Economists see bright future for Malawi

Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) Governor Dalitso Kabambe and renowned Oxford University development economist Paul Collier have said putting in place the right strategies could help Malawi move from poverty to prosperity.

This was observed during the launch of the inaugural Eminent Speaker Series jointly organised by the Mwapata Institute, Michigan State University (MSU), National Planning Commission (NPC) and Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Luanar).

The inaugural forum was held under the theme ‘Achieving the Wealth Creation for all Agenda: Defining the Quick Wins’.

Kabambe said Malawi was at a juncture where the economy had been stabilised the need for sober discussions on how to grow the economy moving forward.

“People do not eat stable macro-economic environment. People eat the outcome of a growing economy. We need to raise GDP, grow it, that’s what creates wealth, that’s what creates jobs,” Kabambe said.

Collier concured with Kabambe. The Eminent Speaker Series is part of Mwapata and NPC’s objective to impact and transform Malawi’s development landscape through motivational talks by eminent personalities from a diverse range of backgrounds and disciplines.

The series is also aimed at promoting public interaction with local and international distinguished personalities to generate and accelerate Malawi’s socio-economic transformation.

Collier said the challenge for Malawi was to catch up with neighbours, adding that this needed some diagnosis of what went wrong.

He said macroeconomic management had worked well in Malawi but structural policies had not been too good to encourage growth.

NPC Director General, Thomas Munthali, said Malawi needed to get input from eminent people as the country prepares a successor plan to Vision 2020.

The Mwapata Institute is an indigenous agricultural policy think-tank whose goal is to accelerate the adoption of effective Malawian-led policies and programme to drive broad-based agricultural sector growth, diversification from tobacco to alternative commodity value chains, improvement of smallholder incomes, and improved household food security and nutrition in Malawi.

The institute is funded by a three-year grant from the Agricultural Transformation Initiative and Foundation for a Smoke-Free World.