One of the least known areas in Malawi is the eastern side of the Eastern Region. I first travelled on the Bakili Muluzi Highway some fifteen or so years ago when I was going to a place called Nampinguja, located a few kilometres away from a trading centre called Mselema. What I found intriguing at Nampinguja was that the local school had a teacher originally from Dowa but whose children could not speak a word of Chichewa. That is a subject for another day.
I recently travelled on Bakili Muluzi Highway again, this time taking a detour to Nayuchi, a border post on the boundary with Mozambique. To get to Nayuchi you branch off the highway at another trading centre called Nsanama.
The Bakili Muluzi Highway boasts a number of bustling centres including Nsanama, Ntaja, Mselema and Chiponde. Driving through them is pure delight. But taking a drive on the earth road to Nayuchi is a totally different experience. The distance between Nsanama and Nayuchi is only 40 kilometres but it takes what seems to be forever to cover that distance. Apart from the railway and its control structures, you do not see any developments worth talking about along that stretch of the road.
If you are lucky, which we were, you will come across a long train with many wagons racing to or from Mozambique. We came across three. I tried to count the wagons on one of them but lost count because there were so many. The highest speed one could drive at on the Nayuchi Road was 40 kph. The trains that we saw were going faster than that and zipped past us so comfortably.
A trip to Nayuchi will leave anybody in no doubt as to the importance of a proper road. Nayuchi itself turned out to be a docile place, courtesy of the poor road leading to it. One MRA officer there explained that there was not much to do at Nayuchi Station, as most of the customs clearing was done further inland. Despite being a border post, there was not a single shop in the vicinity of the train station, a far cry from the situation at the trading centres along the Bakili Muluzi Highway, which were imposing indeed.
The road to Nayuchi is currently under construction to be paved, but it appears the present contractor will only be responsible for 10 kilometres of the 40-kilometre stretch. It will be some time before the entire road is paved. Until that time, the development will continue to elude Nayuchi.
Lack of a paved road often spells doom to a place. Fifty years ago, Nambuma and Mponela used to be at par as rural trading centers with Asians or shops. People living in places like Mdika or Chisepo, lying midway between Nambuma and Mponela, would shop at either of these trading centres, their choices being influenced by other factors than the superiority of one trading centre to the other in terms of development. Indeed the choices varied from one occasion to another.
As it turned out, the M1 road, along which Mponela lay, got paved in the late 1970s. Mponela, consequently, became more easily accessible than Nambuma. Today there is no comparison between the two. Every bank represented in Malawi has a branch at Mponela, for example, but not a single bank is at Nambuma. Many hotels and motels have sprung up at Mponela while Nambuma only has a handful of rural rest houses.
This is what a road can do to a place. Back to the Bakili Muluzi Highway, Mselema Trading Centre now has street lights, which was not the case when I first visited it. It shows that it (along with the other trading centers along the highway) is constantly changing. I would not hesitate to label these trading centres as the little tigers of the East.
When the six-lane project was inaugurated in Lilongwe, somebody commented that it was a mistimed project, coming, as it did, at a time that prices of commodities such as fertilizer and cooking oil were spiraling out of control. This was faulty reasoning, as roads spur development wherever and whenever they are constructed. No government would go wrong with any road project, so long as the funds deployed are not misused. Citizens will benefit from any road project in more ways than one. There is no reason, therefore, to shy away from road projects. The Nambuma Road, the Makanjira Road, the Nayuchi Road, and others that have not yet been paved should not wait because once they are constructed they will open up expansive areas to all manner of development.