Some Development Issues and Debates

Should the sad news coming from Malawi be real, the political land scape will change critically and odds will be in JBs favour in 2014 as the stat machinery will be controlled by someone who doesn't have too much 'bads' on her side. The fight however, will be one of PP versus another party in unison with UDF off-shoot. If MCP were to be alive by then, it could as well be a 2 party face off. MCP-vs PP. A match to death , if MCP marries UDF that is. But would be a walkover in case of pp versus mcp without UDF ....alliance with mcp. PP would simply win.

I was shocked by the way events unfolded in my loved country (Malawi) yesterday. Order appeared to be slipping away and the country seemed to be treading toward some of social and political schizophrenia. Things were indeed falling apart and we were quickly losing the oneness and love that was heavily promoted in the past. I felt very angry, very upset and very resentful about all what was happening. I knew people were going to die and so some of them indeed died. We are with them in prayer and may their souls rest in peace. We also pray that the families left behind will have God’s protection and grace as we forge ahead. Some important questions about this is, how did come this far? Did we have to? How did we let this happen? Going forward, it is imperative that we do serious soul searching and leave all the blame games, concentrate on finding out the root causes of our problems at the moment, address them and forge forward. The issues of the rule of law, economic and social advanc...

Dr Greenwell C Matchaya It is a hazy Sunday morning, the neighbourhood is still quite and although I have no intention of going out just yet, part of me is miles away to Africa and the Arab world. On the BBC TV, the mass abuse of human freedoms in Yemen and Syria by the people that are supposed to protect them are conspicuous and disturbing. If only the world and the United Nation System viewed nations and leaderships in the same way, perhaps some variants of no-fly-zones would have been imposed in those countries in a bid to curb the governments’ abuses of human freedoms. Compared to the case of Libya where a no-fly-zone was suggested and subsequently implemented based on the predicted danger that the Libyan government was going to pose in Eastern Libya, the Syrian and Yemen cases are gravely serious especially when we consider that many a person is being killed every day in protest rallies. One would only hope that God and perhaps the international community will do something posit...

A summary of the paper by Dr Greenwell Matchaya, presented at public seminar organised by Ecama at Cresta Hotel in Lilonge on firt July. Guest of Honour : Minister of Finance, Hon. Ken Kandodo, MP Presenter : Ass. Professor Charles Mataya (PhD) Discussants : 1. MEJN Executive Director, Mr. Andrew Kumbatira, 2. Chair, Trade and Industry Committee of parliament, Dr. Cornelius Mwalwanda, MP _____________________________________________________________________________________ Author: Greenwell Collins Matchaya, PhD , Leeds University-Business School, June, 2010 Summary The recent foreign exchange shortages in the country point to the economic threats that exist for economies that solely rely on foreign exchange in their daily trade. A study of the literature shows that foreign exchange problems could partially be reduced by carefully establishing local currency payments systems with significant regional trade partners. At the local scale, such arrangements are not rampant at present, howev...

GC Matchaya One month after the Malawian people from all parts of the country gave the DPP a mammoth vote in the presidential and parliamentary elections, the DPP top brass has now released this year’s names of men and women who will head ministries as the president endeavours to forge ahead with development goals for the nation. The just-gone elections were unique and memorable with regard to the voting pattern that ensued and the absence of serious voting irregularities as such, people had unique expectations regarding the composition of the cabinet that was to follow. The cabinet has many new faces and some old faces have lost their posts which is normal. At present we do not have the CVs of the appointed ministers and we will postpone any serious and specific comments about expected performance of individual ministers to a later time. The cross-regional or district distribution of the ministers which people are implicitly or explicitly alluding to in their deliberations on issues o...

GC Matchaya I may not claim to have a lasting answer to this question however given the silence I will try to give my sketch of ideas on this as follows. The concerns about the Mw Kwacha being held at some fixed but high level surely spring from many angles but possibly the most useful one for most of us is the effect of such an exchange rate regime on the Malawi’s national accounts analysed in the context of a nation that has more on its table (projects etc requiring increased government spending) to deliver. As appoint of departure therefore it might be important to recap the basic major components of the two major accounts that may be impacted by the exchange rate regime more directly and these are the current account here proxied by the trade balance (value of exports-value of imports) and the capital account proxied by the value of capital inflows into Malawi minus the value of capital outflows to other countries. Now remember again that under a market determined exchange rate, th...

Tivotera o Bingu omwewo!! (We will vote for the same Bingu). That was a resounding statement coming from my fellow constituents deep in the heart of Lilongwe District, juts 3 days before the elections. At that point, as someone interested in politics and the development of our nation, I found it impossible to stop there but had to inquire more. In my inquiry, I wanted to know why these kinsmen and friends of mine thought it was appropriate to vote for the DPP and Bingu into office again. The outcome of my inquiry was amazing as the answers were straightforward. Below were some of the reasons my kinsmen and childhood friends and others put forward for voting o Bingu en masse. Firstly, before Bingu came to power, our village was so vulnerable to hunger and starvation, however Bingu’s arrival on the political scene seems to have repelled those and we are now fine as far as food sufficiency is concerned. Secondly, Bingu’s government is pro-poor in that they have realised what the poor n...