Over the end of year academic year holiday for last academic year I had a chance to attend the Youth Inspiration Movement's Night of Impact. The main speaker for the night, Dr Chithambo, was a bit of a surprise to me but he gave me a couple of lessons that turned my life around.
Apart from all those lessons, I liked the way he emphasized on the fact that we intellectuals need to see the world the way it is. He was especially telling those who had recently graduated and those of us who are about to about the world we are about to graduate into; one where people employ based on surname, color, denomination and everything in that line and not the thing that matters; the ability. He told us of a world in which people cook figures when writing reports in order to look like they are working when the things on the ground are not as good and that provoked a lot of thoughts in me. I just hope it had the same effect on the other young minds I shared the platform with.
I have for long been thinking about what is wrong with our country, Malawi and what it would take for us to turn things around. Each and every time I begin to discuss it with friends we end up with tons of ideas on how we can change things and we spend loads of time on this sort of discussion and brilliance comes out of the talks. This has left one unanswered question on my mind but before I get to that and theorize the answer to the question, let me get to the contents of some the chats that I just talked about.
For some reason I have decided to call these semi-structured chats. You don't really plan to be discussion this sort of thing, but when you get to start it it flows in an almost formal way and you almost begin to take notes.
Recently I had a chat with some friend. Now this is some former secondary school classmate of mine who happens to be a project officer for some non-governmental organization working in the agriculture sector in the country. We had a chat on the farm input subsidy thing and he told me of how their organization was trying to develop an electronic system for farm input distribution which would improve transparency and reduce fraud. I actually got to read up on that a couple of days later.
Good development? Yeah. I thought so too, but you and I might not see this come to light and the issue is that someone somewhere might decide to shoot it down; just because as Malawians we like it manual, are resistant to change and the other reason I will not mention (for you know it already). That was just among the things we discussed but I just put it out here because it is something that is costing the Malawian taxpayer a lot but delivering less with time, contrary to the rational expectation.
Moving from agriculture to something else. I also had another chat with a fellow COM student and this was about the financing of tertiary education in the country (I referred to it in my article on the closure of the Polytechnic). Well. This one had some information I did not have and I was shocked to hear about the radical changes that are about to hit the higher education environment in the country.
Some of you might know about the loan bill the Government just effected. I do not know it in details, but the thing is that if one feels like they are need they need to complete some big form and submit it to the loan office secretariat whatsoever to get the money for fees, upkeep and stationery allowance.
Previously I was worried about the form, but having heard what I have heard now, the form is now the least of my concerns because it turns out that a good percentage of the people who will sweat applying for the loans will do it in vain ad the funds are hardly available for everyone. I don't want to get into the Mathematical details here, but from what I hear (and this is not a secret) there is K 1.5 billion allocated to this cause. What you probably didn't know is that some of that money is to be used to establish the Secretariat of the loan trust or whatever it is called.
Well. There we are. Agriculture and education; two sectors that I believe are so important for the development of this country and that is what we are doing with them. The thing is that when us young people discuss these issue we have some brilliant ideas on them and we propose some viable solutions.
The World Bank recently organized an essay competition for young Malawians and I had a chance to read a couple of entries from some friends. Truth be told they were actual minds of young Malawians spat on paper; two thousand or so words of brilliance and hope. Thinking about my "chats" and the essays then brings me back to the question I talked about.
If there are young people who can think of brilliant and practical solutions to our problems as a country, should we assume that the people who are responsible for these things do not think the way we do and see these potential solutions? If it is that they think the same way as us, why are they not effecting the same and propelling the country? And if they do not think this way, why are they handling the sort of responsibilities they are handling?
These questions might sound bitter and every bad adjective you can describe them with, but those are the things that bother me whenever I sit down and think about what we can do as young people to turn the tables in this country.
Someone might think that I am talking about politicians here. Yes, a politician or two might have contributed something to our downfall here, but I think it is the technocrat who has failed to inform the politician who has failed this nation a more.
It is on this note that I wish to announce that so many young people have given up hope that the nation will prosper and have resorted to just elevating themselves because they think the country is damaged beyond saving. This is a sad development because it is creating a vicious cycle. If you think of it, these great young minds think that the country cannot be saved because there is a spirit of self enrichment and there is nothing that can be done about it. In the end they resort to a different version of the same self enrichment in the name of going out of the country to look for greener pastures and every other thing you can think of.
I am not sure if that is the solution and I have to admit that this country will take more than a politician or a technocrat to save. I just hope that the two will one day sit on a table a discuss issues for the greater good, otherwise we will continue to have these problems which I do not regret to say that I think they are man made.
God bless my country, Malawi.
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