A clip showing late Professor Chikaonda being interviewed by a TV presenter was in circulation on social media last week. The gist of the message in that clip is that as African countries were becoming independent of their former colonial rulers, Britain expressed the concern that some of them, particularly Nyasaland and Mauritius, would not make it economically and, as such, would be perpetually dependent on Britain.
Today, more than fifty years later, Mauritius is on the verge of becoming a developed nation while Malawi is still languishing in the economic malaise that it never seems to be able to get out of. According to Chikaonda, the problem is that both countries have been borrowing but while Mauritius has been borrowing for investment in production Malawi has been borrowing for consumption. I cannot agree more.
No doubt many fingers will point at Government as the culprit for this state of affairs. It is flawed thinking to suppose that everything begins and ends with Government. Yes, much is expected from Government, and I have always stated that those in authority should always be held accountable for their actions and decisions. They must be accountable to the people whom they are supposed to be servants of.
That said, let me hasten to add that Government’s role really should be limited to leading. Government should lead, the rest should follow. Sadly, that is not what happens in Malawi. Instead, the people simply take a back seat, from which they act as referee on everything that Government does or does not do. Recently, Government struck a deal with the Government of Southern Sudan for Malawi to supply certain agricultural products to South Sudan. Most people took it that it was the Government that should have supplied these products. When it was learnt that the first year of the deal was characterized by dismal performance, with Malawi failing to come anywhere close to the quantities that should have been supplied, many commentators concluded that Government had failed.
No, it was not the Malawi Government that had failed; it was the Malawi citizenry. We did not follow the lead which Government had taken. We still preferred to act the referee instead: ticking and crossing what we thought was right or wrong.
Let me repeat what I have said a number of times, namely that the economy of any country is too precious to be left to Government alone. We must all engage in the economic activities of our countries and become meaningful contributors to the gross national product.
A critical shortage of forex has afflicted this country for a long time. Governments have come and gone and they have cosmetically addressed this problem but have not dealt with the root. Some have preferred to maintain a fixed exchange rate, others a floating one, but these approaches have not solved the problem so far, nor will they in future.
The problem is very simple to state: Malawians are exporting too little and importing too much. Here, I am talking about Malawian citizens not the Malawi Government. We are generally production averse and therefore fail to produce for our own consumption, much less for export. In my earlier article titled “We need to lift our numeracy levels” I discussed one of the major causes of the failure by Malawians to engage in meaningful production.
Have you, dear readers, ever wondered why we high a fully-fledged and highly active consumers’ association in Malawi, but not a producers’ association?
The problem has a second component, namely that we have an insatiable appetite for imported goods. In Malawi it is a status symbol to be seen to be using imported items. Local goods are perceived to be too ordinary for a respectable person to use. When I was a student at Chancellor College, one expatriate lecture, a bachelor, had zitenje for his curtains. Boy, he became a target of ridicule by many. This had nothing to do with the cloth he used failing to perform the function of curtains, which was to cover the windows but everything to do with the fact that it was locally produced and therefore perceived as “of low quality”. Quality is simply fitness for purpose. Beyond that what you get are what I call products with frills.
Looking for products with frills is what drives a good number of Malawians towards uncontrollable importations. If Malawians had their way, they would import even sand for building a house. And they would brag about it! It is actually a miracle that we do get a bit of forex in Malawi.