Some Development Issues and Debates

Greenwell Matchaya, PhD Email: Greenwellmatchaya@yahoo.com Malawi’s economy at present is between a 100 to 200 (or more years) behind many African countries and indeed behind advanced countries of Europe and North America. A simple economic growth calculation reveals that, to move from the current Gross National Income of circa $389 per capita to US$1037 per capita threshold for being categorized as a lower middle income country, and assuming the current 5% average growth    rates of incomes per capita, it will take Malawi at least 63 years. Similarly, under the same assumptions, it will take Malawi, 111 years, 165 years, 188 years and 306 years to reach levels of per capita incomes enjoyed by Ghana, Namibia, Botswana, and Germany respectively. This is unacceptable and we must collectively reduce these ginormous time gaps in less than two decades by doing business differently, or we will perish. The encouraging news is t

Mfumusaka (www.mfumusaka.blogspot.com) Introduction ·         ·          Voter behaviour by Malawians is an interesting and complex phenomenon governed by a train of factors, some influential and others determinantal, with others as important in moderating the final result. An attempt to summarize these processes can be appreciated in Matchaya (2010) in the African Journal of Political Science and International relations that focuses on Africa political events and available at  http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.902.7977&rep=rep1&type=pdf ·           ·         So, the fact that voters behaviour is influenced by many factors is something this analyst is aware of. ·           ·         ·          Thus, considering all these factors and the lag with which they change, the results in this year’s elections are likely to be a mirror image of 2014 and  2019 results but altered to the extent of the reconfiguration at present.  ·           ·