out because I think it has missed the point. Or am I missing something here? My thoughts are that the Mudzi Transformation Trust should have aimed at improving the rural poor’s access to financial services, which is severely restrictive in the country along the lines of social cash transfer initiative.
By Negracious Al Majjiduh
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