Some Development Issues and Debates

what led to the MCP disaster in 2009? read on at an International Relations journal| IPSA Abstract In this article, an attempt has been made to explain the performance of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) in the general elections by focusing mainly on the 2009 presidential and parliamentary elections in which the MCP lost overwhelmingly. Specifically, the role of sectionalism of a regional and ethnic nature on the MCP’s national level performance was examined. Different kinds of data from the Malawi electoral commission and news media are used in the analysis. Descriptive statistics are used to summarise the effects of different factors on the party’s share of votes. It is found that a complex combination of factors such as district and regional sizes, education level of voters as proxied by district and regional level data, party level policies and organisation, incumbency, campaign expenditure, individual leaders personal characters and past legacy, party conduct in parliament am...

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...

"To win, we must endeavour to be the stronger of the two at the point of impact. Our only hope of this lies in making our own choice of operations, not in waiting passively for whatever the enemy chooses for us."—Schlieffen, the famous German General behind the Schlieffen plan the plan involved using 90 pct of german forces to quickly defeat france and then turn them to russia.This plan would prevent any two-front war

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...

By Dr Greenwell Matchaya, Berkshire, United Kingdom The need for industrialization in Africa and the developing world is real, although a debate about the means through which it may be achieved, has never been settled and may not be settled anytime soon. Fortunately, it appears that whatever the sources of industrialization may be, in practice they depend on the context such that each nation’s nature and degree of resource endowments are likely to help in dictating the feasible paths for industrialization for individual economies. This is perhaps one case where the concept of ‘one size fits all’ does not appear useful. Although the actual debate on the possible options for routes to industrialization for different African nations is being considered in a future article, effort is made herein to say something that could be useful for the Malawi economy. As we may already know, the lifeblood of Malawi’s economic growth and development is mainly the Agricultural sector so that policy chan...

by Greenwell Matchaya Dear beloved students This might sound unusual especially coming within this festive season however real learning doesn’t and mustn’t stop until you stop breathing (Lol). You can, and should be proud that you have made it to a UNIMA college that is very good and progressive, with a reputation of producing some of the finest minds of our society. The fact that you have made it to Bunda is an indication that you can also ‘found’ in yourselves great leaders, entrepreneurs and researchers of the future. As you are already aware there at Bunda you have programs that each of you belongs to such that some of you are pursuing BScs in Irrigation Engineering, Crops Sciences, Agribusiness, Agric Econs, Aqua-sciences, Social forestry, Animal science etc. These are fantastic programs that are tailor-designed to impart in you some of the rare core transferrable skills that you need for the future soon to come. As a member of the Bunda alumni community I would like to advise y...

Greenwell Matchaya, PhD Leeds University-Business School-UK __________________________________________________________________________________ In this article effort is made to highlight some theoretical mechanisms through which Air Malawi’s ownership structure could affect its very ability for innovation and ultimately, performance. The article further considers some of the many possibilities that Air Malawi may need to try in order to survive these hard times. If records are correct, Air Malawi became independent in 1967 following the dissolution of the Central African Airways that year and since then the airliner went through a series of tough and good times. A number of aircrafts were bought and added to the airliner’s fleet and at the turn of the political upheaval in 1993 the company had just acquired the Dornier 228, Boeing 737-300 and the ATR 42. It appears however that the dawn of the many changes in the political ecosystem in the mid 1990s also marked the e...