America in Africa

Challenging poverty through economic growth
By Emmanuel Luciano

It’s not always the case that great expectations make frustrated men.
The Chairman for the Parliamentary Committee on Trade, Commerce and Industries, who is also Member of Parliament for Lilongwe South West Constituency, is an optimistic man.
Willard Gwengwe envisages a wonderful future for Malawi. He envisions a Malawi with more referral hospitals than the present four of Mzuzu, Kamuzu, Queens and Zomba Central hospitals.
He dreams of a time when even the remotest of places like Phoka in Rumphi, Sinyala in Lilongwe, Makanjira in Mangochi and Marka in Nsanje will have roads befitting a country that gained independence some 44 years ago.
In Gwengwe’s ideal country there are no trees that transform into classrooms of some sort because the available school blocks can not accommodate the surging numbers of pupils in primary schools.
His is a world of conventional secondary schools and proper education system where teachers are spared from the bedlam of shacks they currently call homes because there are enough and proper teachers’ houses.
In the MP’s perfect world, it is only a country with a top-notch health and education system that can spur development in other sectors like of trade and commerce.
Just days after meeting John Hewko, the vice-president of Compact Development of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Gwengwe has every reason to positively look into the future. After all, as Anna Eleanor Roosevelt would have it, ‘the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.’
The prospect of Malawi getting huge grants from MCC’s Compact should, therefore, be exciting news to any development conscious Malawian.
In Africa, MCC has approved nearly US$3.9 billion for its engagement with countries like Ghana getting US$547 million; Mozambique US$ 507 million; Lesotho US$363 million; Morocco US$ 687.5 million; and Tanzania US$ 698 million.
The money is not yet here, and there are still a few things that have to be done in the interim before Malawi starts receiving the grants. But with all these figures that went to other countries, Gwengwe can now start counting the eggs.
“It’s my sincere hope that the administration of the fund is not going to be politicised. We should priotise the key areas of education and the health sector as well.
“To spur trade and investment, we need to remove the supply-side constraints. These are bottlenecks like poor road infrastructure, electricity problems and water supply which the private sector is facing in the country,” says Gwengwe.
Dreams, wishes, prospects are just words that on their own are meaningless and in the case of Malawi’s MCC Compact, meaning will on be attached to these words when, as Hewko said, a consultative process to formulate proposals for Malawi starts.
“The next step is for the government to organise a broad consultative process with Malawian civil society and the private sector to ask Malawian people what they feel MCC funding should be used for.
“We very much view the Malawian proposals that we will receive to reflect a bottom-up approach not a top-down approach so that the proposals that we receive reflects broad consensus among the Malawian people as to what the country’s priorities are,” said Hewko.
It is in the consultation process where the chair for Parliamentary Committee on Trade, Commerce and Industries thinks that Parliament should be involved to remove the fear of government politising the issue.
“At least if one or two members from Parliament would be part of the consultative process. We can for instance involve the position of the speaker since he is supposed to be neutral because he represents all political parties represented in Parliament hence the wishes of the people can be priotised,” Gwengwe says.
But Steve Malamba, Chairman for Parliamentary Committee on education, one of the perceived priority sectors, is a bit skeptical because he thinks at the end of the day it will still be government that will draw proposals to be submitted to MCC.
“If government wants to maximise on the benefits of the Millennium Challenge Corporation and they want us to participate, then we are ready to assist. But the ball is in their court really.
“I understand that there has to be the Malawi Challenge Account Board that will also comprise people in government, that’s when they might want to consider involving other sectors,” Malamba says.
Malamba’s doubts stems from his experiences on how the country has handled some critical issues without consultation.
“What might prevent the government from cheating that they consulted us if they could not even consult on the China-Taiwan issue?” he asks.
Those who subscribe to the notion of measuring reality according to their experiences are right in their own way. They need not be worry when their expectations are not met.
There is a lot that has to happen before the great expectations of the likes of Gwengwe are met.
If the country all over a sudden starts performing badly on ruling justly as inherent in the corruption control, or stops investing in its people and warranting them economic freedom as provided for in the indicators that have to be continually observed, then they will be cause for worry.
According to MCC, there are no pre-set limits on Compact amounts that countries can request as “final Compact amounts will be based primarily on program quality, estimated costs, and available funds.”
And given all factors equal, the future looks very bright for Malawi.