You forgot this, right? Well. I didn't.
Recently we had a rumor circulating that Malawi had been ranked the poorest nation on the planet. The World Bank would later come to disown the report to the excitement of many (to my surprise and disappointment). The question I kept asking myself is why people put so much attention to a World Bank report and not the general standard of living in the country; why we were rejoicing with not being on the top spot when we were still in the top 10 anyway.
The rankings, as the rumor-creators argued, were based on the GDP. Being a medical student, I am not a genius on economics so it will be safe if I don't touch the GDP issue. While some say that it is not a good indicator of poverty and prosperity, I
still feel that if we have ours on the bad extreme then there automatically is a problem.
Being on Facebook meant that I could not be quiet about this whole thind, so I posted about the issue in a bid to ask some friends on what they thought we should do as Malawians, to get off that number one spot (because people seem to be angry, heartbroken... And in short too emotional about this whole thing). When I posed the question, I expected solutions in the comments. I must have forgotten what Facebook is about fot many so contrary to my expectations, what I found was one solution that lacked clarity, a joke and in most comments the one who people thought was responsible for that ranking.
While it is good to know what went wrong, I do not think that blaming an individual person or entity will do us any good, for the valid reason
that almost every single one of us has contributed to that in one way or the other.
Most people have their fingers to the government when it comes to this issue. Some blame either a specific reign or just the government system in general. There is indeed an area in which our government machinery can do better. In the first place the Government needs to have goals and a long term development plan that should be followed by every Jim and Jane who walks into that Kamuzu palace.
It is not an overstatement to say that we lose a lot of money in projects
that are abandoned after change of regime. That is the sad reality we have to move from.
The government could also use some assests that could be making some money for it other than depending on donor aid and squeezing the common Malawian with unreasonable taxing.
Someone once pointed out that graduates in this country deserve a lash or two because they have not done anything to develop the country. I am not saying it is true, but there is a point in that statement.
For long, the mindset of the common
graduate has been that of finishing school to get a job and to move on which has left us with no
one to come up with innovative ideas to develop this country. It is sad to have an Agricultural Extension graduate who is always sitting in the
office and in seminars and does not even have the slightest interest in having some piece of land to apply thr knowledge. That is among the
many examples of the gaps that we have in various fields, whilst we have loads of graduates in such. In short, we are in a system where the
main aim of our daily existence is to survive and not to work to develop something. This is
probably the reason some opted just to take large volumes of cash from Government coffers and to
survive.
The workman's spirit is lacking among most Malawians and the lack of it among the graduates is proving too costly taking it from the
fact that our tertiary education is among the cheapest in the world and it is sponsored by the
government through loans for fees and book allowances; which in the end no one pays back (I hope someone sees a point of lack of sustainability here).
Intellectuals need to rise and identify the gaps in their fields; and then strive to fill those. I believe there is no better way of making money than to find a need and provide it. I believe we have the potential to do that and every graduate out there needs to take this up. We need engineers who
can fix the water systems other than graduateand start thinking of how they can get into Mota Engil.
Now to fellow young people. The moment of truth came and we got our gold medal for being poor thesr were the poeple who were all over blaming everyone else apart from
themselves. But fellas, do we realise that we have also contributed to this? The young people of today have done very little to elevate the
societies and even themselves. Here is the issue. We have people who can claim that they do not have shool fees when they can buy a
tablet for entertainment (they are there), we have people who refuse to be in school while they also say entreprenuership is boring and all
the bad adjectives you can think of.
What we have around are young people who are so focused on the image they portray other than
their actual status. Guys. We need to wake up because at the end of the day the swag does not pay the bills and it is when we at least do something profitable to society that we can contribute to the country's economy.
Most of us young people sit down grumbling that we are not give the opportunities to do things. To that I have this response; if you have to get
an opportunity to rise, you do not have to sit down and wait for someone who is up there to come down and give you the oppotunity to rise with him. What you do is to go up there and ask for the opportunity.
The point is that most of us do nothing but expect things to miraculously happen, but that is not the way things work. If you need an opportunity, you have to knock on
the doors of those who can give them to you and give them a reason to do that. Someone might be saying that this is easier said that done. Well. It is indeed not easy, but I know it is not impossible either and I have some success stories.
Too much of a writing, but the issue is that if we have to take this poverty gold medal personal, then we have to take it personal with solutions
not blaming fingers.
The late Bingu once said that Malawi is not poor but it is the people in it who are. Henry Kachaje once said that the reason the USA is rich is that the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet live there while Malawi is poor because you, me and out relatives live here. The point was just that we need to generate wealth as indivuduals if we are to get out of these rankings. After all, I think it wouldn't be such a bad idea if you
can find your self a legit way of being a billionaire in one of the poorest countries on earth... so long as you don't evade tax.
Ndanyoza munthu?
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