That we have daunting economic problems in Malawi is well documented and needs no further elaboration. Almost all our economic indicators – foreign exchange rates, interest rates, inflation rates – are critically unfavourable. And there is no indication that they will take a swing any time soon. When I last checked, the Kwacha rate to the British Pound had reached its lowest point.
While the causes of this dismal economic performance are many and varied, two of them stand out, namely that we under-export and that we over-import. As I write this article, I quickly look around in my bedroom to assess the origin of the items in it. Apart from two bottles of water, a few pieces of zitenje and some photo prints, the rest of them – beddings, cell phones, books, cosmetics, reading glasses, pieces of clothing, electronic gadgets and the list is endless – have been brought in from outside the country. Every Malawian uses a disproportionate number of imported items compared to what they export. How we survive as a nation is honestly beyond me, but that is a story for another day.
To support all the imports we make with tobacco exports, which is what we do, is to tread on treacherous ground. We have, for a long time, been told to diversify our exports but have hardly been shown how. Government as well as private citizens have performed dismally in this respect. Which is why I salute the efforts of Kondwani Kachamba Ngwira. He has grasped the gravity of our situation and is doing something about it. Obviously he will not go far or fast, acting alone, but needs the support of all of us, not least that of Government.
If and when Ngwira’s proposals are implemented, the need for imports into Malawi will be eased somewhat. We shall shave begun to deal with the problem of over-importing. Ngwira is saying we can, and should, produce some of the things we use ourselves. Why should we import the cereal we use for breakfast, the cooking oil for preparing lunch, the toothphicks for clearing our mouths after a dinner which will have been cooked over an imported cooker? Most of the items in this list can be made locally by us, the private individuals.
In one of the parables told by Jesus of Nazareth, a farmer had instructed his farmers to plant wheat but the Bible says that during the night, as the workers were asleep, an enemy planted notorious weeds in the same garden. Sleeping, the workers did not know what was going on around them. Until we wake up from our slumbering mentality we will not realise that our mindset is being infested by notorious beliefs and attitudes. It will take the realization that we need to ruthlessly deal with our appetite for imports to begin to see a significant change in our forex situation. I do not mean window dressing the issue by maintaining an artificial rate. That does more harm than good ultimately. We have seen that happening right under our noses before.
Among us are many commentators who bring nothing but criticism to the table. I have always maintained that we should, by all means, hold the authorities accountable. They should account for every decision, every expenditure. But more importantly, in my view, we need to show what we can do as groups or groups of individuals. The best response to rising cooking oil costs, for example, would be to set up local manufacturing plants so that we produce the commodity locally. When we have a situation where excess capacity persists, prices will for sure take a knock. I know that this cannot be done overnight, but there must be some willingness and some attempts to do it. It only needs a tough decision to forego the importation of a motor vehicle in order to import an oil extracting and refining machine instead. Criticism without tangible proposals as to how the challenges can be resolved is only macabre to society.
The other side of the problem, namely under-exporting, is probably the more difficult one to deal with but we certainly need to wean ourselves from tobacco and find something else to export. The more the lines of export we come up with, the better. To do this we, all of us, need to be innovative. Our colleagues elsewhere on the African continent have taken the necessary leap in this direction. I have featured Apostle Kantanka from Ghana who is manufacturing vehicles in that country on this column before. In Nigeria they have Innoson, a company that manufactures cars. Innoson will soon be exporting vehicles to Sierra Leone.