The Skirt

No independence for women

2011-07-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

Today, July 6, 2011, Malawi is commemorating 47 years of independence. Instead of celebrating, many Malawians are bemoaning the miserable living conditions they have to contend with; erratic water supply, frequent and lengthy power outages and fuel shortages at the pump.
As I sit and reflect on this Independence Day, I can’t help but sympathise with my fellow women staying in the urban areas of the country; how independent are we? Are we really free? The obvious answer for me is “a complete no”.
Urban women are hit hardest by the crisis facing the country; the burden lies with them to find solutions on how households should survive these challenges.
As I stood on a fuel queue yesterday, I could not avoid overhearing a number of men complaining on how the lack of diesel and petrol is “restricting them in the house”. By the way, the fuel queue is the best source of information at this moment – we are parking our cars hours before the tanker arrives and one gets to listen to different kinds of conversations.
One man bitterly expressed his displeasure on how he will be confined at home instead of spending quality time celebrating July 6 at his usual drinking hole with his group of friends.
“They are rationing fuel at this filling station as such I know that I will not be able to travel much tomorrow so I will have to stay at home and listen to my wife whining all day long about money problems and what she would have loved to have in the house. My kids will also keep on bothering me with their usual noise,” worried the man.
Leaning on his beautiful, white Toyota Corolla, the man also bemoaned the tendency by the Electricity Supply Commission of Malawi (ESCOM) to switch off power on holidays.
“I am sure we will have no power for the most part of the day tomorrow and I will not be able to watch the football play-offs on television either,” the man continued, now sounding really upset at the prospect of spending his day at home.
I could not help it but imagine the man’s poor wife toiling at home while the husband was only thinking about escaping the homestead on a day suitable for quality family time.
With no power, I could just see the woman struggling to light up a charcoal burner as early as 6 AM to prepare water for bathing for the household and then cook breakfast – being a holiday; the breakfast must really be elaborate and sumptuous so that the husband does not get very worked up early in the morning.
I could just imagine that the only male assistance the woman would receive would be to push her to work more quickly as she is reminded that breakfast is late.
Of course this was just in my imagination but I know for sure that many men in our society employ machoism tendencies especially when they feel restricted.
And of course the water problems which have recently hit the cities are not helping matters for the women. They have to make sure that they keep water in drums everyday or they will have to go around the city looking for the commodity to use for all household chores; washing, bathing, cooking and for cleaning up the house.
Back to fuel problems; many women who go to work are having to risk their lives as they now have to walk in the dark as they trek back from work.
A friend, Gladys Kalumbu, who works within Lilongwe city centre, told me three days ago how she has been walking home late after failing to get on a minibus early enough.
“The fuel crisis means that many minibuses are no longer on the road as such many people who use public transport are struggling to get home now,” said Kalumbu, who has to get on two different minibuses before she arrives home.
Walking at night has always been risky especially within Lilongwe.
“I am scared most of the time to walk from the bus stop to my house. It takes me 15 minutes to get home from the bus stop,” Kalumbu said.
Right now, life is not simple for the urban women. More than anything, I for one, would like to see a quick end to these problems and experience independence from hardship.
As they remain standing and continue to survive the struggle against erratic water supply, frequent and lengthy power outages, fuel shortages at the pump combined with social expectations, I salute the women of Malawi’s urban areas. Today, they are “The Skirt”.

The little homemaker

2011-01-10T06:47:00.001-08:00

Patuma Mjahito from Malawi’s lakeshore area of Malombe in Mangochi is a very reliable handmaid; she does every household chore available in her homestead. Waking up at 5 AM every day; Patuma has to light up a fire outdoors using firewood – she uses the fire to boil water and cook porridge for breakfast – her father, mother and two of her younger siblings use the boiled water for washing up. When it rains, she lights up a charcoal fire on a burner which she takes indoors to boil water and cook. Patuma is only seven years old.

Although she looks frail and half-starved, Patuma is still in charge of taking care of her household while her father goes off the whole day working in other people’s fields as he tries to raise money for his family’s upkeep. The young girl’s mother toils in the family’s field where she grows maize, the country’s staple and leguminous crops to feed the family.

Back at home, Patuma, who has never seen the inside of a classroom, is left to look after her 4-month old brother and her sister aged three.

Patuma is one of many children across Malawi involved in work that is not fit for them. According to a Plan International report of August 2009 titled "Hard Work, Long Hours and Little Pay", Malawi has the highest incidence of child labour in southern Africa. Up to 88.9 percent of the children in the age group 5-14 work in the agricultural sector.

The United Nations indicates that around one in three children are engaged in child labour in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“Blame it on poverty,” Patuma’s mother, Khadija said. “She is the eldest in this family and she has to play her part in keeping this family together. She does not do any agricultural work as it is more tedious and so we leave her home to take care of her younger relatives.”

Khadija spends almost half the day in the field before venturing into the bush where she collects twigs which Patuma uses to light up the fire.

“She is also in charge of making lunch for the family – my husband rarely comes home for lunch and so Patuma makes less food then,” explained Khadija.

Patuma’s father, Chadwick, makes an average of $20 per month and the money is used to buy things like salt, second-hand clothes and paraffin which the household uses to light up the house at night.

There is no hope that Patuma will escape the poverty cycle that is tormenting her family. She does not have a chance to go to school and all she knows is that she has to be responsible for her family’s welfare.

Patuma is “the skirt”.

Naphiri ndiwe Galu

2010-11-30T11:43:00.000-08:00

Naphiri - my wife - you are a dog

The men are wearing zibiya – a skirt of some sort that is mostly worn by men who dance Ingoma.
Ngoma is well known among the Ngonis, a tribe in some parts of Malawi especially the Central districts of Ntcheu and Dedza. It is a warrior dance – the men dance stamping their feet to the ground; the women ulutate, clapping their hands and cheering the men on.
Some songs are led by men and one of the popular songs is titled “Naphiri ndiwe galu” which literally means “Naphiri you are a dog”.
The song is about a man who is reprimanding a woman for cooking what was supposed to be bean soup but ended up being dried beans.
“Waziphika bwanji nyemba; zopanda msuzi,” – how can bean soup have no soup in it?” Querries the man in the song. “Naphiri ndiwe galu”.......”Naphiri you are a dog”.
“Lu lu lu lu” – the women ululate while clapping hands for the men.
The big question here is: “why should women be happy with a song like that? Why should they rejoice over a song that belittles a fellow woman? Why should they clap hands and cheer men on as they stomp onto the ground showing off their muscles as they are scantily dressed – showing how strong they are – strong over a dog? Warrior over a dog.

The Skirt

2010-11-10T11:28:00.000-08:00

This skirt is being worn by so many women in Malawi – the average women who mostly are vulnerable, poor and are facing social injustice on a daily basis.
The skirt costs just about $2 – very cheap – just like many women in Malawi are treated – cheap.

I feel for these women. They put in so much but get back very little. They are the homemakers but most times are treated as second-class citizens.
Most of them are facing domestic violence – they are abused left, right and centre.
During this month of November, I want to advocate for the abused women of Malawi - today, this blog is speaking against gender-based violence as an add-on voice to the movement against gender-based violence.

“Domestic violence and abuse are used for one purpose and one purpose only: to gain and maintain total control over you. An abuser doesn’t play fair. Abusers use fear, guilt, shame, and intimidation to wear you down and keep you under his or her thumb. Your abuser may also threaten you, hurt you, or hurt those around you."

During the month of November and during the 16 Days of Activism – from November 25, 2010 and December 10, 2010, I am joining other activists around the world to to emphasise that such violence is a human rights violation.

Many Malawian women are experiencing violence as they are swimming against the current.................................................................

Africa Steps Up the Fight Against Maternal and Child Deaths

2009-06-16T04:26:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

The very survival of women and children in Africa may depend on the newly-launched Campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa (CARMMA). According to latest estimates by the African Union (AU), over the next ten years there will be 2.5 million maternal deaths, another 2.5 million child deaths and 49 million maternal disabilities in Africa alone if urgent actions are not taken.

Around the world, a woman dies every minute from pregnancy-related causes. Globally, there are more than 500,000 maternal deaths per year, the majority of which are in Africa where in many places the maternal mortality rate (MMR) is as high as 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births. And these death threats are only increasing: one in every 16 African women faces the lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy and delivery-related complications, particularly those from marginalized communities and those living in poverty.

On May 7th, I attended the AU's launch of CARMMA in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Its theme, Africa cares: no woman should die while giving life, reflects a campaign designed to accelerate the availability and use of universally accessible quality health services, including those related to reproductive and sexual health.
The AU Commissioner for Social Affairs, Bience Gawanas, describes the maternal mortality rate in Africa as “unacceptably high.” She says CARMMA aims to enhance political leadership and commitment at national levels to reducing maternal and child deaths. By identifying and working with national champions, the campaign will leverage local resources to mobilize action.

Gawanas says the campaign will help raise and maintain awareness and appropriate response at global, continental, regional and national levels to ensure that the best practices of countries which have significantly reduced maternal mortality rates are replicated elsewhere through exchanges and visits by health professionals.

“It is my hope, through this campaign, that we will ensure that our renewed efforts save the lives of women who should not die while giving life,” she says. “We should ensure accountability; every single loss of a mother’s life should be reported. In this regard, it is essential to establish and institutionalize maternal, infant and child mortality audits.”

Gawanas says that if every maternal and child is reported, experts will be able follow up on the specific causes and work on prevention.

For Agnes Mapapa, 67, from southern Malawi, the campaign is welcome news – her first-born daughter died while giving birth in 2007 because the nearest health center is some 35 kilometers away. “She bled to death soon after giving birth. There was no skilled attendant to help her and we could not get to the health center as it is too far away from our village,” says Mapapa. Her newborn granddaughter died just seven days later.

“I also lost a niece in child-birth last year,” she continues. “I have three other daughters of child-bearing age who are already married and I fear that they might face death or disability if they [get] pregnant. We need help and this new campaign might bring salvation to my community.” Mapapa hopes that with the campaign, a clinic will be built within her area so that pregnant women can easily access maternity services.

Malawi’s MRR is 807 deaths per 100,000 live births, making it one of Africa’s highest. It is second only to war-torn Sierra Leone. The good news is that Malawi is among the first batch of countries that will conduct government-led national launches and get technical support from the AU and UN agencies in the next three months. Other countries leading in the launch effort include Mozambique, Rwanda and South Africa.

Malawi already has initiatives promoted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the country’s Ministry of Health where traditional leaders and their communities are empowered to create their own community-based campaigns to improve maternal and child health. UNFPA reproductive health officer, Juliana Lunguzi says CARMMA will strengthen these programs.

“Traditional chiefs, who command a lot of respect in Malawi’s villages, are used as champions for promoting the maternal and child health initiatives. The chiefs facilitate the formation of local village committees on safe motherhood and family planning. The committees encourage pregnant women to seek antenatal care, monitor the health and growth of new-born babies and are also in charge hygiene and sanitation in the villages,” says Lunguzi.

Reports from UNFPA Malawi indicate that these initiatives are working. As just one example, Pitala Village in the country’s central district of Mchinji has seen no maternal deaths in the past two years. Before the initiative, it was not strange to hear that a pregnant woman or a newborn child had died.

Speaking on behalf of African government at CARMMA’s launch, Prime Minister of Ethiopia Meles Zenawi says it is regrettable that women and children continued to die from preventable causes. He emphasizes the need for a universal and adequate health service system for all African countries saying it will not be possible for the continent to achieve the Millennium Development Goals without addressing the issue of maternal and child mortality.

“We should come up with solutions that work in the resource constrained environment we live in,” he says. “Most of the health problems in Africa can be tied to preventable diseases so emphasis should be given to preventive measures, which are relatively cheap.”

Meanwhile the United Nations (UN) - through the UNFPA, World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) - has thrown its weight behind CARMMA, vowing to support it fully.

UNFPA Africa Regional Director Bunmi Makinwa told journalists at the launch that the UN is convinced that the battle against maternal mortality could be won if there is effective coordination among all players.

He says the high incidence of maternal death in Africa must change. “Is this something that should continue happening? No,” he says. “It’s really sad that one of the worst things that could happen to a woman in Africa is being pregnant.”

MALAWI: Poverty Uppermost in Voters' Minds

2009-05-18T03:14:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

When Malawians go to vote on May 19, they are expected to put their cross next to the party they believe will do most to reduce poverty. Political campaigns in the run-up to the presidential and parliamentary elections have centred around poverty, agriculture, food security and employment.

Margret Kalibu lives on the outskirts of Malawi’s capital Lilongwe. Her husband died last year, leaving her with seven children the ages of two and 15. With one less income, the family survives on only one meal a day, mainly porridge.

Kalibu says her husband died of malaria because he could not access treatment – they did not have the money for him to travel to the nearest public hospital, located 25 kilometres from his home.

As Kalibu goes to vote this week, she says she will choose a president and a member of parliament who will make sure to improve the economic and social well-being of her family.

"I want a president and an MP who has the poor people’s interest at heart. I want my family to have access to food, clothing, good health facilities and proper housing. I want my children to have access to proper education," said Kalibu.

Most Malawians going to the polls will cast their votes based on similar considerations, reckons the Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN), a coalition of 100 civil society organisations, community-based organisations, media, trade unions and academia.

Basic needs, such as food and employment, are key issues in Malawi. Up to 65 percent of the country’s 13.1 million people are living below the poverty line of less than one dollar per day.

MEJN executive director Andrew Kumbatira says many Malawians will vote for political parties that campaign for poverty reduction, improved health care, increased infrastructure and better education standards.

Agriculture is another important issue that will determine people’s choice in the elections, Kumbatira says. Eighty-five percent of Malawians rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, and the agricultural industry generates up to 70 percent of the country’s foreign exchange earnings.

"During their campaigns, the front-runners in the presidential election have been talking about the importance of boosting agricultural productivity. Most people will take the issue of food security seriously when they enter the polling booth to vote," said Kumbatira.

Various opinion polls have indicated as front-runners current president Bingu wa Mutharika, in direct competition with John Tembo, leader of the country’s oldest political grouping, Malawi Congress Party (MCP), who has formed a coalition with the United Democratic Front (UDF), led by the country’s former president, Bakili Muluzi.

The presidential election is being contested by five other candidates: Loveness Gondwe of the National Rainbow Coalition, who is the country’s first female presidential candidate, Alliance for Democracy’s Dindi Gowa Nyasulu, Stanley Masauli of the Republican Party, independent presidential candidate James Nyondo and Kamuzu Chibambo of People's Transformation Party.

The leading political parties are well aware of the need to fight poverty and hunger and improve basic services, such as health and education. During election campaigns in the past few weeks, the MCP, for example, has promised to introduce a universal agricultural subsidy programme, while the DPP has pledged to strengthen an existing subsidy for resource-poor smallholder farmers.

In its manifesto, the MCP says it will support the people of Malawi to feed themselves, clothe themselves, live healthily, lead productive lives and live in decent houses by scrapping taxes on domestic housing materials.

The MCP also promises to overhaul the health system, which is currently seen as a failure, and re-establish professionalism, efficiency and integrity in the civil service. "I want the lives of the people, particularly the poor ones in the villages, to improve," MCP’s Tembo says.

The DPP, on the other hand, claims it has successfully implemented developmental polices in the five years it has been in power and suggests people should vote for the ruling party if they want continued development.

The DPP has also pledged to invest heavily in education by providing more funding to schools and colleges and to be more committed to raising educational standards.

However, political experts are afraid election manifestos may remain lip service. Most campaign promises made by the different parties have been vague, and politicians have refrained from detailing what policies and programmes they will implement to improve service delivery.

"People will be voting while groping in the dark. No party has managed to articulate properly how they will execute their promises and this might encourage people to vote on ethnic lines," said Blessings Chinsinga, political analyst at the University of Malawi.

While agreeing that most Malawians will vote for candidates who promise to tackle poverty, hunger and unemployment, Chinsinga said ethnicity is likely play a role in the elections.

"In the past, we have seen Malawians vote on regional as well as ethnic grounds. They either voted for a president who comes from their area or for a president who they think sympathises with their tribe," he explained.

Christopher Gondwe, a registered voter from Mzuzu in northern Malawi, confirmed Chinsinga’s theory when telling IPS he will vote for a president who is interested in developing the whole country without segregation.

"The north, for example, has been marginalised for a long time. We want a president who will not only develop the two other regions but the north as well," said Gondwe.

Gondwe is unlikely to put his cross next to the name of Malawi’s current president Mutharika who belongs to the Lhomwe tribe of southern Malawi. Mutharika has been repeatedly accused by analysts and politicians, including his main contender Tembo, of giving preference to people from his tribe when appointing cabinet ministers and parastatal organisations.

(END/2009)

Separating the ‘‘Ultra-Poor’’ from the Poor - Why?

2009-05-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

A group of civil society organisations in Malawi is pushing for changes to the country’s controversial social cash transfer scheme which has caused tension in communities as it attempts to separate the poor from the ‘‘very poor’’ in a country where some 65 percent of people live on less than a dollar a day.

Pilot programmes to test the scheme are underway in seven of Malawi’s 27 districts. Cash transfers have been proven to be effective in the reduction of poverty as households use cash in various ways to improve their livelihoods, from spending the money on food to education to agricultural production to even saving money and starting small businesses.

The ministry of women and child development and the ministry of economic planning and development are implementing the social cash transfer scheme, which was launched in September 2006.

Technical and financial assistance for the programme comes from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The Institute for Policy Research and Social Empowerment (IPRSE), which leads 50 non-governmental organisations advocating for social protection, argues that the scheme is creating problems.

The reason for this is its targeting of a category of ‘‘ultra-poor’’ in a country where most people live below the poverty line of less than one dollar per day.

IPRSE Director of Programmes and Development Paul Msoma says that the scheme attempts to separate the poorest from the poor. The question that has arisen is, ‘‘who is really poor and who is not poor enough to benefit from the programme’’, Msoma tells IPS in an interview.

IPRSE is concerned that, given the vast numbers of very poor people in Malawi, especially in the rural areas, providing assistance to a few of them will not make a great difference towards the country’s goal of reducing poverty and hunger.

‘‘If you go into a typical Malawi village, almost everyone is very poor yet the cash transfer scheme is targeting very few people,’’ Msoma points out.

The civil society grouping queries the system used to identify beneficiaries as it poses difficulties for communities. Recipients of the money from the scheme are nominated by a local community social protection committee (CSPC) which is composed of community members. These include the traditional leaders of the area and other respected members of the villages.

The CSPC draws up a list of households living in grim conditions and refers this to a district social protection sub-committee (SPSC), made up of social workers and provincial government officials. The SPSC verifies and approves nominations.

This process ‘‘is creating complications. The people who are equally poor are being asked to make decisions to make others better-off. There should be a better way of identifying beneficiaries,’’ contends Msoma.

He explains that the targeting of very few people is also causing ‘‘unnecessary tensions’’ in the poor communities.

In Mchinji, central Malawi, 65-year-old Malita Namalomba laments that her neighbours ‘‘despise’’ her. Namalomba, a widow, looks after seven grandchildren. Two of her children died within two years and she had to adopt her grandchildren.

‘‘I am happy that the cash transfer scheme has enabled me to look after all these children. The money makes me able to feed them all and send them to school,’’ she admits. But she is worried that other families living in poverty are unhappy with not benefiting from the scheme.

‘‘I was lucky that I was identified to benefit from the scheme. All my neighbours are poor and they need similar help. They despise me now and I can’t do anything about it,’’ says Namalomba.

The amount of money disbursed to beneficiaries like Namalomba is dependent on household size. The minimum grant is 4.20 dollars for a household of one person. The scheme also encourages school enrolment: an extra 1.30 dollars is granted for each child enrolled in primary school and 2.60 dollars for children in secondary school.

Nicholas Freeland, programme director at the Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme (RHVP), agrees with the local NGOs that some negative lessons have indeed emerged from the pilot social cash transfer scheme.

The RHVP supports policy-makers and practitioners concerned with food security, social protection and vulnerability in southern Africa and is funded by the UK’s department for international development.

‘‘Community-based targeting is open to abuse. It does not work in a Malawian context to identify the most vulnerable people,’’ explains Freeland. This is because there is a little difference between the poorest households.

It is unfair and unethical to select only 10 percent of them to receive a transfer that will ‘‘leapfrog’’ them over almost equally poor members of the community. ‘‘Unless of course you re-target on a regular basis, which is complex and expensive,’’ states Freeland.

Experience in many other countries has shown that the best way to target the poorest in society is not to try to identify them individually but to use categories that are associated with a higher likelihood of poverty, such as elderly people, young infants, the disabled and women.

‘‘Such categories are much more easily understood by recipients and non-recipients alike, much less easy to exploit or corrupt, much simpler to administer and therefore much more politically acceptable,’’ Freeland tells IPS.

Despite these objections by NGOs, the Malawian government is planning on expanding the scheme. It is working on scaling up the cash transfers with an aim to eventually make them available to all districts in the country.

According to a government report, preliminary survey results indicate that the money is ‘‘properly’’ used by beneficiaries as it is invested in meeting people’s immediate, basic needs while some households are able to make some savings from the scheme.

The government has also come up with new guiding principles which include simplifying the programme so that it is well understood by communities.

Meanwhile, IPRSE has vowed to continue lobbying government to revisit the targeting of the social cash transfer scheme. (END/2009)

Women’s Group Sues Govt Over Abortion Rights

2009-04-30T01:17:00.000-07:00

No choice for pregnant women in Malawi?

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

LILONGWE, Apr 29 - An influential women rights organisation in Malawi, Women in Law in Southern Africa-Malawi (WILSA-Malawi), is suing the government of Malawi for preventing women from accessing safe abortion.

Malawian law prohibits abortion - Section 149 of the country’s penal code says any person who administers abortion shall be liable to imprisonment for 14 years, while Section 150 indicates that any woman who solicits abortion is liable to seven years imprisonment.

But WILSA-Malawi’s executive director, Seodi White, calls the existing laws nonsensical because they infringe on women’s rights. She says they force women to seek back-street abortions from traditional healers and illegal clinics thereby putting their lives in danger.

"These laws do not make sense at all. They are contributing towards the death of so many women. We need to get rid of them as soon as possible," urged White.

Government statistics in Malawi indicate that up to 30 percent of maternal deaths in the country are due to abortion. Malawi’s maternal mortality is one of the highest in Africa - second only to war-torn Sierra Leone.

White says refusing women the right to abort is discrimination. "Access to legal and safe abortion services is essential to the protection of women’s rights to non-discrimination and equality. Where women are compelled to continue unwanted pregnancies, it puts them at a disadvantage because abortion is a medical procedure that only women need," she told IPS.

White argues that the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has implied that the denial of medical procedures that only women need is a form of discrimination against women. "Therefore, restrictive abortion laws may amount in certain cases to discrimination against women," she concluded.

WILSA-Malawi is also contending that when pregnancy is unwanted, a legal requirement to continue the pregnancy may constitute government intrusion on a woman’s body. "We are therefore taking the Malawi government to court for failing to protect the women in the country," explained White.

WILSA-Malawi, whose main mandate is to work towards improving women's human rights from a legal and social perspective, has already celebrated one major success in changing legislation to improve women’s rights.

In 2006, the organisation facilitated the enactment of the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act, after a long battle against the country’s deeply rooted culture and beliefs that wife beating was normal.

Legal battle

Meanwhile, a number of other organisations have joined WILSA-Malawi in the debate on unsafe abortion. For instance, the Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC), a government body working on developing and sustaining a culture of respect for human rights among all people in Malawi, indicated that one of the issues the country needs to tackle is abortion.

"This is part of addressing reproductive and sexual health rights of all Malawians. This is important, because there is overwhelming evidence of dangerous termination of pregnancies among women and girl children of Malawi," said MHRC executive director Dr. Aubrey Mvula.

He says the initiative is in line with global women’s rights protocols, such as the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the Beijing Declaration and its Platform of Action. ICPD objectives include universal access to reproductive care services, while the Beijing Declaration urges governments to review laws that contain punitive measures against women who undergo illegal abortion.

Mvula stressed the fact that international human rights law supports the need to terminate pregnancy to promote and protect other human rights.

"Therefore, MHRC submits that Malawi needs to move forward and significantly promote the health of women and the girl child by making sure that all dangerous pregnancies acquired through unwanted, ill-advised and accidental sexual activities or economic problems need to be terminated on that basis," he said.

Unsafe abortions

In response to demands by MHRC and WILSA-Malawi, the Reproductive Health Unit (RHU) within Malawi’s Department of Health admitted that unsafe abortions are rampant in the country.

RHU deputy director Fannie Kachale points out that most countries with low maternal death rates, such as South Africa and Ghana, have had to permit induced abortion and that legalising abortion has not led to increased number of abortions in those countries. "It has just shifted [numbers from] unsafe to safe abortions," she said.

Kachale explained that while the government of Malawi does not permit abortion, it indirectly acknowledges the fact that illegal abortions take place, because it provides post-abortion care to women who underwent abortions and have developed complications.

According to IPAS, an international organisation working globally to increase women's ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights and to reduce abortion-related deaths and injuries, by providing post-abortion care, the government of Malawi is confirming that there is a problem that needs to be resolved.

Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah, vice president of IPAS Africa, told IPS that women usually have valid and important reasons for abortion. "Women tend to seek abortions when pregnancies are not supported by their partners, families or communities, when the pregnancy may threaten the woman’s health or survival or when the foetus has abnormalities. It’s not for immoral reasons," she said.

Brookman-Amissah also explained that the medical process of abortion is usually simpler and cheaper than post-abortion care. "Induced abortion is one of the safest medical procedures. But with unsafe abortion, women easily develop complications, such as hemorrhage, infections, incomplete abortion and secondary infertility. These conditions are very expensive to treat," said Dr. Brookman-Amissah.

As the example of Malawi shows, making abortion illegal does not prevent them from happening. "Where safe abortion is unavailable, women go for unsafe abortion through the ingestion of herbs, bleach, gasoline and gun powder. Others go for vaginal insertions of sharp tools such as twigs and pouches filled with arsenic," explained Brookman-Amissah.

Some women have also been reported to hit themselves into the stomach, while others throw themselves from high places to abort the foetus. According to IPAS, apart from death, consequences of unsafe abortion include significant short and long-term illness, injury and infertility.

(END/2009)

Bringing TB Testing and Treatment To Those Who Need It

2009-03-24T04:51:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

LILONGWE, Mar 24 (IPS) - Malawi does not have accurate statistics that define the extent of tuberculosis (TB) cases within its borders, and there are fears that only half of those infected with the disease are able to access testing and treatment.

Technical advisor of the country’s National TB Control Programme (NTCP), Dr. Daniel Nyangulu, said TB is one of the top killer diseases in the country, together with malaria and HIV/AIDS. "Every year, [we estimate that] up to 30,000 people are treated for TB, and 8,000 die of the disease. TB is a huge public health problem," said Nyangulu.

In the 1980s, TB infections were much lower, with public health facilities having to treat only 5,000 TB patients per year.

Malawi’s fears that only half of those infected with the disease are accessing treatment are supported by 2008 World Health Organisation (WHO) data, which estimate that there were more than 50,000 new cases of TB in the country last year. Malawi falls short of the WHO recommended treatment success rate of 85 percent by at least 13 percent. But all existing data are estimates.

NTCP has therefore embarked on a campaign to provide universal access to TB testing and treatment. Sputum collection centres have been established in hard-to-reach rural areas that don’t have health facilities. Members of local communities are volunteering to collect sputum from people with TB symptoms. The volunteers then transport the samples to the closest health facility for testing.

According to the United Nations, up to 85 percent of Malawi’s population lives in rural areas where about 60 percent of the people live below the poverty line of $1 per day. It is difficult for them to seek medical care when they need it, especially if public health facilities are far away from their villages and they don’t have the money to pay for transportation.

"We have discovered through surveys that most people in villages are not accessing health services such as TB detection services easily. This is mainly because of the distances they have to travel to get to the nearest health centres and also because of the high poverty levels," explained Nyangulu. Residents of rural areas have to travel an average of five kilometres to reach a clinic or hospital.

Lack of knowledge about TB has also been cited as contributing to the fact that few Malawians get tested, said Nyangulu. He said most people in rural areas have little information about the disease and therefore fail to recognise its symptoms.

Mtsiriza, a rural community on the outskirts of Malawi’s capital Lilongwe, is one area that has benefited from the universal access initiatives launched by NTCP. Now that sputum collection centres have been established in the community, people have been flocking to the centre to be tested in high numbers. NTCP is also encouraging home-based care services, delivered by community volunteers who observe and follow up on treatment for TB patients.

John Chiguduli (48) is one of the patients who has been cured from TB due to the new centre in Mtsiriza. "I have been sick for about a year, and I haven’t been able to work at all. I felt very weak but I could not access testing services because the hospital is far away from here, and I didn’t have money for transport. I only got diagnosed with TB when a medical facility was set up here in my village," Chiguduli told IPS.

He believes the NTCP initiative of bringing health care to the people, instead of expecting people to make their way to health facilities, has saved his life. "I nearly died. The testing service came to my area just in time to save me," said Chiguduli, who is now able to work his fields again.

The community TB initiative also encourages all members of a household with a TB patient, especially children, to be tested.

In addition, NTCP offers ‘active screening’ at its TB testing centres, which means that HIV testing is offered in combination with TB tests. This way, government tries to identify the large number of TB/HIV co-infections, which the national health department estimates to be 77 percent.

NTCP has also established walk-in centres in the country’s main health facilities, such as referral hospitals, to enable people to access TB testing services without having to join the long queues of patients requiring other hospital services.

Hospital waiting times are usually long because Malawi is facing acute shortage of health personnel. The Department of Health indicates that up to 120 registered nurses leave the country per year for better-paying jobs in the developing world. Currently, 50 patients are looked after by only one nurse, while one doctor is responsible for 64,000 patients, according to health department figures.

In addition to bringing TB testing to rural areas as part of its universal access strategy, the NTCP makes special efforts to provide testing services in other TB hot spots, such as prisons. "Most of the prisons in the country are overcrowded and this becomes a breeding ground for TB," said Nyangulu, explaining that prison authorities are now encouraged to offer TB testing to every new prisoner and offer testing services for all prisoners on a regular basis.

Yet, health experts realise that efforts to curb TB will be less effective if Malawi does not have accurate statistics on the TB situation in the country. The health department is therefore planning to embark upon a national prevalence survey later this year. "Right now, we only have estimates, but we need specific figures to be able to treat all cases properly," said Nyangulu.

(END/2009)

Water makes the difference

2009-03-24T04:38:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

LILONGWE, Mar 20 (IPS) - Water has become the very essence of economic development for a rural community of Ngolowindo, in Malawi’s lake district of Salima, where households are reducing poverty thanks to irrigation.

Ninety percent of Malawi's agriculture is rain-fed but government is now pushing for more diversification into irrigation farming which allows farmers to grow crops even in the dry season and allows for additional harvests.

Taking advantage of the fresh water from Lake Malawi, the people of Ngolowindo are using simple irrigation methods to grow such produce as tomatoes, cabbages, mustard, onions, okra, green pepper, green beans, lettuce and maize on 17 hectares of land.

A vibrant agricultural cooperative, the Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society, has since emerged in the area and 159 people are now members. Each individual farmer is allocated a small piece of communal land and assigned a specific crop to grow. The produce is collected into one lot and is put on the market.

Eluby Tsekwe, the cooperative’s chairperson, proudly told IPS that her community has become the largest supplier of fresh produce to the residents of the country’s capital city, Lilongwe.

"We supply all the main supermarkets and individual vendors in the capital city with fresh produce which they sell to residents of the city. We make a substantial sum of money from there and this sustains our livelihoods," she said.

Tsekwe said that members have to be 18 years and above. "We don’t want to get children into the cooperative since we believe they should be in school and not be involved in any type of child labour," said Tsekwe.

For Tsekwe, a single mother of five, the financial benefits of this collective endeavour are evident; all her children, aged between four and 19, are in school. Despite her divorce leaving her alone as head of her household, she is also able to provide three meals every day to all her children in a country where, according to the United Nations, seven out of 10 households typically run out of food before every harvesting season.

Tsekwe has also managed to build a house of bricks with an iron sheet roof and cement floors. "A typical house here is one with mud walls and floors with a grass-thatched roof but I can afford to live better and I am very proud of myself," she said.

But it has not been all rosy for the Ngolowindo project, according to Coordinator of Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society, Mercy Butao.

The cooperative coordinator explains that the agricultural initiative started at Ngolowindo in 1985 as an irrigation scheme and only became a cooperative in 2001. She said the project was initially driven by the government’s departments of water and agriculture through traditional leaders and community members.

"As a scheme, individual farmers worked in their own fields. They could only benefit from communal irrigation systems, but they were each others' competitors when it came to marketing their produce," Butao told IPS. During this time, the maintenance of irrigation structures such as drainage canals and irrigation canals was suffering.

The scheme was turned into a cooperative to improve marketing of the produce and for a more organized management of the project, according to Butao, but this also solved problems of maintenance.

"The farmers applied for funding from the European Union soon after forming the cooperative, and they used the money to upgrade their agricultural skills in irrigation farming and modern ways of crop production," said Butao.

The Ngolowindo farmers have also been trained in marketing fundamentals, financial management, organisation management and agro-processing.

The Cooperation for the Development of Emerging Countries (Cospe), an Italian non-governmental organisation, has also assisted the Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society in the constructing irrigation structures and in human resources. Butao, for instance, is an agricultural expert, employed by Cospe since 2002 to provide technical support to the cooperative.

"The Ngolowindo project has grown so much and it is now moving into agro-processing," Butao told IPS. She said in the absence of a processing project, there had been a lot of wastage of produce since the crops being grown are perishables.

"The cooperative has now diversified into the production of tomato juice and tomato sauce," said Butao.

The project has 18 people working in agro-processing, using hand-powered machines to process the agricultural products. "We are yet to make it big in the agro-processing business. Our products are not developed enough to compete on market but we are working hard towards advancing further," said Butao.

The cooperative is also working towards diversifying into livestock farming so as to use excess produce from the farming to feed the animals. "We also want to promote the use of animal manure in our farm," Butao said.

Another member of the cooperative, Ginacio Kamoto, explains that he has benefited a lot from the cooperative. "I am able to provide employment to some people in my area. I employ them as casual labourers to assist me with farming. I employ up to six people per growing season," said Kamoto.

But people like Tsekwe and Kamoto are still the exception in Malawi where up to 65 percent of the 13.1 million people live below the poverty line of less than a dollar per day.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the country is only irrigating 72,000 of 400,000 hectares of irrigable land. The country is yet to fully utilise Lake Malawi, a fresh water length which stretches the length of the country is the ninth largest lake in the world.

(END/2009)

Malawi's Women Challenge For Top Posts

2009-03-05T07:11:00.000-08:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

LILONGWE, Mar 5 (IPS) - Sitting side by side, clothed in bright traditional outfits complete with headgear, they looked like any of the women who always dance and ululate for politicians at rallies.

But Loveness Gondwe and Beatrice Mwale are exceptional: with their newly formed Rainbow Coalition party, they are vying for the country’s top most positions of president and vice president respectively in Malawi’s May 19, 2009 presidential elections.

Malawi’s current president, Bingu wa Mutharika, has also picked a woman, Joyce Banda, to be his running-mate in the elections. But it is yet to be seen if the women will indeed make it to the top.

Such political positions have so far been a domain for men in Malawi - a woman’s role has mainly been limited to dancing and cheering for their leaders - mostly men.

For instance, Gondwe, the country’s first female presidential aspirant, has not had it easy in politics. She formed the Rainbow Coalition Party because the Alliance for Democracy (Aford), the party she has represented since 1994 - rising higher than any woman before her in the national assembly, where she was voted to the position of First Deputy Speaker - refused to endorse her as presidential candidate.

"I am an achiever and capable of bringing positive change to people’s lives and I am qualified to lead this nation," Gondwe told the local media upon presenting her presidential nomination letter to the Malawi Electoral Commission.

She said if elected, she would like to make more employment opportunities available to the youth, in a country where the unemployment rate is at 45.5 percent.

Gondwe also aims to improve the conditions of service for civil servants who are the lowly paid and to support small holder farmers who play a big role in Malawi’s economy, which is predominantly agricultural.

"I would also like to see the maternal death rate going down so that women are able to participate in development work," Gondwe said. Malawi's maternal mortality is one of the highest in the continent at 807 deaths per 100,000 live births.

Banda, President Mutharika’s running-mate, who was Malawi’s foreign minister before her appointment, also told the media that she has been fighting a hostile environment as a female politician.

"I have had to learn how to navigate and find my way. People have seen my performance as a member of parliament. I am not emotional but solid and realistic. I have done my best as a cabinet minister and I will prevail in any political, social and economic storm," said Banda.

All women vying for political positions in Malawi are benefitting from the support being rendered by the 50:50 Campaign, a national programme on increasing women's participation in politics and decision-making positions. The campaign is being coordinated by the Ministry of Women and Child Development with support from international donors including the United Nations.

The programme provides campaign finances and materials to women aspiring to political positions, to expose them to the public through media and to provide them with training in personal development. Up to 150 women have presented their nominations papers to contest for the 193 parliamentary seats. Currently, there are only 27 women out of the 193 members in Malawi’s Parliament.

Programme coordinator for the 50:50 Campaign in the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Bertha Sefu, admits that it is an uphill battle to achieve equal participation for women in decision-making positions.

Sefu told IPS that Malawian society favours men more than women but that the 50:50 Campaign has managed to position women well and that the country is now realising that women can be trusted with decision-making positions.

"We have seen that the women candidates for political positions are getting more and more support from both men and women and we hope this means that the situation is changing. We are optimistic that we will have women in the very top positions of government by May," said Sefu.

Beyond the selection of Banda as Mutharika’s running-mate, people have to wait for the elections results in May to see if indeed more women are being given the opportunity to be political leaders.

While the situation seems to be growing more favourable for women in politics; it is a different story in the civil service and private sector. Currently, only seven women out of 38 are in ministerial positions - only four are full ministers and three are deputies. Just five out of 38 permanent secretaries in government ministries are women and just 21 percent in other top level positions are held by women. In the judiciary, women are not well represented either, since there are only four female judges out of 27.

On the positive side, the positions of chairperson of Malawi electoral commission, clerk of parliament, chairperson of Malawi Human Rights commission, attorney General and parliamentary draftsperson are currently being held by women.

Gender specialist for the United Nations in Malawi Veronica Njikho says the focus now is on the forthcoming elections but once that is over, there will be a review of the 50:50 campaign to start focusing on the participation of women in all levels of decision-making including the private sector.

"We will also be lobbying for the participation of women in trade union movements," said Njikho.

Meanwhile it seems like the women of Malawi would still want to continue dancing for political leaders; whether male and female and Banda, the vice president nominee, is one of them.

"Because I am an African, we dance as part of our culture and identify. We dance during birth, we dance when we brew beer, we dance when we praise God, we dance when there is death, we dance when we install chiefs. We dance as a form of appreciation and expression of our feelings," said Banda.

She said dancing is part of who Malawians are. "It does not take away anybody’s dignity. I will dance alone as an African. I have advised my children that when I die, nobody should cry, but celebrate my life, I expect people to dance in celebration of my life. Dancing is part of who we are and we cannot stop that," said Banda.

It is yet to be seen if men will be forming dance groups for women politicians.

Rains Expose Poor Sanitation

2009-01-26T04:29:00.000-08:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
LILONGWE, Jan 23 (IPS) - Zimbabwe - where cholera has claimed more than 2,700 lives so far according to the Red Cross - is not the only southern African country facing increased disease as rains set in across the region. Malawi is also battling a cholera outbreak which has killed 19 people since the onset of the rainy season, an unusually high death toll.

Up to 485 cases of the epidemic have since been registered and treated. World Health Organisation records from the 2007/2008 rainy season indicate not even a single cholera case was registered in the country's capital, Lilongwe, last year, although up to 20 deaths and 1,022 cases were documented in nine of Malawi's 27 districts.

Apart from the current outbreak in Lilongwe, one other cholera case was treated in the country's commercial capital, Blantyre, two weeks ago, but this was imported from Zimbabwe, according to Malawi's principal secretary for health Chris Kang'ombe.

"Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre treated a Zimbabwean truck driver who had cholera. He recovered and has since returned to Zimbabwe," said Kang'ombe.

There is a lot of cross-border trade and movement between Malawi and neighbouring Zimbabwe and Malawi health authorities have been on alert and intensifying civic education on cholera to ensure that the serious Zimbabwe cholera situation does not spread into the country, according to Kang'ombe.

But cholera is not primarily spread directly from person to person. The country's health experts have attributed the problem to lack of safe water combined with poor sanitation and poor hygiene.

The outbreak has hit Lilongwe, and surrounding communities hardest. Kang'ombe said all the people that have died were resident in Malawi's fastest-growing city which has large populations living in slums with little access to safe water. Cholera is transmitted through contaminated water or food.

"We encounter cholera outbreaks almost every rainy season when people who have little or no access to safe water resort to using untreated water from swamps," Kang'ombe told IPS.

The Banda clan, living on the outskirts of Lilongwe city, has lost two family members to the disease within a period of two weeks. Another member of the family was also infected but has recovered after treatment.

A clan member, Jabu Banda, said his aunt got ill with cholera two weeks ago and was admitted to one of the tents erected in Likuni, one of Lilongwe's high density areas, by the ministry of health specially to care for cholera victims. "She died two days after being taken to the health centre," said Banda.

He said his niece also started showing signs of cholera a week after the death in the family. "We took her to the health centre but she also died a day later," Banda said.

Banda said his cousin who played the role of guardian for the two victims was also diagnosed with cholera last week.

"She has just been discharged from the clinic but she is yet to recover fully. She is very weak," Banda told IPS.

In managing the outbreak, Malawi's Ministry of Health has erected special tents near local hospitals and within areas that have been highly affected by the cholera outbreak.

"The idea is to avoid mixing cholera patients with others admitted to hospitals for other less contagious illnesses," said Kang'ombe.

He said the outbreak would have been quickly contained if people had improved on their hygiene. Kang'ombe said a lot of people in townships and surrounding areas eat fresh foods such as fruits without washing them. Fruits such as mangos, bananas and pineapples are in abundance during the rainy season in Malawi.

"We are providing chlorine to households for them to be able treat their water. We are also stopping communities from preparing food at gatherings such as funerals and to avoid buying cooked food from streets to avoid contamination," he said.

The ministry has also cautioned people who handle corpses of cholera cases to be extra careful. Culturally, most communities in Malawi administer a bath to the dead just before burial.

Meanwhile, there are more fears of cholera outbreaks in other parts of Malawi – health officials are vigilant in the flood-prone areas of the country which include southern districts of Chikwawa and Nsanje, the lowest-lying areas of Malawi, which experience floods annually and where cholera epidemics are most common during the rainy season.

Floods have already affected 2,100 households in 21 villages in Nsanje district and 1,573 other families in Chikwawa district since the beginning of the New Year, according to government statistics from district commissioners' offices.

A task force comprising the Ministry of Health, United Nations Children's Fund – (UNICEF), World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Kingdom's Department For International Development (DFID) is currently working to promote civic education on hygiene and chlorination of water sources in the country to control further cholera outbreaks.

Malawi's rainy season runs from November to May and the country still has five more months to contend with cholera.

Climate Change Threatens Livelihoods

2009-01-08T07:18:00.000-08:00

By Pilirani Semu-Banda

LILONGWE, Dec 26 - Climate change will affect the Zambezi River basin more severely than any other river system in the world, according to Kenneth Msibi, Water Policy and Strategy Expert for the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Increased floods, drought and increased levels of disease threaten lives and livelihoods all along the river’s length.

"Frequent floods and intense droughts are becoming more frequent occurrences in our region. We need to use our existing water resources as a catalyst for development so that we don’t get overwhelmed by the effects of climate change," said Msibi.

Coordinator for the Climate Change and Adaptation in Africa project, Miriam Kalanda-Sabola, told IPS that farming communities in Malawi and Tanzania, for instance, have in the past 30 years experienced considerable negative climate change effects in both semi-arid and high rainfall areas.

Throughout the basin, agriculture is mostly rain-fed, and the people of these states are facing declining agricultural productivity which is being linked to worsening poverty and increasing food insecurity.

The semi-arid areas of Tanzania have seen declining crop yields, poor livestock production, and increasing domestic animal diseases. Many communities have abandoned the production of traditional crops. But farmers in areas of high rainfall are also in difficulty.

"The high rainfall areas in Tanzania are facing declining soil fertility, stunted crop growth, destruction of mature crops in the field and stored ones," said Kalanda-Sabola.

In Malawi's semi-arid areas, communities are seeing increasing periods of hunger and loss of property due to floods while droughts have reduced grazing for livestock due to droughts.

Meanwhile, the high rainfall areas are experiencing soil erosion and frequent landslides, increasing incidence of malaria and loss of crops and animals due to floods.

"The most vulnerable victims facing the effects of the changes in climatic conditions are the poor, women, children, elders, people with less education, sick people and communities in areas with poor infrastructures and less social network," said Kalanda-Sabola.

New and increased levels of disease are also having a negative impact on agriculture, according to Professor Moses John Chimbari, Deputy Director at Harry Oppenheimer Okavango Research Centre (HOORC), a research institute at the University of Botswana.

He says droughts and floods due to rising temperatures are creating a conducive environment for diseases such as malaria and meningitis. He said there are already many more episodes of malaria in the riparian states because of the favourable atmosphere for mosquitoes that has already been created due to the climatic changes.

"This has a great impact on agriculture and the economies since people are sick most of the times and they are not being very productive," said Chimbari.

He said most countries in the Zambezi riparian states have little capacity to adapt to high incidence of diseases and that this makes many people even more vulnerable.

He worried that HIV/AIDS is also adding to these stresses.

"We need to reverse the trends that increase vulnerability to climate change through food security. We will actually be the most vulnerable region if we continue to be where we are now," said Chimbari.

The researcher called for states to improve their health facilities and be able to cope with the health hazards being posed by climate change.

The adaptation strategies that are being employed in Malawi include switching to drought-resistant crops like cassava, increased irrigation farming, growing early-maturing hybrid varieties of crops and the use of organic manure.

In Tanzania, farmers are also turning to drought resistant crops such as sunflowers, and employing small scale irrigation, improved social networks such as cooperatives and the use of improved seed varieties.

Kalanda-Sabola approves of all these strategies and further calls for more livestock farming -- especially in the high rainfall sites -- and timely access to vital and simple information on climate change and variability.

She says farmers in the region are being hampered by resource limitations including lack of enough crop land, lack of accessibility to loans and farm inputs. She underlines the need for a strengthening of capacity for implementation among communities.

"Most farmers are failing to meet transaction costs necessary to acquire adaptation measures as they also have no or little access to external markets," she said.

Harnessing the Zambezi

2009-01-08T07:14:00.000-08:00

LILONGWE, Dec 2 - If the socio-economic development goals of the eight countries that share the Zambezi River basin are to be met, countries along the river should quickly implement plans towards managing water resources in an efficient, effective and sustainable manner.

This was the agreement made during the Fourth Zambezi Basin-wide Stakeholders Forum which took place in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe from Nov. 26-27.

The gathering, an annual event of stock-taking and strategising first held in 2005, focuses on managing the resources of the Zambezi basin. This year's forum was aimed at turning the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) Strategy and implementation plan of the Zambezi river basin resources into action.

The IWRM spells out how the eight Zambezi Riparian States -- Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe -- can share the benefits derived from the water resources of the Zambezi River Basin in a sustainable and equitable manner.

Malawi's Principal Secretary for irrigation and water development, Andrina Mchiela, alerted the forum to several serious warning signs concerning the water situation in the region. She said that many rivers in the water basin are now running dry before they reach the lakes or seas they previously emptied into. Across the region, water tables are drying up and wetlands are fast disappearing. She said there was need to speed up the process of implementing the IWRM to counter these negative developments.

The IWRM strategy addresses four issues, namely lack of coordinated water resources development, poor environmental management approaches, weak climate change adaptation measures and weak regional cooperation and integration mechanisms.

"There is need for a very careful management of the water resources in the Zambezi Water Basin," said Mchiela.

Mchiela said there is growing demand for fresh water in the region, which, she said, is currently using 50 percent of all fresh water sources.

"At the current trend, by 2025, we shall be using 75 percent of all the fresh water," said Mchiela.

Globally, up to one billion people lack clean water, two billion have no proper sanitation and seven billion will be faced with severe water shortages by 2015, according to Mchiela. She said the IWRM should be used to improve the situation, at least in the region.

"We need in-basin people that are dedicated towards finding solutions to these challenges," said Mchiela.

Another problem facing the Zambezi Basin is the impact of climate change. According to Kenneth Msibi, Water Policy and Strategy Expert for the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Zambezi is the worst-affected basin in the world.

Frequent floods and intense droughts are expected to become even more frequent occurrences. In 2007 alone, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe all experienced intense flooding which affected more than half a million people.

Msibi said that a large part of the population of six of the eight states along the Zambezi live below the poverty line and water management has a role to play in economic and social development for the region.

"The challenge is to use water as a catalyst for development," said Msibi. "We now need to see tangible actions if the region has to achieve poverty reduction and economic prosperity," said Msibi.

He said water, food and energy security can be realised from the Zambezi water basin, explaining that it is the biggest river basin in SADC with abundant water resources and good soils that need to be effectively utilised.

"There is so much potential in this water basin," said Msibi.

The Zambezi basin is home to over 40 million people, according to the 2007 IWRM Forum Report. The basin is reported to be rich in human, social, political, economic, natural and ecological diversity and has high potential for agriculture, fisheries, forestry, wildlife and hydroelectric power generation.

David Harrison, Senior Advisor and Consultant for Global Freshwater Team, called on the Zambezi water basin riparian states to learn from the effective management currently taking place on China's Yangtze River basin. The Yangtze is the world's third longest river.

Harrison cited flood control initiatives, constructing and operating of dams in ways that reduce impacts on the river and its aquatic populations as some of the projects that should be encouraged in the Zambezi water basin.

The formulation of the IWRM followed the Zambezi Watercourse Commission (ZAMCOM) agreement signed by the eight riparian states in July 2004. The countries indicated that they recognized the significance of the Zambezi watercourse as a major water resource in the region and the need to conserve, protect and sustainably utilise the resources of the basin. The states also committed themselves to ensure equitable and reasonable utilization and efficient management and sustainable development of the water basin resources.

The forum came up with resolutions to improve water reservoir management for improved food security and for the rehabilitation, management and monitoring of environmental-vulnerable areas in the basin.

The forum was attended by delegates from government ministries for environment, water, justice, finance, fisheries, forestry, agriculture and energy, non-governmental organisations working in environment and water sectors, traditional leaders who represented their communities, universities and research institutions, parliamentarians, private sector, and local government leaders.

Elections Get Ugly For Women

2009-01-08T07:07:00.000-08:00

Nov 24 - Malawi’s primary elections are getting ugly for women candidates. Shoving, derogatory songs and being pelted with stones are just some of the intimidating tactics aimed at discouraging women from contesting the primary elections that will select candidates for the parliamentary polls in May 2009.

Gertrude Nya Mkandawire, one of the strongest members of parliament (MP) for the ruling Democratic People’s Party (DPP), recently withdrew from the primaries in her Mzimba Solora constituency, in the north, where she was running against 10 men.

"I can’t take it anymore," Nya Mkandawire told IPS. "I have faced different kinds of intimidation from fellow contenders, who are all men."

Angry crowds sang demeaning songs and shoved her around at rallies. "They have been destroying my campaign materials, including flags and posters, in the night to discourage me from contesting," she added.

The last straw came when DPP committee members and primary delegates demanded money.

"They said I can only win the elections after I pay them some money and I didn’t find this proper," she told IPS.

The culture of handouts is common here during elections. Politicians distribute money, food and blankets to their constituents, claiming it is their way of sharing wealth.

Gender activist Veronica Njikho says the practice of freebies disadvantages women politicians because men already have an established financial capacity that women do not.

"Only 23 percent of women have an equal say as their partners in economic matters at home and they do not have the same financial muscle as their male counterparts when it comes to politics," Njikho said.

Women drop out

Njikho is a champion of the 50/50 Campaign, led by government and 42 civil society groups, to boost women’s participation in politics and decision-making positions.

The Campaign has condemned the intimidation and harassment of women candidates. Violence is marring some rallies for men candidates as well.

"There is a lot of political violence being reported from all corners of Malawi and this is discouraging a lot of women from participating in the elections," said Njikho.

The gender expert explained that most women do not want to be associated with or be victims of abuse: "Naturally, women are not violent people."

An unprecedented 425 women wanted to run for parliament at the onset of the 50/50 Campaign but only 200 persevered. "The rest dropped from the race mainly due to the harassment and intimidation," Njikho told IPS.

She fears that the growing reports of intimidation during the primaries will prompt more women to abandon politics.

The Campaign seeks to see women win at least half of the 193 seats in the national assembly, in keeping with the Southern African Development Community Protocol on Gender, signed in August, which mandates a 50 percent representation of women in government by 2015.

Malawi scores below the Sub-Saharan average of female representation in parliament, with women accounting for 14 per cent of its national assembly.

The biggest challenge for the Campaign, said Njikho, is the uneven political playing field. Men hold the top political positions, they support their fellow men and resist women candidates.

Leaders fail women

Lilian Patel, an MP and chair of the Malawi Parliamentary Women Caucus, blamed party leaders for these problems. Just like the DPP, the other main political parties -- the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) -- are headed by men.

"All political parties in the country have failed to put up deliberate efforts to ensure that women are propped up," said Patel, a UDF member.

On Nov. 13, a primary election in the lake district of Nkhatabay ended with a stampede, when DPP supporters started throwing stones after a dispute over eligible voters. Three women were contesting these primaries.

Meanwhile, Nya Mkandawire is not giving up on politics. She is considering running as an independent candidate or joining another party.

To discourage this choice, the DPP came up with a trick, she explained. DPP candidates collecting the nomination forms for the primaries had to sign a declaration that, in the event of losing, they would support the winners, and not run as independents or join other parties.

"The declaration would have been fair if the elections were fair but, in this case, we have to look for other alternatives if we have to stay in politics," said Nya Mkandawire.

Dodging stones and insults is not an alternative she will consider. Respect and safety for all women candidates, that is what she wants.

New Efforts for Citizen Power

2009-01-08T06:49:00.000-08:00

Dr. Fletcher Tembo
Civil society organisations in Malawi are keen on the newly introduced Governance and Transparency Fund (GTF) which, they hope, will provide people with more power to ensure that there is proper governance and transparency in the country.

Up to 65 percent of Malawi's 13.1 million people live below the poverty line of less than a dollar per day, according to Malawi government statistics.

Malawi's transparency and accountability record is also not very good -- the country is ranked number 115 out of 180 countries in the 2008 Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).

A new programme -- funded by the 130 million pound Governance and Transparency Fund (GTF) of the Department for International Development (DFID), the arm of the UK Government that manages Britain's aid to poor countries -- designed to help citizens hold their governments to account may help.

The "Strengthening Citizen Demand for Good Governance Through Evidence Based Approaches" programme -- which will be implemented in various African countries -- was launched in Malawi's capital on Nov. 19, 2008.

Overseas Development Institute (ODI) director Dr Fletcher Tembo said at the launch of the project that there is need to strengthen the country's budding democracy through participatory governance and social accountability.

Tembo explained that the programme is about facilitating citizen's voices through the engagement of civil society, independent media, elected representative and other non-state actors.

He said following the launch of the programme, a national coordinating organisation will be appointed to provide grants to the media, parliament and civil society organisations in their pursuit to intensify governance and transparency issues.

"The whole emphasis of the fund hinges on citizenry power. The programme would want to enable the citizens meet their aspirations better at the same time holding the government accountable," he said.

The Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN), a coalition of 100 civil society organizations, including NGOs, community based organisations, the media, trade unions and the academia, is excited about the GTF. MEJN works on social and economic governance.

MEJN executive director Andrew Kumbatira lauded the launch of the programme saying it would strengthen accountability.

"We need to progress as a country and we can only do that if there is good governance and if government is accountable on its spending," said Kumbatira. "The country's citizens therefore have a great role in monitoring government and this will be made possible with the fund," said Kumbatira.

He said there are already existing programmes in the country where citizens participate in holding government and political officials accountable but that these are minimal.

Kumbatira cited the Umunthu (human-ness in Chichewa) Initiative, where constituents are able to summon their member of parliament to explain how he has been representing them in the national assembly, as one of the programs where citizen participation is already working.

"Of course the Umunthu initiative is only happening in two of the country's 27 districts and the GTF will help in expanding such kind of program to all the districts," Kumbatira told IPS.

He also mentioned Budget Monitoring as another already-existing programme with citizen participation. This is implemented by MEJN and communities at local level hold local authorities in their assemblies accountable on public funds.

"Even the Budget Monitoring has lots of gaps as it is done in very few areas due to lack of resources," said Kumbatira.

Kumbatira also said with the GTF, citizens will be able to prevent legislators from misusing public funds the way they did last year when the passing of the Malawi national budget for 2007/2008 was held to ransom by a political impasse between the ruling and opposition parties in Parliament.

The delays in passing the budget affected the progress of development projects and the provision of essential services such as health and education as government could not procure enough supplies without the national budget.

The country's main opposition parties, the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and the United Democratic Front (UDF), wanted the Speaker of the House to declare vacant the seats of parliamentarians who had crossed the floor to join President Bingu wa Mutharika's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

The opposition parties were citing Section 65 of the Constitution, which stops legislators from leaving the parties that put them into power. Mutharika himself won the presidency under the UDF but dumped it after becoming president and went on to form the Democratic People's Party.

The budget which was supposed to be passed on June 2007 was not passed until September and Mutharika told people in a national radio broadcast that up to $2.2 million was wasted by Parliamentarians during the squabble which yielded no results. The parliamentarians who crossed the floor still have their seats in the national assembly.

"We want to see an end to such inconsiderate conduct by parliamentarians and we will use the GTF to work with citizens to ensure that transparency and accountability is the order of the day," Kumbatira told IPS.

*The Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Britain's leading independent think-tank on development and humanitarian issues, is driving the implementation of the "Strengthening Citizen Demand for Good Governance Through Evidence Based Approaches" in partnership with the Inter Press Service (IPS) Africa and CIVICUS.

Climate changing agriculture

2008-10-28T23:18:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

Agnes Boti struggles to bend down as she attempts to replant maize seeds in her garden. Her crop, which was supposed to be food for her family for this whole year, was washed away in February by floods that ravaged Malawi’s Southern Region.
Boti is suffering from malaria, but she says she is feeling better compared to her husband and two children. Soon after the floods, her whole household was afflicted by malaria following an outbreak that hit Chikwawa, the district she stays in.
The woman’s family is among the 190,000 people that were displaced by the floods in January this year. According to Malawi government’s disaster management department, half of the country’s 28 districts were affected by the heavy rains and storms.
“We helplessly run for our lives and watched from a distance as our house and gardens were being washed away by the floods. We lost almost everything that we owned,” laments Boti.
She says her family has been staying in makeshift camps together with a lot of other flood victims.
Crocodile attacks were also on the increase following the flooding of the Shire River, a crocodile-infested river in the southern part of Malawi, according to another flood victim, Maxwell Vizya.
“I was nearly maimed by a crocodile at night right in front of my house which was water-logged followed the heavy rains,” says Vizya. He said the river had overflowed into his village making it a swamp and a new home to crocodiles.
Similar floods occurred in Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe since December 2007, with disastrous repercussions for about half a million people in southern Africa. Following the heavy rains and floods, diseases like cholera and malaria claimed further casualties.
In recent years, climatic changes have been widely noted in Malawi. Between 1999 and 2005, the country experienced droughts that wiped out agricultural crops from the country’s fields. Five million of the country’s 13.5 million people were in need of food aid.
Such heavy impairment hit Malawi hard, which generates up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from agriculture and 85 percent of the country’s population depend on agriculture for their livelihood.
Ted Chingolopiyo, a farmer from Lilongwe in central Malawi, experienced a fierce water scarcity. “All my crops dried up in the garden before they matured. My family had to survive on wild roots and mice for six months before we got food aid from government.”
Chingolopiyo says his two children, aged five and seven, were treated for malnutrition following the ordeal.
The loss caused by floods and droughts is of great concern to the Malawi government. Minister for Lands and Natural Resources Khumbo Chirwa describes the changes in agriculture fortunes as effects of climate change.
Chirwa says Malawi has, therefore, developed a climate change adaptation strategy, called the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), to build capacity to cope with climate shocks especially for vulnerable groups such as the farmers.
“The strategy focuses on eight sectors namely agriculture, land use and forestry, fisheries, energy, wildlife, water, human health and gender,” says Chirwa.
The NAPA is being used to implement measures to tackle the effects of climate change. Priorities in the strategy include the creation of buffers for the poor and most vulnerable from effects of climate shocks.

Concrete measures outlined in the NAPA include the restoration of forests in flood-prone areas, as in Boti’s village, to reduce flooding and siltation. This will maintain land fertility and help to develop sustainable livelihoods. One challenge is improving the utilisation of available water sources such as Lake Malawi for irrigation.

The plan of action also highlights improvement of agricultural production by teaching smallholder farmers to use advanced agricultural techniques in soil and water management.
In February this year, President Bingu wa Mutharika launched the NAPA. He said government was to strengthen its response to climate change and integrate environmental and climate risk-related issues into development policies and programmes.
Following the launch, government departments especially those dealing with forestry, water and agriculture, have been sensitising people around the country on the NAPA programme.
The local people have since started bracing themselves against the effects of climate change. Most smallholder farmers are now moving away from total dependence on rain-fed agriculture towards irrigation farming.
Boti, for example, is now concentrating on replanting crops in her field in this dry season.
“We never used to grow crops in the dry season but my whole community is now relying on irrigation to produce food. We will therefore be able to avoid starvation in case of more floods or drought this year,” says Boti.
Other adaptation strategies that have been adopted by smallholder farmers include crop diversification into growing drought resistant and short duration crops like legumes and producing high value crops.

“We are being encouraged to grow crops that will provide us with a lot of income such as paprika and mushrooms. We’ve also started concentrating on livestock farming and bee-keeping,” says Boti.

The smallholder farmer is also part of a village disaster management committee, which has since been formed to map up ways that the local people can help each other in coping with current and future climate change effects.

Boti says her committee has agreed to construct water reservoirs to catch rain water for irrigation in case of a drought, to manage land better by producing manure and to intensify civic education within her district on climate change and adaptation plans that the people can adopt.
Meanwhile, the adaptation strategies can easily be noticed in her area. Villagers are busy planting potatoes, paprika and mushrooms at a time that was deemed as a break from agricultural activities.
Chingolopiyo says his family has escaped the malaria outbreak. Many people in his area, including him, have now heeded government’s call to always use bed-nets to avoid being beaten by mosquitoes which carry the malaria parasite.

“We have been receiving free mosquito nets from health facilities for some time but most of us were using them as fishing nets. We have now realised that it’s much more beneficial for us to use them against the prevention of malaria,” says Chingolopiyo.

Malawi Women Push for Parliamentary Positions with the Help of the 50:50 Program

2008-10-28T22:55:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

No political meeting happens in Malawi without song and dance. Clad in colorful political party regalia, women and girls are the traditional singers and dancers for the country’s political parties. They sing adoring songs of praise for the political leaders they support and mock those who represent political interests different from their own. The majority of Malawi’s politicians are men.

As the country’s Presidential and Parliamentary elections draw closer, the women of Malawi want to move away from being mere singers and dancers; 425 women have mobilized to contest for the country’s 193 parliamentary positions in next May’s elections.

An aspiring MP Margret Nyakondowe says she is contesting because she understands the challenges facing people, especially women and children, better than any man.

"I am a mother and I know the needs of mothers in this country. I would like to see an end to those challenges and I will advocate for them in Parliament," says Nyakondowe.

The quest for more political positions for women is being championed by 42 civil society groups under the NGO Gender Coordination Network (NGO GCN) and the country’s Ministry of Women. Technical and financial support is coming from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Canadian International Development Agency, Action Aid International, Danish Church Aid, OXFAM-GB, GTZ and the Royal Norwegian Embassy.
In July, the campaigners launched a national program to increase women’s representation and participation in politics and decision-making positions – the crusade has been dubbed the 50:50 campaign. Its primary goal is to have 50 percent or more women holding parliamentary positions after the 2009 elections.

Lilian Patel, Chairperson of the Malawi Parliamentary Women Caucus and a current MP, says the women are not asking for special favors, just to be given a chance to be part of the country’s development.

"We always work extra hard as women in Parliament. We want to see women and the whole nation prosper. We have the people's interest at heart," says Patel, who has been an MP for 14 years.

The battle promises to be tough since the targets set are much higher than the number of women who currently hold decision making positions; at the moment there is only a 14 percent representation of women in Parliament, 16 percent in the executive arm of government and 12 percent in the judiciary.

“Malawi has made unsatisfactory strides in getting more women into Parliament,” worries Minister of Women and Child Development, Anna Kachikho, especially since the country is party to various international and regional instruments which call for the involvement of women in decision-making positions. Malawi has ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Gender and Development Declaration, the Beijing Declaration, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights and the African Union Solemn Declaration of Gender Equality.

Already, hurdles against the women aspirants are emerging from the country’s major political parties – some leaders in constituencies are literally blocking women from contesting. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has set up excessive primary elections participation fees to hinder women from contesting, while the major opposition party, Malawi Congress Party (MCP), has declared that it will not give any special treatment to its women parliamentary candidates.

“Of course the elections are a competition, but men already have an unfair advantage over women, partly because of their well established financial capacity,” says executive director of the Association for Progressive Women (APW), Reen Kachere. According to government gender statistics, only 23 percent of women in Malawi have an equal or greater say in economic decisions at home.

“With start up financial incentives for women, the situation could be reversed to ensure sustainable women participation in politics and decision making,” says Kachere.

Under the 50:50 program, each candidate will be trained in assertiveness, advocacy, lobbying and campaigning. They will also receive $700 as start-up campaign money and media exposure.

But according to NGO GCN board chairperson Emma Kaliya, violence also deters women from participating in politics. Reports of violence and harassment always occur in Malawi, especially in the run-up to elections. Fights have already been broken up this month as different political parties hold parliamentary primary elections.

This unruly behavior by male parliamentarians discourages many women from contesting and the use of insults against women MPs is ever present in the Malawi national assembly.

The leader of opposition in Parliament, John Tembo, recently accused women in Parliament of getting cosmetic surgery. While making the remark, he pointed at the Minister of Information, Patricia Kaliati, one of the women in Parliament who is well-groomed. Some women MPs have even been called prostitutes, ugly and unmarried.

“MPs should tone down the language they use against women. This is a sad development because the shortage of women in the House is affecting discussions that affect them. For instance, issues to do with maternal deaths and property grabbing are not discussed,” says Kaliya.

But those championing the 50:50 campaign continue to encourage women’s participation in the coming elections despite these impediments. Through UNFPA, the United Nations in Malawi believes that a critical mass of women in politics tends to influence public priorities and helps to keep gender equality, women’s rights and issues of reproductive health rights high on the agenda of public policies and budgets.

Says UNFPA gender expert Veronica Njikho, “UNFPA is committed to helping the Malawi government and other civil society organizations that are championing the 50:50 campaign to ensure that they strengthen the skills of women aspirants for them to run successful campaigns.”

Njikho also says the UN would like to see political parties provided with the skills necessary to ensure that conducive political space is provided to women contestants and that the general populace is mobilized to support women candidates during the elections.

The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC), which facilitates elections in the country and boasts 50 percent female representation, also supports the effort. The chairperson of the electoral body, Anastasia Msosa, has since appealed to traditional, political and religious leaders to make deliberate efforts to encourage more female participation in the 2009 electoral process.

Msosa observes that the active participation of women is vital considering that females in the country make up 60 percent of the electorate. “It would be great to see women use their voting power to be in power,” says Msosa.

But it is not only women that want to see the number of women increase. A prominent male civil rights activist in the country, Unandi Banda, says it is vital to choose women for parliamentary positions as they know social and economic problems much better than most men because women and girls in Malawi suffer most in terms of securing basic resources like water and firewood.

“Women are better placed to come up with policies that could improve the people’s lives,” says Banda. “For example, the lone member of parliament for the opposition Alliance for Democracy, Loveness Gondwe, always gives constructive criticisms during parliamentary debates. Most male MPs just make unnecessary noise.”

A district commissioner in Malawi’s southern district of Chikwawa, Lowford Palani, says that every nation requires the full involvement of women to develop.

Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) executive director Undule Mwakasungula agrees with the sentiments that it is the women that know best the socioeconomic problems confronting the country.

“Look at the long distances women travel to the nearest health center for health care, only to be told there are no drugs. Look at the long distances they cover to fetch water,” says Mwakasungula. Most women and girls in Malawi travel an average of 5 kilometers per day to collect water, carrying a container that holds about 20 kilograms of water on their heads. The average person in Malawi travels 20 kilometers to reach the nearest health center.

Like the many of the people who support these women in their fight for parliament, I believe women make better leaders than men. The women in the Malawi Parliament and those in decision-making positions are rarely implicated in corruption cases. They're more honest and have the people's interest at heart; issues of national importance like the environment, health and education get more attention from women parliamentarians.

The Malawi government through the Ministry of Women and Child Development has since pledged its commitment to ensure that women have equal access to parliamentary seats.

UNFPA Resident Representative in Malawi, Esperance Fundira, says the program to increase women in politics is not just about numbers. Citing the critical role women parliamentarians played in getting the Prevention of Domestic Violence Bill passed into law in 2006 she says, “There is overwhelming evidence from within Malawi on the difference women bring to the table when they are in key decision making positions. We must remember that by empowering a woman, the whole nation tends to benefit and we stand a better chance of achieving the Millennium Development Goals and making gender equality a reality.”

Saving Sex Workers in Malawi

2008-10-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

Twenty-seven year-old Lima Wochi from Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, looks dejected. She ventured into prostitution at the tender age of 12. She says she is tired of sex work and is looking for a way out of it.

Prostitution is deemed unacceptable in Malawi but the sex trade continues to thrive. Large numbers of women, especially young ones, are seen loitering around street corners, near hotels, bars and other entertainment places.

Wochi is one of these women. She immediately catches one’s attention as she prowls around a popular bar in Chigwirizano, one of the capital city’s popular entertainment joints. The woman has all sorts of scars on her face and thighs – many of her customers have inflicted physical and emotional abuse on her over the years.
“The worst case of abuse I encountered was two years ago when three men gang-raped me and beat me up. I couldn’t work for three months as I was seriously injured,” Wochi recalls pensively.

Wochi says she went back to the sex trade because she knew no other way of earning a living. But she says she is now too worn-out to go on.

“I don’t want to be a prostitute anymore. I am fed up with everything that comes with it, but my main problem is that I never went to school and I can never get good employment,” she worries.

Another of Wochi’s major concerns is the risk of contracting HIV. She has not been brave enough to go for an HIV test yet. The 2006 Malawi Behavior Surveillance Survey indicates that up to 70 percent of sex workers are HIV positive – this is the highest rate being faced by one group of people in the country – the national prevalence rate for Malawi is 14 percent. AIDS is Malawi’s second leading cause of death after malaria.

Wochi says she was forced into prostitution by abject poverty. “I found sex work lucrative and I thought it was a very easy way of making money.” She left her rural village in southern Malawi and moved to the country’s capital, Lilongwe. She immediately started roaming around the city’s drinking places and hotels plying the sex trade.

Now, Wochi is looking for a substantial sum of money that will set her off in a “more respectable business.” She is paid US$3 for providing sex without using a condom and US$1 for sex with a condom. “I sleep with five men on a good night but sometimes I go without getting any customers,” she says.

The United Nations Population Fund’s HIV Prevention Officer Humphreys Shumba says that sex work in Malawi is mainly driven by poverty. The country remains one of the most impoverished in the world and is ranked among the 14 poorest nations by the 2007/2008 United Nations Human Development Index, which ranks countries based on broader indicators of their quality of life including life expectancy, enrollment in school, freedom from disease and other measures.

According to 2008 research findings by the Community Health Department at the University of Malawi, up to 83 percent of prostitutes in Malawi are known to depend solely on sex work for their livelihoods and 95 percent of them have children. Sixty nine percent of the women who are involved in the sex trade are divorced.

Shumba says unprotected sex, which is often practiced by sex workers, is among the key drivers of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Malawi. “Sex work in Malawi is characterized by, among other factors, lower age of entry into the trade where girls as young as 12 years are known to be sex workers,” he says. Since 2005, government has since been deploying child protection officers to find and rehabilitate child prostitutes so they can return to their communities.

Shumba explains that lack of negotiation skills and assertiveness in ensuring safer sex through condom use also aggravates the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted illnesses.

UNFPA has since funded the Family Planning Association of Malawi (FPAM) to work on reducing the transmission of HIV among the prostitutes by empowering them to practice safer sex, and by increasing the sex workers’ access to reproductive health, voluntary counseling and testing.

So far, the law in Malawi is silent on prostitution. However, the police usually carry out night raids and arrest anyone found loitering in entertainment and public places – most of those arrested are prostitutes. The police charge them with minor infractions: either being found Idle and Disorderly, or Rogue and Vagabond - crimes that do not exact harsh punishment.

Grace Thupi, a sex worker, says she was once arrested during a night raid and was taken to court. “I was charged with Rogue and Vagabond and the court imposed a suspended sentence of two weeks in jail,” she says.

To fill in the gaps, FPAM is engaging the sex workers by providing them with information, skills for negotiating safer sex (condom use) and alternative livelihood options, says Bessie Nkhwazi, the NGO’s district manager for Lilongwe.

FPAM, the government, NGOs and other service providers in Malawi realize that they cannot stop prostitution overnight, so their focus is largely on HIV prevention. And though FPAM and UNFPA create their workplans with the government, it’s mainly for appearances so they can say the government is somehow involved. Some of the money that FPAM receives comes from the National AIDS Commission, which is a government body, but the government is mainly helping to combat child prostitution through the deployment of child protection officers. The implementation of actual programs, especially those for older prostitutes, are really falling on the NGOs.

“We are addressing the economic and social obstacles faced by those indulging in the sex work trade. The sex workers are undergoing training in business management and they are also being equipped with vocational skills such as tailoring, running hair salons, restaurants and mushroom growing,” says Nkhwazi.

Jane Banda, 25, is one sex worker who has been trained in tailoring. She is waiting for a loan to be provided by UNFPA through FPAM that will set her up with her new business.

“I have been abused so much in this trade. Some man picked me up from the drinking joint and dumped me in a grave yard in the middle of the night. I have never been as scared as I was on that night. I can’t live like that anymore,” declares Banda.

Fistula Turns Women Into Outcasts

2008-10-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

Pilirani Semu-Banda interviews LAUSI ADAMU, fistula patient

Women suffering from obstetric fistula in Malawi received free medical care to reverse their condition during the country’s Fistula Week.

Between Oct. 12 and 18, the Malawian government, with technical and financial assistance from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), treated more than 130 destitute women who have no or little access to health care services.

Lausi Adamu, from Makanjira in Malawi’s lake district of Mangochi, who does not know her exact age, has suffered from fistula for the last 25 years. Her affliction came to an end last week, when she received an operation free of charge to stop her ailment.

Adamu told reporter Pilirani Semu-Banda about her life with the disease as she recuperated in hospital after the operation.

How did you develop fistula?

Lausi Adamu: It was 25 years ago, when I was in labour for three days while giving birth to my first and only child at home.

I received no medical care throughout pregnancy, and it was only my mother who was with me during delivery. There was no midwife or doctor available. It was a very long and painful labour and the baby was stillborn when he eventually came out.

I have been unable to control the leakage of both urine and faeces from my body ever since and I haven’t had the courage to have another child.

Why did you not receive medical care during pregnancy and delivery?

LA: It takes four hours to walk from my village to the nearest hospital, and no vehicle goes into my area because the road is in a very bad condition. Most births therefore happen at home, and women rely on their mothers, their mother-in-laws or traditional birth attendants to help them during labour.

The culture in my area also demands that the first baby has to be delivered at home for elders to ensure that the husband is indeed responsible for the pregnancy. There is a belief that most women have more than one relationship after they just got married -– so the women who help at birth ask the woman in labour to mention the (name of the) real father of the baby. The belief is that if any complications develop during the process of giving birth the woman has been unfaithful.

What did you know about fistula before you developed the condition?

LA: I thought I was bewitched, but everyone else in my community thought I had been unfaithful to my husband. It was a very strange affliction. My mother took me to five different traditional healers who told me that the condition was incurable and that I should accept to live with it for the rest of my life.

However, there have been many such cases in my area over the years, and most of the women have been treated by community members the same way as me (with contempt).

Government and UNFPA staff have in the past year been coming to my area, and they have been carrying out community meetings where they are telling us that the condition is medical and that it is repairable.

I decided to come to the hospital to see if indeed I can be helped after one of the women from my community, who had a similar condition, came back cured after visiting the hospital.

How has fistula affected your life?

LA: It has been a terrible nightmare. My husband left me two months after I developed fistula and my mother died soon thereafter. All of my relatives, including my own brothers and sisters, deserted me.

I have been living a very lonesome life since no one wanted to be close to me because of the appalling smell that emanated from my body at all times. I could never attend any social gatherings within my community, not even funerals of my own relatives.

I have been selling mats, which I weave, to make a living, but I never got close to my customers even then. I leave the mats by the roadside and speak to them from a distance about the price.

Do you still believe fistula is caused by witchcraft?

LA: Not any more. After listening to the community meetings being carried out by UNFPA and government and after my visit to the hospital, I believe that fistula occurs due to prolonged and hindered labour during which the baby's head puts pressure on the bladder and rectum, thereby causing holes. This causes the woman to leak urine or faeces or both uncontrollably.

Looking back 25 years, I do agree that this is what really happened.

Are many members of your community now changing their perceptions about fistula due to the meetings?
LA: It is very difficult to change people’s perceptions because most of us have not been to school. Our culture is strong and it’s not easy to sway people away from what they have believed in for a long time.

Of course, there are quite a number of us that have now come to accept how fistula occurs, but it will take a lot of sensitisation before most people start to believe that fistula is indeed a medical condition.

Now that women with fistula are able to access medical treatment, what other challenges are they facing?

LA: The medical personnel carrying out the repairs are men and because my community is very traditional and conservative, most women are not willing to be treated by men, especially since the condition has to do with private parts.

Given a choice, I would have opted to be operated on by a woman. However, we are being told that it is only men that are qualified to carry out fistula repairs, so we don’t have a choice.

Will you play a role in educating people in your community about fistula?

LA: I have had fistula for a very long time and I have experienced unimaginable torture from this condition -– I know the terrible feelings that women with fistula have to live with.

When I go back home, I will encourage women with fistula to go and seek medical help. I will also be advocating for hospital deliveries and try to change people’s thinking. The best way to avoid fistula is to encourage pregnant women to go for antenatal care and to have their babies delivered in hospital.

Do you think that organisations working to combat fistula are doing enough?

LA: They’re trying their best. But apart from aid organisations we need government to help us in the reduction of poverty as well because I now understand that fistula happens mostly among poor people.

Communities like where I come from do not have easy access to proper health care and good roads because they are mostly poor. We also need education so that we can understand issues and to get rid of harmful traditional beliefs.

The Bold and the Beautiful

2008-10-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
The reigning Miss Malawi, Peth Msiska, has hit the campaign trail, not seeking another crown but to be voted into Parliament in her country’s general elections in May 2009.

Msiska, 24, says this is the right time to join the majority Democratic People’s Party (DPP) and run for office because she is "young, focused and determined to serve others as I have always done over the past two years in my capacity as Miss Malawi."

Trading high heels for flat shoes, the beauty queen with a degree in accountancy has swapped fashion and charity events in Blantyre for rallies along dusty roads in her home area of Chileka, in the south of the country.

"I decided to join politics to make a difference in the lives of people, especially those in the rural areas," Msiska told IPS.

Hers is no easy task. Up to 70 percent of Malawi’s population of 14 million is rural, more than half live in poverty and 22 per cent live in extreme poverty, according to the United Nations.

For the people of Chileka, Msiska wants to bring boreholes and taps closer. She knows from her childhood that local women and girls walk up to 10 kilometres to fetch clean water.

Second in her to-do list is bringing electricity. Ironically, Chileka is close to a hydro-electrical power station on the Shire River, Malawi’s longest watercourse, but people here use paraffin lamps and candles.

"Electricity is generated right on their door-steps but they don’t have access to it," she fires. "And it’s unacceptable to see women travelling long distances in search of clean water."

Orphanages and schools are another priority. As Miss Malawi, Msiska fundraised for charities dealing with orphans and the elderly. There are one million orphans in Malawi, according to United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF).

Sharon Gonsalves-Chalira, a 25-year-old secondary school teacher from Chileka, is a fan.

"She is an inspiration not only to young women like me but to the whole community here," she told IPS. "Peth will win the elections and I am sure she will deliver all that she’s promising in her campaign speeches."

Msiska is a powerful motivational speaker, urging young women to see themselves just as capable as men. Just like she does: "I am aware that some people might not take me seriously because I am young but politics it is not about age. I am a very determined woman, principled, confident and qualified to be a member of parliament."

Msiska, who is single, has the backing of her family, and derives strength from praying at the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian.

Walk the talk

Malawian women do not often venture into politics because of harassment, intimidation and cultural perceptions that bind them to domesticity, says Emma Kaliya, of the Gender Coordination Network (GCN).

Malawi scores below the sub-Saharan Africa average of female representation in government. Women account for 14 percent in Parliament, 16 percent in the executive arm of government, and 12 per cent in the judiciary.

In the world ranking of women legislators by the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union, Malawi scored 87 among some 140 countries.

Kaliya says the small number of women in parliament hampers discussions on issues such as maternal deaths and property grabbing from widows.

"We need more women in parliament so that women issues are addressed effectively," said Kaliya.

There is now new hope for improvement. Msiska, like all 425 women parliamentary candidates, has the backing of the 50/50 Campaign, a national effort of government and 42 civil society groups to boost women’s participation in politics and decision-making positions.

The Campaign wants at least half of the 193 parliamentary seats to go to women. It is inspired by the Southern African Development Community target agreed in August by member states, including Malawi, to have a 50 percent representation of women in government by 2015.

To get there, the Campaign is putting its money where its mouth is. All women candidates will be trained in advocacy, lobbying and campaigning, and get $700 as a campaign start-up in their constituencies.

Msiska would not be Malawi’s youngest Member of Parliament. Angela Zachepa was voted into office in 2004 when she was just 22 years old. But Misiska might just be the most glamorous.

Miss Malawi is further inspired by the vice-presidential candidate for the Republican party in the United States, Governor Sarah Palin, who won the third place in the 1984 Miss Alaska pageant.

Unlike Palin, who has received a lot of negative coverage in the American press, Msiska has been portrayed positively in the Malawi media.

"It’s high time that people realised that beauty queens can make great leaders," Msiska told IPS.

(END/2008)

The ABC of Being a Successful Business Woman

2008-10-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

Through hard work and resilience, Malawian entrepreneur Mary Phombeya has developed her once small and struggling business outfit into a fully fledged company. She imports fashionable clothes – for women, children and men – from Dubai, Thailand and Hong Kong which she sells locally.

‘‘Although I have only been in this business for two years now, I feel like I have come a very long way. I have achieved so much despite facing some very tough challenges,’’ 40-year-old Phombeya tells IPS.

Initiated in April 2006 with a measly 3,000 dollars, the clothing business has given her a five-bedroom house in one of the affluent areas in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. She is also able to send her two children and three other relatives to the country’s distinguished schools from the profits she makes.

‘‘I was so reliant on my husband before I started my business. But I am now very independent as I have a daily cash flow from the sales,’’ Phombeya says proudly. She makes an average profit of 5,000 dollars per month and provides employment to two women.

The business is different from when she kick-started it two years ago. She did not even have a business plan. ‘‘I had no real vision at all when I started. I just decided to accompany somebody to Hong Kong who had been selling clothes to me. I brought back whatever I could lay my hands on but most of the clothes did not sell because I had only bought what I’d liked,’’ she explains.

Phombeya learnt her lesson from that incident and decided to take her trade to greater heights. She went around to offices, asking potentials clients what their desired piece of clothing would be.

‘‘I only got things right when I decided to acquaint myself with the needs of my customers. I always make sure that I know exactly what I will sell to what type of buyer,’’ says Phombeya, as she bustles around her boutique, hanging up pieces of clothing from the consignment she has just brought back from Thailand.

It is her dedication to her customers that has supported Phombeya’s business, Flora Kabati, one of her most reliable clients, tells IPS.

‘‘She has the interest of her customers at heart. She knows what my choices of clothing are and she does not go wrong. She has supplied me with office wear, casual wear and even clothes for special events like a wedding or a party,’’ enthused Kabati.

Phombeya makes the most of every chance to network with fellow traders. She is always in the company of colleagues when she travels abroad to procure clothing.

‘‘You want to feel safe when you are walking around a strange city. We walk long distances scouting for affordable goods. Sometimes we cover a distance of up to 20 kilometres,’’ says Phombeya.

It only takes two days to gather enough merchandise for sale but that she spends four days flying to and from Malawi. ‘‘It is very tiring and challenging. One needs a lot of patience and determination to do this.’’

There are a number of sacrifices that Phombeya has to make in her quest for an income. She throws the need for privacy to the wind during her travels as she usually shares a hotel room with four other traders. This helps them save money.

She also has to be tough and stop herself from being enticed to buy goods that she might want for herself and her family while shopping for her customers.

‘‘This business demands a lot of discipline and self-control. Sometimes I get really fascinated by all sorts of good things but I ensure that I don’t get lured into buying those things,’’ says the merchant. Once she went to Dubai and ended up shopping for her own house, thus losing business opportunities.

A major challenge facing Phombeya’s trade is the amount of duty she has to pay on importing merchandise into the country. ‘‘The taxes are so high. Sometimes the amount of money I pay in taxes on an item of clothing is higher than the amount of money I paid for the garment,’’ worries Phombeya.

She has to sell such clothing at a higher-than-usual price if she is to realise profits.

The business woman also has to contend with high transportation costs when flying the goods into the country. She pays seven dollars for every kilogramme of luggage.

Most of Phombeya’s customers buy the clothes on credit. They pay her in instalments. This also poses a challenge because not all her customers honour their debts. ‘‘Some people get the clothes and change their telephone numbers while others move houses. It’s very difficult to trace such people and I lose out.’’

Others get aggressive when she reminds them to pay and hurl insults at her.

Phombeya, however, is not being slowed down by the challenges she encounters. She plans to spread out into more business ventures in the coming year and is eyeing the distribution industry.

‘‘I already have plans in place to be a distributor of soft drinks and mobile phone credit. I am sure I will make it and I will be a much bigger trader than now,’’ Phombeya confidently adds.

She holds a Master’s of Science Degree in Agricultural Economics which, she says, has also helped her in being resourceful. (END/2008)

Help for Women with Obstetric Fistula

2008-10-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

A group of 138 unhappy and mostly destitute women from Malawi’s lake district of Mangochi have something to look forward to this week: They will have a chance to restore their dignity and pride by accessing a medical service usually not available to them.

Some of the women have been unable to control the flow of urine and faeces from their bodies for many years due to a medical condition known as obstetric fistula. Others are recent victims of this demeaning condition.

According to United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reproductive health officer, Dorothy Lazaro, obstetric fistula occurs during the process of giving birth and is caused by extended pressure of the child’s head against the soft tissue in the mother’s pelvis.

The tissue eventually dies from the lack of blood supply, and a hole develops between either the rectum and vagina or between the bladder and vagina. As a result, women lose control of the flow of urine and sometimes faeces.

UNFPA and Malawi’s Ministry of Health have jointly organised a "Fistula Week" where women with this condition will undergo operations and receive free medical services to reverse the condition.

Apart from medical complications, women suffering from obstetric fistula have to face numerous social obstacles. They are outcasts in their communities because their husbands abandon them when they fall ill. In addition, community members do not want to get close to them because of the smell that emanates from their bodies due to the continuous flow of excreta.

Malawi has no official statistics on how many women are afflicted with fistula but government, with UNFPA’s assistance, is currently carrying out a study to determine the scale of the problem.

Lazaro says that there is such a large number of fistula patients in Mangochi because early marriages abound in the district, which result in young women giving birth before their bodies are ready to endure the strains of pregnancy and birth.

She explains that young women often go through a prolonged labour process that causes the soft tissues between the pelvis to die, which then creates holes between the bladder and/or the rectum and the vagina. "We have come across girls as young as 13 giving birth, and this age group usually risks developing fistula," says Lazaro.

She also says that most women in Mangochi give birth at home with no medical care or follow up examinations.

The head of the national health ministry’s Reproductive Health Unit (RHU), Dr. Chisale Mhango, says Malawi lacks sufficient infrastructure for maternal care -- another contributing factor to fistula. The lack of health services is also responsible for the country’s high maternal mortality rate -– with 807 deaths per 100,000 live births -– the second-highest on the continent after war-torn Sierra Leone.

"It’s very difficult for us to cope with maternity cases because of the lack of medical personnel that the country continues to face," says Mhango.

The country’s efforts to attain Millennium Development Goal (MDG) number five, which aims to reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters by 2015, are being severely hampered by these shortcomings.

There is only one doctor and four clinical officers in the whole of Malawi who are qualified to carry out fistula repairs, according to Lazaro. More than 100 registered nurses are reported to be leaving the country each year for the developed world in search of higher-paying jobs. Malawi’s Ministry of Health statistics indicate that one doctor takes care of up to 64,000 patients.

But this week, UNFPA has brought into the country two surgical specialists from Holland and Kenya to provide support to the existing local medical personnel in treating the women during fistula week.

"The specialists will also provide a refresher course on fistula repair to our local medical personnel," says Lazaro. She, however, worries that the efforts of fistula week might be hampered by a lack of bed space available in the health care facilities in Mangochi to treat the 138 women.

"The women have to be monitored for two weeks after the operation and it may not be feasible for the health facilities to have so many women hospitalised for such a long time," says Lazaro.

As a long-term plan developed locally to prevent fistula, UNFPA in Malawi is recommending fistula prevention programmes to be linked with education systems to ensure that girls remain in school for a longer time. The UN agency also recommends that youth-friendly health services be made widely available to prevent early pregnancies.

Malawi is not the only country faced with high maternal mortality rates. Globally, 99 percent of maternal deaths occur in the developing world and half of these take place in Africa, according to a joint statement released by UNFPA, World Bank, UNICEF and World Health Organisation in late September.

The agencies say the MDG goal on maternal mortality is showing the least progress compared to the other seven MDG goals, which aim to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empowerment of women, reduce child mortality, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases and ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development.

"Every minute a woman dies in pregnancy or childbirth in the world," says the statement.

The agencies pledged to enhance support to countries with the highest maternal mortality during the next five years and will work with governments and civil society to strengthen national capacity by conducting needs assessments and ensuring that health plans are MDG-driven.

The UN agencies have also promised to address the urgent need for skilled health workers, particularly midwives, reduce financial barriers to access health facilities, especially for the poorest, tackle the root causes of maternal mortality and morbidity which include gender inequality low access to education, especially for girls, child marriage and adolescent pregnancy.

Malawi is hoping to be one of the countries to benefit from this new pledge to scale up efforts to eliminate fistula and maternal deaths, says Lazaro.

(END/2008)

Irrigation Promises to Increase Food Security

2008-10-28T08:44:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
Wyson Chandanga, a small-holder Malawian farmer from the northern district of Mzimba, does not care if the country receives enough rain this year. He is also not concerned on whether the rains come on time or not.

Chandanga’s attitude is at first surprising, since Malawi is an agricultural economy which greatly depends on rain-fed farming. The country derives up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange revenue from agricultural production and 85 percent of the country’s population depend on the same sector for their livelihood.

However, Chandanga says adverse weather, including erratic rains, experienced in the country in recent years, has persuaded him to find ways to reduce his dependence on rainfall.

Malawi has recently experienced three major episodes of drought; one in 1991, another in 2000 and the most recent happened in 2005. The country has also faced major flooding in some parts of the country -- last year, half of Malawi’s 28 districts were hit by heavy flooding and most crops were swept away.

Looking dirty and tired but content after finishing a day’s work cultivating his plot of land, Chandanga declares that he will be a more successful farmer now that he no longer cares for the rains.

"I have now ventured into irrigation farming and I grow maize twice a year even in the dry season. I could only produce the staple food once in a year when I practiced rain-fed agriculture and the yield was not enough for my family," says the farmer.

Chandanga is one of the 29,000 farmers being assisted by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to intensify farm production by developing small-scale irrigation systems and water harvesting schemes in Malawi’s northern region.

The farmers are being trained to improve food security, diversify sources of household income, prevent waterborne diseases in water points and pit latrines, improve their dietary intake and conserve natural resources, according to FAO communications officer Muwuso Chawinga.

"Up to 90 percent of Malawi’s agriculture is rain-fed but we need to diversify into more irrigation farming practices if we have to attain food security for the country," says Chawinga.

Seven out of 10 households in Malawi typically run out of food before the harvesting season, mainly because of drought and floods, according to Chawinga. "It is therefore important that the country should now be maximising on all the seasons and grow their crops even in the dry season and avoid the drought or flooding which may destroy their crops," says Chawinga.

The irrigation programme, which only started in January this year, is already showing signs of having promoted crop diversification in a country that is highly reliant on maize as a staple food. Chandanga, for example, is now also cultivating potatoes, beans and rice to supplement the maize that he has been growing.

Masuzgo Jere, who is also cultivating on a small piece of irrigated land, says she has already harvested enough maize this year to feed her family of five; most farmers are yet to even plant a first crop as they await the rains. She expects to bring in two more crops before April next year, which is when the country harvests maize from the rain-fed agricultural system.

"I not only manage to feed my family, I also sell the surplus food I grow. My family is now regarded as well-off by members of my community," says Jere.

The farmers involved in the irrigation project are provided with treadle pumps and water pipes which they use to pump water through canals from dams, rivers and streams closest to them.

Apart from irrigation, the farmers are being taught skills in water management, development of agro-business, promotion of afforestation and natural resource conservation.

"Our children are not left behind in this since we are also developing garden-based learning centres in primary schools. This is forming part of the agriculture lessons and it will ensure sustainability of the project since the kids will grow with the knowledge on the importance of irrigation farming," says Jere.

The irrigation programme was kick-started following a Poverty Rural Assessment (PRA) exercise which FAO carried out in May 2007. The assessment highlighted low crop yield and low income levels among rural households – the findings were mostly attributed to lack of irrigation opportunities, erratic rainfall and drought.

Malawi is only irrigating 72,000 of 400,000 hectares of irrigable land, according to the government. However the country’s president Bingu wa Mutharika, who is also Minister of Agriculture, told reporters at an August press conference that government is creating a "green belt" along Lake Malawi, which will entail the creation of irrigation schemes along the lake. Lake Malawi is a fresh water lake -- the ninth largest lake in the world, it extends the length of the country.

Small-holder farmers will be assisted by government to establish irrigation schemes along the lake. In Malawi’s 2008/2009 national budget, the allocation to the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development has been increased by 50 percent to $55 million.

"The funds will be used in the ministry’s development programme, considered to be crucial for the attainment of food security. This year, (the programme) is expected to construct some 16 earth dams in addition to 20 that have been constructed so far," said the country’s Minister of Finance Goodall Gondwe when he presented the budget statement.

The Ministry of Agriculture has since indicated that the country is expected to produce up to 300,000 tonnes of maize from irrigation by November. The country usually receives its first rains between November and December.

(END/2008)

Malawi Still Hopeful That Investment Will Come

2008-10-28T08:29:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

LILONGWE, Aug 12 (IPS) - Malawi is on the prowl to extend its trade connections to different corners of the world, west and east. The small southern African country is hoping foreign investment will help it to become a producer and exporter rather than a consumer and importer economy, as is presently the case.

The Commonwealth Business Council (CBC), which seeks to link budding markets in the developing world with the international private sector, has become Malawi’s latest ally in its quest to find much-vaunted, but ever-elusive, investment by foreign companies.

‘‘The Malawi economy is as good as any economy you would want to invest in. We have achieved a lot. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cannot believe what we have achieved in just four years. We have managed to stabilise the economy,’’ Malawi’s finance minister, Goodall Gondwe, told the CBC.

The CBC and the Malawi government agreed on July 18 that the council will assist in wooing investors for the country’s industries of mining, tourism, information technology, telecommunications, agriculture and agro-processing, transportation, energy and banking.

The CBC was founded by the Commonwealth’s heads of state at a meeting in 1997 in order to use the network connecting Britain and its former colonies to spur investment and trade.

The new deal comes on the heels of another trade venture which the small southern African country has cultivated with the emerging trade giant, China. Just in May this year Malawi signed a memorandum of understanding with the Asian state, aimed at promoting bilateral trade relations between the two countries.

Another three trade missions are expected this year -- from Japan, the United States and India.

A total of 25 major project proposals were presented to the CBC by Malawian business people, with bankable projects worth 10 million dollars and above.

The council will facilitate investment of 20 million dollars by a team of financiers from the developed world for an upmarket international conference facility.

This is aimed at attracting international conferences to the country, head of the CBC team that visited Malawi, Sanmit Ahuja, told government and private sector leaders who met his delegation.

‘‘There is a lack of conference facilities in the country. We believe that if we invest in a conference centre, Malawi will be able to host international conferences and in turn attract more tourists into the country,’’ said Ahuja.

The CBC and the Malawi government, through the ministry of trade, have since agreed on an action plan which will ensure that the country sustains momentum based on its economic fundamentals.

Through a communiqué signed by Malawi and CBC, the country is expected to promote public-private partnerships for the provision of economic infrastructure and to increase productivity in the agricultural sector to ensure food security.

It is also expected to build on existing economic advantages, such as tourism and information communication and technology, as a way of broadening its economic base.

The CBC, on its part, promised to facilitate the availability of geological surveys to develop and exploit Malawi’s mineral resources and attract investors to transportation, energy and health.

The council also pledged to commit itself to creating a follow-up mechanism on the investment pledges that were made during the visit.

Gondwe told the CBC that Malawi is courting investors to help build the country’s private sector which, he said, is the engine of economic growth.

Gondwe also assured the CBC delegation that the country’s markets are up to standard and that government will continue to step up the trade environment and improve security on investments.

He explained to the CBC team that Malawi’s interest rates are down from around 35 percent in 2004 to about 15 percent now and that the inflation rate has dropped from 17.5 percent to 7.9 percent during the same period.

‘‘Government’s target is to cut the inflation rate to about 6.5 percent by the end of the year, to make the economy even more stable,’’ Gondwe promised CBC.

The industry and trade minister, Henry Mussa, has since indicated that Malawi is arranging more trade missions this year. He said the country is now targeting the United States, India and Japan.

‘‘We expect to start seeing the real fruits of improved trade and investment in three or four years to come. In three to four years’ time, real investment will take place in the country,’’ Mussa argued.

CBC works to provide leadership for the improvement of international trade and investment flows, to create new business opportunities and to promote good governance and corporate social responsibility. It seeks to reduce the digital divide and to integrate developing countries into the global market.

The visit by CBC to Malawi followed a Malawi Investment Forum which was held in London in April this year. The forum is reported to have generated a lot of interest in investing in Malawi. (END/2008)

Water Woes in Model Hospital

2008-07-15T02:21:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

Gladys Mawera's face is contorted with pain -– both she and her newborn baby survived a complicated birth three days ago -- but she has not been able to take the painkillers and antibiotics prescribed to her by the medical personnel at the Chiradzulu District Hospital in southern Malawi. The hospital has been without water for five days.

"I am disgusted with my own smell and that of my baby," says Mawera, who is still wrapped in bloodstained linens as she cradles her child. "There is literally not a drop of water around here," worries Mawera.

Chiradzulu hospital is one of the country's model hospitals. The medical facility was built with around $25 million funding from the European Union and boasts of a modern operating theatre, state-of-the art laboratory where sophisticated blood tests can be carried out, including monitoring the viral load in AIDS patients.

The 350-bed hospital provides some of the best HIV/AIDS treatment and care in Malawi with the help of international medical and humanitarian aid organization, Médécins Sans Frontières. These modern technological services are not easily found in most of Malawi's poor health facilities.

"We get people coming here from different parts of Malawi despite the fact that this is not a referral hospital; they mostly come because of the good HIV/AIDS services that we offer," says Chiradzulu hospital's deputy director Kennedy Kandaya.

But the hospital, which serves a catchment area of 300,000 people, has one intractable problem. Since opening its doors in June 2005, the hospital's water supply has been erratic. Kandaya says the scarcity of water at the hospital is this year reaching record levels with the medical facility going without pipe-borne water for up to a week at a time.

When the water is cut off, patients and medical staff alike are lucky to find so much as a cup of water to drink. Medical personnel at Chiradzulu cannot carry out theatre routines such as scrubbing or sterilising of equipment before and after an operation. The hospital has suspended major theatre operations and is now referring patients who must be operated on to other health facilities.

X-ray services are also suspended because of the water problems. The 17 staff houses located within the hospital compound have had no water supply for over a month.

"Both doctors and nurses here are having to go to work without taking a bath," says Kandaya.

The hospital is in a situation where it is running out of linen because everything has gotten dirty, according to the sister-in-charge of the hospital's labour ward Agnes Mhango.

"It's very sad to see women and children shivering and catching cold right within the hospital because we can't provide them with blankets," worries Mhango. Laundry is being done at another hospital, 60 kilometres away; the hospital is running up unbudgeted costs to transport materials and equipment to and fro.

Stealing out for water under cover of darkness

The hospital is encouraging the presence of guardians for patients – usually a relative who is able to assist -- to help the hospital in fetching water for patients from nearby boreholes meant for communities that live in area surrounding the health facility.

Mhango says in most cases, the guardians have to wait until night falls to use the community boreholes. "The real beneficiaries pay for the maintenance of the boreholes and they're not happy to see strangers drawing water from their facilities. The people from the hospital therefore have to wait until the owners of the boreholes are sleeping to collect water for the patients," says Mhango.

She says this is dangerous as the guardians face the threat of slipping and falling in the dark and of being bitten by snakes and dogs.

Mawera, however, does not have a guardian since her mother is dead. Women in Malawi are traditionally take responsibility to provide water for their families; there is no other woman who can fetch water for her as she recuperates in her smelly hospital bed.

"I am just praying that the water should come back soon so that I and my baby can wash up," says Mawera.

Poor planning at the root of the problem

The local authority blames the erratic water supply on the location of the hospital. The hospital was built at a place that is higher than the water reservoir for the area, according to the Director of Planning and Development for Chiradzulu district, Emmanuel Bulukutu. He admits that the planning department erred when it opted to use a reservoir that was there before the hospital.

"Ideally, we should have constructed a new reservoir to cater for the hospital," says Bulukutu.

He said there is need to upgrade the whole water system in the district to improve the pumping of water from the reservoir. Bulukutu says there is a proposal to construct a new dam on a higher ground which will be used as the hospital's new reservoir to satisfy the water demand. But as funds have not yet been set aside for this project, this is far from an immediate solution.

Meanwhile the EU has promised the construction of a borehole within the hospital premises as a short term solution to the water problems.

(END/2008)

NGO Keeping An Eye on Malawi’s New Best Friend, China

2008-06-09T06:54:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

China continues to grow its presence in Africa, having just roped in the small southern African country of Malawi as another one of many trading partners on the continent. But some Malawians have adopted a cautious attitude towards their government’s new ally.

A local non-governmental organisation (NGO) is keeping an eye on the developing bilateral relationship, citing concerns about China’s importation of its own labour and the dumping of cheap goods in other African states.

The National Statistical Office (NSO) in Malawi reports that trade between the latter and China has increased by a record 4,894 percent over the past three years.

China’s relations with Malawi picked up noticeably when the two countries established diplomatic relations in December last year, a move which coincided with the southern African country severing its 41-year-old political ties with Taiwan.

Evidence shows that Chinese investment in some countries does not promote the interest of poor nationals, according to Mavuto Bamusi, the network coordinator of the Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC), which promotes human rights, including economic rights, in Malawi.

‘‘We know that the Chinese usually bring in their own workers when they invest in poor countries and that they have been accused of dumping cheap goods on such countries’ markets. Civil society will be quick to raise an alarm if such malpractices happen here,’’ Bamusi told IPS.

He said the Chinese should not bring unskilled labour to Malawi but rather create employment for locals if their initiative is to be seen as an ‘‘honest investment’’.

Civil society in Malawi also frowns upon Chinese aid as lacking democratic tenets. NGOs say the terms of Chinese aid contradict the Paris Declaration, an international agreement adopted by more than 100 parties, including governments, in 2005 with the improvement of aid effectiveness as its aim.

The declaration emphasises transparency and accountability in the use of development resources.

The HRCC worries that Chinese aid and investment as agreed with Malawi do not include any component on the rule of law. ‘‘China is giving us an incomplete package with no guarantee of accountability,’’ said Bamusi.

Malawi and China signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) this month (May 12) with a view to advancing bilateral trade relations between the two countries. Malawi hopes to boost trade in its agricultural products, especially tobacco, tea, cotton and sugar -- the backbone of the country’s economy.

China has also committed itself to investing in Malawi’s tourism, banking and insurance sectors, as well as in mining and fertilizer and cement production.

The MOU signed by Malawi and China comes hot on the heels of a visit to China by Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika in March to woo investors. The Asian economic giant pledged 286 million dollars in grants, aid and soft loans to Malawi during Mutharika’s visit.

Beijing also promised to assist Malawi with human resource development. The two countries signed trade, economic and cultural exchange agreements. ‘‘I hope the private sector in Malawi will take advantage of my trip to forge further partnerships with our Chinese counterparts,’’ Mutharika told press upon his return from China.

The recent signing of the MOU happened during a visit by 43 Chinese businesspeople, led by Deputy Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng. He described his delegation as ‘‘high-powered’’.

The Chinese struck several trade and investment deals with local entrepreneurs in the agricultural, banking and insurance sectors, among others.

Malawi’s Minister of Trade Henry Mussa is hoping that the country’s agricultural products will find new markets in China as the country’s exports benefit from preferential tariffs following the MOU.

Recently Malawi’s tobacco industry, for example, has been in disorder following wildly fluctuating prices. Protesting farmers forced frequent suspensions of the auction floors’ business. ‘‘We would like our Chinese counterparts to start manufacturing cigarettes right here in the country,’’ said Mussa.

The country generates up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from agriculture, with the tobacco industry contributing 15 percent towards Malawi’s gross domestic product. Tobacco and related industries provide livelihoods to about two million of the country's 13 million people.

Malawi offers a conducive business environment and a favourable economic landscape for investment, according to a briefing that Suzanna Mjuweni, investment promotion manager of the Malawi Investment Promotion Agency (MIPA), made to the Chinese delegation.

‘‘Malawi already boasts attractive trade and investment policies,’’ said Mjuweni. She mentioned the accessibility of plentiful and cheap human capital as a guarantee of an encouraging business environment.

Mjuweni also named Malawi’s access to regional markets like the Southern African Development Community and the Common Market for East and Southern Africa as some of the factors that position the country as a conducive investment destination

Mob Justice in Malawi: Accused of Witchcraft, the Elderly Are Rarely Protected by the Law

2008-05-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
Sixty-three year old Gladys Kasito, in Malawi’s capital city, Lilongwe, only has one wish – to die peacefully, preferably in her sleep. Kasito says she feels trapped and threatened in her own country. Her community, including her own family, has disowned her. She says everyone is baying for her blood. Kasito has been labeled a witch.

Her face is heavily scarred, she walks with a limp, and has no front teeth. Kasito is recovering from the wounds she sustained when her neighbors demolished her house early one February morning and beat her up. A few passers-by rescued her and took her to hospital.

“All I want is to die, but peacefully. I no longer want to go through the mental and physical ordeal that I was subjected to. They call me a witch just because I am old and no longer pretty,” worries Kasito.

She now sleeps in a shack in what used to be her kitchen. Only rubble remains where her house once stood. Kasito was attacked by her neighbors after a seven year old boy woke up with a swollen leg and told his parents that he was pushed off a witchcraft plane by the old woman after he had refused to bewitch his sisters.
“My three children say I embarrass them and they have nothing to do with me. My neighbors run away from me and I am just destitute. I have nothing to live for,” Kasito says in an interview.

In Malawi, witches and wizards are believed to be cannibals who have supernatural powers that they use to make people sick and even kill them; it is commonly believed that the witches prey on the meat of the dead. A typical witch or wizard in Malawi is said to have the ability to fly, especially at night, and to have powers that help them change their appearances; they can become invisible, go through walls or turn into animals such as cats, owls and hyenas.

Most Malawians believe that witchdoctors are the experts on witchcraft and that they alone can protect people from being killed through magic. Witchdoctors use herbal concoctions to cleanse and remove witchcraft from those that practice it and those that may have been bewitched unknowingly. Communities will often help perform a ceremony to rid children and witches of witchcraft led by the witchdoctor.

Once labeled as witches or wizards, the accused have very little chance of leading a normal life since they are stigmatized, rejected by society and rarely protected by the law. On numerous occasions, the Malawi police has arrested and brought suspected witches before the court, where in most cases, the suspects are sent to prison.

Malita Khoviwa, 54, a teacher in the southern district of Mulanje has just finished serving a three-month jail term. She was convicted in January for causing the temporary disappearance of a 14 year old girl in her neighborhood.

Khoviwa was arrested after the girl’s parents consulted a witchdoctor who led them to the teacher’s house. Khoviwa explains in an interview that the girl had run away from home because she was poorly treated by her parents.

She came to my house to seek refuge but they accused me of witchcraft and the court convicted me. I am hated around my village because I make more money as a teacher. Most people in the village haven’t been to school and they are poor,” says Khoviwa.
But it is not only illiterate Malawians who believe in witchcraft. Both Kasito and Khoviwa have well educated children who have rejected them.

Khoviwa’s eldest son, Mylos, says that his father died mysteriously in 2005. “He just stopped talking and died the next day. My mother has failed to explain to any of us the circumstances surrounding his death and the whole family strongly thinks that she bewitched him.”

Most of the witch-hunting activities are occurring in towns and cities where most people are educated. A lot of people, literate or not, also consult witchdoctors every time they don’t feel well. They believe that they have been bewitched and the witchdoctors usually provide them with herbs and a talisman for protection against witchcraft.

Recently, Alesi Yosefe, 60, from Malawi’s central district of Mchinji was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment after people in her area complained that she was “flying around a market place using a witchcraft plane and disturbing peace.”

Police prosecutor Julion Mtotela told the court that some people in Yosefe’s community said that their children were always exhausted in the morning. The children would tell their parents that that they had been practicing witchcraft throughout the night with Yosefe.

For whatever reason, Yosefe plead guilty. The magistrate, Steven Chifomboti, convicted her based on her own plea but also used Malawi’s laws Chapter 7.02, Section 6, of the Witchcraft Act to send her to jail.

The Witchcraft Act states that “any person, who by his statement or actions represents himself to be a wizard or witch or exercising the power of witchcraft, shall be liable to a fine of 50 British Pounds and to imprisonment for 10 years.”

The Act is 107 years old and was put in place by Malawi’s colonial power, Britain, in 1901. Back then, the British rulers in Malawi had negotiated treaties with indigenous rulers resulting in the formal laws now governing the country.

Chikumbutso Mponda is serving a five-year jail term after being convicted on allegations that his magic plane crashed while he was traveling in it. The police told the court that Mponda fell from the magic plane after it flew over a house, which was also magically protected. Magistrate Hends Kantchere, who convicted Mponda, explained that he imposed such a tough sentence based on the Witchcraft Act.

“Innocent people are being affected directly or indirectly [by witchcraft], especially children who are being taught without their knowledge,” says Kantchere.

But another purported wizard, Medson Kachilika, is not going down without a fight. He is challenging the outdated Witchcraft Act after being arrested and taken to court when he was accused of teaching witchcraft to children. He applied to the country’s Constitution Court to have the act invalidated and argues that the law violates the people’s right to freedom of consciousness, religion, belief and thought.

The Constitution Court has yet to hear the case.

Just recently, on May 4th, an angry mob apprehended 50 year old Veronica Vincent and her 65 year old mother in Malawi’s university town of Zomba and took them to witchdoctor, Jimmy Mustafa, 42, after four children, ages six to eight, claimed that the women were teaching them witchcraft. Vincent died of poisoning after Mustafa administered an herbal concoction to cleanse her of witchcraft.

Police public relations officer in Zomba, Thomeck Nyaude, said the witchdoctor forced Vincent to drink a brew he concocted and that the woman started throwing up soon after taking the mixture of herbs.
“Vincent died just a few hours [later]. Her mother escaped death because the witchdoctor did not administer it to her after seeing what had happened to Vincent,” said Nyaude.

The police officer said Mustafa has since been arrested but has plead “not guilty” to charges of murder claiming that he had previously administered the same potions to many other witchcraft suspects and none of them had died.

No statistics exist on the number of people serving sentences for practicing witchcraft in Malawi prisons, but NGOs and churches decry the increase in witchcraft cases throughout the country. (In Malawi, little research is generally done since the country is poor.)

Interestingly, the Roman Catholic Church, which is the biggest and most influential denomination in Malawi with a following of 4 million out of the country’s 13 million people, says witchcraft is real in the country.

Reverend Father Stanislaus Chinguo, chairman of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in the Blantyre Archdiocese, said in an interview that the church is working on solutions to witchcraft for its followers.

“[Witchcraft] is a real challenge to the church and we have to face it head on. We are looking at a number of solutions and one of those is exorcism,” says Chinguo. The priest says the Catholic Church in Malawi has lost some of its members to other churches because it has failed to accept the existence of witchcraft thereby failing to help the Christians “that have been haunted by it.”

The Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC), a non-governmental organization that works on the promotion and protection of human rights in Malawi is lobbying for a proper “normative legal position” on witchcraft.

“The time has come for Malawians to accept reality and stop burying our heads in the sand. The reported incidents of witchcraft across the country have reached alarming levels, warranting urgent attention. We have in the recent past witnessed violent incidents involving suspected witchcraft practitioners and communities,” states a report by HRCC Chairperson Justin Dzonzi.

Dzonzi states that there is need for the country to carry out a rational process to address the issues that, he says, cannot be ignored any longer.

Another prominent human rights organization, Civil Liberties Committee (CILIC) has asked government to come up with a bill that would protect witchcraft suspects. No steps have yet been taken to review or invalidate the Witchcraft Act.

Meanwhile, communities in the country continue to terrorize suspected witches and wizards, and old women continue to be the easiest targets.

Aid Will Not Be Conditional Upon Signing of EPAs

2008-05-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

LILONGWE, May 16 - The European Commission (EC) has assured Malawi that the country will continue receiving cooperation aid even if it does not sign an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union.

Malawi’s president Bingu wa Mutharika last month accused the European Union (EU) of ‘‘imperialism’’, saying it was punishing countries who resisted the EPAs by threatening to withhold aid from the European Development Fund.

Malawi is not one of the 18 African states that signed the interim EPAs which the EU was attempting to rush through last year. Mutharika said at a press conference last month that he will not allow Malawi to sign the EPA because it has the potential to be harmful to the country.

Heavy pressure against the EPA has emanated from different sectors. Ten of the country’s most influential non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have protested against the signing of the EPA because of the adverse effects that will be caused by sudden and extensive liberalisation.

In contrast, the EU’s head of delegation to Malawi, Alessandro Mariani, said last week that the EU believes that the EPAs would serve the interests of Malawi. He was speaking at the European Day commemoration celebrations on May 9 in the country’s capital Lilongwe.

Mariani also assured Malawi that the EU will go ahead to finance the country with up to 451 million euros, even if the country does not append its signature to the EPAs.

‘‘Please allow me to reconfirm that there is no link between access to grants allocated to Malawi under the European Development Fund and signing the EPAs,’’ said Mariani.

He was reiterating an EC press statement issued on April 18 that declared that aid from the European Development Fund (EDF) will not be tied to the EPAs.

‘‘This is valid for Malawi as well as for all the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) countries which benefit of the development assistance provided through the EDF. (Trade) commissioner (Peter) Mandelson stated that the level of resources made available to ACP countries will remain as has been agreed,’’ said the statement.

The EC admitted that the programming of EDF regional resources will take into account EPA implementation needs but that ‘‘there has at no time been any attempt by the EU to reduce EDF resources for those ACP countries that do not to sign an EPA’’.

The statement further indicated that Malawi was among the very first group of ACP countries that signed the latest EDF arrangement at the EU-Africa summit in Lisbon in December last year, and that no link was ever made with accession to the EPA.

The statement further confirmed that ‘‘the overall objective of European co-operation aid is to assist developing countries in their fight against poverty and in the implementation of their own development strategy to achieve this objective.

‘‘Ownership of European assistance by the partner country is paramount and contributes to the achievement of the millennium development goals, and in particular the national development objectives of the partner country,’’ said the EC.

The EC also reminded Malawi that while it has decided not to initial the EPA, it benefits from the ‘‘Everything but Arms’’ (EBA) trade arrangement under the EU’s generalised system of preferences, like all the other least developed countries (LDCs) in the world.

The statement said that under the EBA all LDCs have duty and quota free market access to the EU market, subject to a transitional period for sugar and rice only. ‘‘Malawi sugar exports to the EU will continue to be able to enter the EU market duty free and will be quota free from 2009 onwards,’’ said the EC.

The statements went on to quote Mandelson that ‘‘it is the right of every country to determine whether an agreement is in its interest’’.

However, Mandelson stated that the EBA is not perfect as it is a unilateral regime offered by the EU while the EPA, as a negotiated agreement covered by World Trade Organisation rules, offers a level of legal security that the EBA does not.

Andrew Kumbatira, who heads up Malawi Economic Justice Network, the country’s most prominent NGO advocating for economic justice, still accuses the EU of failing to make a commitment to funding which will assist countries like Malawi to adapt to a liberalised regime.

‘‘All countries should be at par in the EPAs but the EU is already a great giant in this. We should trade as equals and the EU should help us to get to their level. There is need to resolve issues of supply side constraints and we need funding for us to deal with those but the EU is very silent about such issues,’’ Kumbatira told IPS.

Speaking during the European Day celebrations, Minister of Trade and Industry Ted Kalebe said Malawi was hoping that the ongoing discussions on EPAs will come to a meaningful conclusion by the end of this year. (END/2008)

Turmoil as Tobacco Prices Fluctuate

2008-05-26T07:54:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

Malawi’s tobacco industry has been in turmoil after wildly fluctuating prices led protesting farmers to force the closure of the auction floors.

This year’s tobacco sales started on a very high note with prices reaching the phenomenal price of 11 dollars per kg. The high prices did not last, however.

The tobacco auction floors opened in Malawi’s capital city Lilongwe in March with a kilogram of tobacco fetching between six and eleven dollars. This gave hope to farmers who have struggled to make any profit from the trade over the last few years.

Malawi’s cancellation of subsidies for tobacco production a number of years ago has meant that farmers have to cover the full cost of production.

It costs the average tobacco farmer one dollar to produce one kilogram of the crop, according to Malawi’s ministry of agriculture. But for many years, prices moved between 70 and 90 cents per kilogram.

This placed the heavy burden of perpetual debt on farmers as they failed to settle loans to purchase farm inputs. Most farmers cut production and others diversified to different economic activities.

Then the unexpected hike in prices happened. Godwin Ludzu, a farmer from Malawi’s central district of Kasungu, was among the lucky ones who sold up to 30 bales of tobacco at 10 dollars per kilogram on the first day of trading. He was ecstatic about the profits he made.

‘‘The price was very good. I will be able to settle all the loans I incurred in producing the tobacco,’’ said Ludzu. He has been growing tobacco for six years. The auction prices this year are the best he has ever come across.

However, the exceptional prices did not last. On the second day, the flicker of hope died. Prices have since fluctuated, with the value of the leaf dropping to between 2.30 dollars and 60 cents for the same quality crop.

The statutory Tobacco Control Commission’s (TCC) general manager Godfrey Chapola confirmed that prices started off high because of a tobacco shortage on the global market. He said that that some countries which grow tobacco have stopped while others have reduced production levels, causing consumption to be higher than supply.

The fluctuation in prices has affected farmers badly. Champhira Gondwe, a farmer from the northern district of Rumphi, went to the Mzuzu auction floors in the north of Malawi. He could not sell any of his produce because he found that the tobacco prices were set very low.

‘‘They were being pegged at the maximum price of 2.30 dollars. I couldn’t let my hard-earned produce go at such a low price when our counterparts in Lilongwe sold their tobacco at 10 dollars,’’ said Gondwe.

The Mzuzu floors were closed on April 14 after violence broke out between the farmers and the guards at the market. The farmers physically blocked the buyers from continuing with sales. The TCC then suspended the sales.

The farmers were not ready to let go of their demand for higher prices after hearing about the worldwide shortage of tobacco.

Sales of tobacco were suspended on all four auction floors in April but the floors reopened again in the last week of April.

President Bingu wa Mutharika, himself a tobacco farmer, has previously accused buyers of fixing prices but the buying companies – from the U.S. and Switzerland -- have denied the allegations.

The southern African country is a major exporter of tobacco, accounting for five percent of the world's total exports and two percent of total production on the planet. In terms of burley tobacco, Malawi produces some 20 percent of the global total, according to the World Bank.

The country derives up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from agriculture, and the tobacco industry is responsible for 15 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). About two million of the country's 13 million people depend on tobacco and related industries for their livelihood. (END/2008)

Female condom, a lifeline

2008-05-12T00:36:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
A small group of women stand around in a hair salon in Chilomoni. Business has come to a temporary stand-still as each one of them is engrossed in what one of the ladies, Chipiliro Kamtema is doing. Kamtema has a female condom in her hands and she is explaining to the women on how to use it.

All the women in the salon have already pledged that they will start using the female condom. The owner of the salon, Jacqueline Talama-Jamu, has placed an order with Kamtema to have 10 dispensers of the condoms delivered to her within the following week.

Kamtema loves her job; she boasts that she would have been dubbed “a knight in shining armour” if she were a man. She goes around hair salons in Blantyre City promoting the new brand of female condoms called Care. She says she is saving lives.

The bubbly lady works for Population Services International (PSI) as Senior Care Promoter. She says that a lot of women in the commercial capital are in total awe of the female condom; its capabilities to save lives and the responsibilities it bestows on women to ensure their own protection against sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.

“They say I am contributing to saving lives just by doing my job and that’s why I call myself a knight of some sort,” says Kamtema.

She explains that women are so keen on female condoms.

“For once, women have the authority on their protection against sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancy and they love this new responsibility,” Kamtema says.

Talama-Jamu is not the only hair salon owner who is keen on selling the female condom to her clientele; PSI Malawi is already working with up to 2,800 hair salons in the country’s four major urban centres of Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Zomba in making the female condoms available to the public.

“The salon is a place where most women throw away any inhibitions and are able to talk to fellow women on a lot of important issues including sexual health. I have already started promoting the Care condom to everyone who comes to my salon,” says Talama-Jamu.

Talama-Jamu says she has been teaching her customers the importance of using a female condom and also on how to use it.

“I demonstrate to them on how to insert and remove it. Apart from educating them, we have fun in joking about this new initiative as well,” Talamu-Jamu explains.

She says she is also making a good profit from the condom sales. PSI sells a pack of two condoms at K23 to the salon owners and they, in turn, sell them to their customers for K35.

PSI Malawi says experience and research has shown that hair salons are an effective marketplace for female condoms, as well as an excellent venue for providing targeted interpersonal and behavior change communications activities.

Today, PSI Malawi, with support from Ministry of Health and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), will be launching the Care female condoms, a branded, social-marketed female condom, which offers dual protection against unplanned pregnancies and HIV/Aids.

PSI/Malawi has trained and employed a team of female Care promoters, like Kamtema to distribute and promote Care female condoms in the nation’s many hair salons. These Care promoters will in turn train hair salon staff on how to demonstrate the correct use of female condoms for their customers, encouraging them to purchase the product and empowering them to protect themselves against unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections and HIV/Aids.

Country Representative for PSI/Malawi, John Justino says the launch of a female condom social marketing programme in Malawi was made possible through “the incredible determination and drive” of the Ministry of Health’s Reproductive Health Unit (RHU) and the UNFPA.

“At PSI/Malawi, we are very pleased with the partnership with the RHU and UNFPA and we are proud of our joint achievements and the launch of Care Female Condoms. We are particularly pleased as this programme demonstrates clearly the government of Malawi’s efforts, as well as those of UNFPA and PSI, to help empower Malawian women to make choices that enable them to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and HIV/Aids,” says Justino.

UNFPA Condom Coordinator Sandra Mapemba explains that her organisation is the United Nations lead agency for issues of HIV prevention hence its support towards PSI.

Mapemba says UNFPA has the expertise and experience in procurement and educating communities on correct and consistent use of male and female condoms to help safeguard sexual and reproductive health.

“UNFPA provides quality condoms and provides the best prices because it is the largest public-sector procurer of condoms in the world,” says Mapemba.

She says UNFPA also supports the RHU in the Ministry of Health through technical assistance in comprehensive condom programming.

Mapemba says the female condom programme took off in 2000 mainly through the Family Planning Association of Malawi (FPAM) and selected health centres throughout the country.

Achievements on the female condom initiative that have been recorded by RHU include an increase in the distribution of female condoms from 124,000 pieces between 2004 and 2006 to 298,000 pieces in 2007.

Meanwhile, fifteen PSI country programs worldwide currently distribute female condoms using innovative approaches that combine peer education and mass media communications with innovative distribution strategies.

A press statement from PSI Malawi indicates that experiences in Zimbabwe and Zambia indicate that female condom marketing programs must complement conventional commercial selling strategies with creative, non-conventional distribution methods that are built upon existing female social networks and gatherings places, such as hair/beauty salons. Since their launch in 1997 and 1995 respectively, a total of over 7 million female condoms have been sold in Zimbabwe and Zambia.

After the Malawi launch, PSI/Malawi will begin putting the power and reach of the commercial marketplace to work to ensure the broad availability of Care female condoms nationwide.

''If EPAs Are So Good, Why Force Us to Sign?''

2008-05-12T00:31:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

While the European Union (EU) has wanted a conclusion to the economic partnership agreements (EPAs) as soon as possible, the Malawian government has been staving off a deal.

The deadline for EPAs at the end of last year passed without Malawi signing -- in contrast to other African states such as Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and the members of the Southern African Customs Union, excluding South Africa.

The Malawi government indicated that it was taking its time considering the implications of the EPAs, for fear of getting bound to an agreement that might not be good for the nation. The EPAs are deals aimed at liberalising trade between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.

Secretary for Trade Newby Kumwembe told IPS last month that Malawi does not want to rush into signing an agreement without exhausting all channels of consultation within the government hierarchy.

‘‘The EPA is not a temporary agreement. This is something that Malawi is going to live with for a very long time. We cannot therefore rush to make a decision that might make us have regrets at a later stage,’’ cautioned Kumwembe.

For such ‘‘an important trade agreement’’, the trade ministry, which has been directly involved in the trade negotiations, needs to go through all its bureaucratic channels which meant consulting the whole state machinery.

Kumwembe mentioned the country’s foreign affairs ministry and the cabinet as some of the important groups that have to scrutinise and recommend on whether the country should sign an EPA or not.

‘‘You don’t negotiate for a raw deal. We want to sign an agreement that has no loopholes and that’s why we want to have conclusive consultations,’’ added Kumwembe.

Malawi government consultations can take ‘‘very long’’ and no timeframe has been set for a decision to be made. ‘‘It may take some time before we, as a country, know for sure what we’re going to do on the EPA,’’ said Kumwembe.

At the beginning of this month Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika said at a press conference that he will not allow Malawi to sign the EPA because it will not benefit Malawians. Instead, it is expected to be harmful to the country.

Mutharika went as far as to accuse the EU of ‘‘imperialism’’.

He was critical of the EU’s stance that EPA signatories will be assisted with money from the European Development Fund (EDF).

‘‘This is imperialism by the EU which we must fight against because the EDF funding has nothing to do with EPA conditionalities. They are doing this in order to punish those that who are not signing their agreements. Now, if the agreement is so good, why do they have to force people to sign?’’ asked Mutharika.

The government’s decision could mean that it is bowing to the pressure mounted by 10 of the country’s most influential non-governmental (NGOs). They have been protesting against the signing of the EPA in its current form since early last year.

In April 2007 five civil society organisations wrote to EU president Angela Merkel, arguing that the EPAs will prevent Malawi and other poor countries to protect their domestic industries with tariffs and other means.

The Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN), consisting of NGOs advocating economic justice, is one of the organisations that have been against the signing of the EPAs.

MEJN executive director Andrew Kumbatira told IPS that, ‘‘the government should not sign this trade agreement in its current form. Critical issues of development and supply side constraints have not been addressed to Malawi’s satisfaction’’.

He said Malawi would need a capital injection of up to 5.7 billion euros to counter the supply-side constraints and other adjustment costs if it were to benefit from the proposed EPA trading framework.

‘‘But there are no clear agreements in the current form of the EPA on how these resources will be made available to us,’’ said Kumbatira.

Without the resources, Malawi would be fully exposed to the shocks that take place in the commodities markets from time to time.

Kumbatira also said the EU wants to tie Malawians into an agreement that reduces the country’s policy space to consider other and more profitable economic agreements with other regions.

‘‘Asia is an upcoming major economic power which might potentially be a better alternative for Malawi,’’ said Kumbatira. He was worried that Malawi was being asked, under the EPAs, to liberalise 80 percent of all its trade with the EU.

‘‘This means that the Malawian market will be put in direct competition with the European market. This will be very unfair for our small country as we are just an emerging economy. The EPAs could easily destroy the great potential to grow we have.’’

Interestingly, Malawi’s parliamentary committee on trade had already approved the signing of the interim EPA on trade in goods. The temporary deal is aimed at averting disruption of trade between African countries and the EU, following the expiry of the Cotonou Agreement at the end of last year.

The signing of the EPAs was initially slated for the end of last year but ministers from the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region, of which Malawi is part, said at the ESA-European Commission ministerial negotiating meeting in Brussels in November last year that it was not practical to do so.

Kumbatira said at the Brussels meeting African leaders called for more work in the negotiations until they can be reviewed.

‘‘Through the African Union, African leaders underlined the importance of trade and development cooperation to the partnership they share with the EU.

‘‘They stated that now more than ever, Africa needs economic partnerships that will see its people grow in economic power, and living standards commensurate to their dignity as human beings,’’ said Kumbatira.

Water Utility Over-Stretched and Under-Maintained

2008-04-15T02:39:00.000-07:00

By Pilirani Semu-Banda

BLANTYRE, Mar 29 (IPS) - Long known as a peaceful and quiet city, especially at night, Blantyre is steadily losing its reputation for tranquility. Residents now find themselves waking up to the hustle and bustle of women carrying metal and plastic buckets as they move around the city most nights and early mornings in search of water.

Water cuts that sometimes last up to three days have become a fact of life in Malawi's commercial hub. And, the parastatal Blantyre Water Board (BWB) -- the city's sole water supplier -- has warned that the cuts are likely to persist until 2013 as it replaces dilapidated water pumps with new equipment.

Businesses in Blantyre have resorted to installing on-site water tanks in an effort to cope with the erratic water supply.

The '2007 Malawi Millennium Development Goal Report' indicates that the country is making good progress towards reaching the MDG target which calls for the reduction by half of the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. (This target was set under goal seven, which deals with environmental sustainability. In all, eight MDGs were agreed on by global leaders at the U.N. Millennium Summit held in New York, in 2000; the deadline for the goals is 2015.)

The report states that access to water has improved significantly, from slightly over 47 percent in 1992 to 75 percent in 2006. But the state of affairs in Blantyre could overshadow this achievement.

During a recent media tour of BWB's main intake facility at Walker's Ferry on the Shire River in the southern district of Mwanza, superintendent Clive Bismarck explained that transformers have been breaking down at the point where the water is pumped from river to pipeline.

The transformers currently in use were installed in 1963: "The major problem we have is of old age. Our transformers have outlived their lifespan and we need to replace all the transformers to permanently address the water shortages."

Bismarck added that the utility has begun repair operations and the installation of new and improved machinery that will ensure a more reliable water supply for Blantyre.

He said BWB's ability to cope with demand is also being outpaced by the growth of Blantyre. The utility is able to pump 75,000 cubic metres of water daily against a demand for 95,000 cubic metres.

Malawi has emerged as one of the fastest urbanising countries in the world with an urban population growth rate of 6.3 percent compared to 0.5 percent in rural areas, according to the United Nations Centre for Human Settlement.

Persistent water shortages cause city residents to flush their toilets less frequently and to compromise on other basic elements of household hygiene such as dish washing. As a result, unpleasant odours emanate from houses and the risk of water-borne diseases has become a constant problem.

Cholera used to occur mainly in the rainy season when contaminated water entered the distribution system as a result of floods. Now, there are instances of the disease throughout the year, as poor hygiene is conducive to the spread of the Vibrio cholera bacterium.

If left untreated, cholera causes diarrhoea that can lead to kidney failure and death by dehydration within 24 hours. Since the beginning of this year at least eight people have died in a cholera outbreak in areas around Blantyre, which is located in southern Malawi. Up to 291 cases of cholera were reported within a three-week period in the region.

During a severe outbreak in 2002, more than a thousand people died of cholera in Malawi.

The water shortages in Blantyre led to the suspension of BWB Chief Executive Officer Owen Kankhulungo in November last year. A press statement signed by the utility's board chairman, Tarsizius Nampota, said Kankhulungo had been suspended ahead of investigations into the causes of the water shortages.

Before his suspension, Kankhulungo had said that the shortages were a direct result of the water system being both inadequately maintained and over-utilised. He has since been quietly reinstated.

Kankhulungo told Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe during a pre-budget consultation earlier this month that BWB's ability to upgrade the water system is compromised by the taxes it is obliged to pay.

He proposed that the minister waive tax on BWB's imports of equipment for maintenance and expansion, noting that the utility cannot claim back thousands of dollars in duties paid on these goods.

However, the minister has been less than sympathetic to the BWB. Acknowledging that the current tax system does affect the utility, Gondwe said he had little respect for water boards because of their inefficiency.

"Over the past 40 years BWB has not repaired its equipment. BWB has become a nationwide problem. This year my budget will try to answer some of the problems that we have at BWB...but I will be very reluctant to give tax relief."

Amidst this wrangling, many residents have now resorted to using rain water that has collected in ditches.

Those who have cars drive to BWB headquarters where they draw water from taps at the utility's offices. (END/2008)

Playing with Children's Lives: Big Tobacco in Malawi

2008-03-11T01:47:00.000-07:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

Sickly and malnourished, Kirana Kapito began his working life on a large commercial tobacco estate in Malawi's northern region. The farms sell their produce on the country's auction floors directly to international corporations including Limbe Leaf Tobacco, majority owned by the Swiss-registered Continental Tobacco Company and U.S.-based Alliance One Tobacco.

Kirana is one of 250 million children across the world involved in work that is damaging to their mental, physical and emotional development. Some 57 million of these endangered children live in Sub-Sahara Africa. And with an estimated 1.4 million child laborers, the small, southern African nation of Malawi has the highest incidence of child labor in southern Africa, according to the Olso, Norway-based, FAFO Institute for Applied Social Science.

Kirana was eight years old when he first went to work in the fields. Estate owners transported him and his parents from their home village, Mulanje, along with 45 other families. The truck journey covered more than 1,000 kilometers and ended in the tobacco fields in Rumphi in northern Malawi.

Kirana's mother, Jane Kapito, 45, says the family left home seeking a better life. “Four years later, my whole family is still struggling with poverty. My son has to work as hard as everyone else if we have to afford the basic necessities. The money that my husband and I receive from the tobacco estate is not enough,” she says.

Now 12, Kirana has never been to school. For the past six months, his health has been failing and he can no longer work as hard as he used to. His mother says her little boy is malnourished and therefore contracts different infections easily. The family often goes without a proper meal for up to three days.

“Just in the past two months, Kirana has been afflicted by malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia,” Jane Kapito said. “He's my only child and I am so scared of losing him.”

This family's struggle is repeated throughout Malawi's tobacco industry, where poverty ensures that every member must contribute to the workload.

Virginia Import Now Main Malawi Export

Malawi's sprawling tobacco estates are not only a source of national economic pride, but of lovely pastoral vistas as well. Up close though, the sight of child laborers in the hot fields exposes the ugliness at their core.

Commercial production of tobacco in Malawi goes back as far as 1889, when settlers from the U.S. state of Virginia introduced the crop. In those days “foreign masters” forced the native people and their children to work in the farms for little or no pay. Over a century later, this exploitation continues -- with no end in sight.

Increasingly, critics are demanding that the tobacco companies take responsibility for ending the abuses. Given their key role in Malawi's economy, they wield significant clout. Malawi derives up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from agricultural crops, and the tobacco industry makes up 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Malawi’s exports account for five percent of the world's total tobacco exports and two percent of the world's total production.

But the wealth generated by this resource is not spread evenly across the country. The Malawi Tobacco Control Commission (TCC), a local government watchdog for the tobacco market, estimates that it takes $1 for farm workers to produce a kilogram of tobacco , which they usually sell at $.70 for a loss of $.30 per kilo. Hardworking farmers who cannot make a living turn to child labor. TCC's 2008 campaign is demanding that farmers get a profit at least 15 percent above production costs.

Despite the TCC campaign, farmers and their families are still at risk of losing money on their crops. And this year the farmers' plight may be further exacerbated by heavy rains that are predicted to cut the country's tobacco production by about 3 percent.

Tenant Farmers’ Dilemma

Up to two million Malawians, mostly poor, depend on tobacco and related industries for their income. Virtually all of the up to 900,000 adult growers are “smallholder farmers, tobacco tenants and casual farm workers,” according to a 2006 research paper by the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE), an independent center based at the University of California, San Francisco.

Tenant farmers are allocated a plot of land by the estate owner and required to produce a specific yield. The owners loan the tenants inputs including seed and fertilizer and deduct the debt from future profits -- if any.

The owners are also supposed to supply food rations, but when monthly allocations run out, workers and their children go hungry. Many also lack such basic necessities as medication, proper housing and safe drinking water. Not surprisingly, workers on tobacco estates and their dependants are among the poorest and most oppressed people in Malawi, according to a survey released last December by the Center for Social Concern, a Catholic organization that monitors the welfare of the people.

A minimum of “78,000 children are working on a full- or part-time basis in the tobacco fields, according to the CTCRE study. “Forty-five percent of the child workers are 10-14 years old and 55 percent are 7-9 years old,” the study found. Meanwhile, the tobacco companies have received nearly US$40 million in revenues over four years through the use of unpaid child labor in Malawi.

In 1995, the Malawi government, through the Ministry of Labor in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, started drafting a Tobacco Tenancy Labor Bill to regulate the relations and transactions between the tenant farmers and the landlords.

The bill has been taken through a number of revisions but it has not yet been taken to Parliament.

Supporting Children or Exploiting Them?

Multinational tobacco companies are aware of the public relations implications of profiting not only from tobacco itself, but doing it through the cycle of poverty and child labor. Tobacco companies in Malawi including Alliance One, Africa Leaf (Malawi) Limited, Premium and British American Tobacco (Malawi) are sponsoring the Eliminating Child Labor in Tobacco Growing Foundation (ECLT). The project, which includes other agricultural industries, is run by Together Ensuring Children Security (TECS), a registered trust set up in 2001 by tobacco exporting corporations operating in Malawi: Africa Leaf, Dimon, Limbe Leaf and Stancom Tobacco.

In 2001, ECLT budgeted US$2 million for a four-year effort to combat child labor. Six years later, in October 2007, the 20 companies within the supply chain of the tobacco industry had ponied up somewhat less than $100,000 of that amount, according to TECS'S corporate newsletter.

The University of California researchers are skeptical of the inherent conflict of interest in having tobacco companies influence social policy. They concluded that in Malawi, transnational tobacco companies are using child labor projects to enhance their corporate reputations and distract public attention away from how they profit from low wages and cheaply produced tobacco .

Others argue that even when useful, the TECS program is a drop in an ocean of poverty. Up to 45 percent of the population is poor, according to the 2007 Malawi Millennium Development Goal (MDG) report. Registered as a Trust under the Trustees Act of Malawi, TECS projects have taken what it calls “a poverty reduction strategy approach” to improve food security, water safety and HIV/AIDS intervention and education.

The trust has built schools, planted trees and constructed shallow wells to address the use of child labor in tobacco farming, according to TECS Programs Director Limbani Kakhome.

While not directly undermining child labor, these programs will eventually bear fruit in better social conditions that will diminish the problem, Kakhome said.

“We are also addressing health issues to ensure that the children don't skip school because of illnesses,” says Kakhome. Once they stay home because they are ill, they are easily taken up by child labor.” It is difficult, he said, to supply the market for child labor once the children are absorbed into the school system, have safe water and are financially secure.

Too Little, Too Late?

It is too late for children like 15-year-old Martha Kalima who dropped out of school at 12 years old to work in the tobacco fields. Pregnant at 14, she continued working in the fields until she gave birth. The father was the 16-year-old son of another tenant farmer.

“There is nothing like maternity leave for tobacco workers,” Kalima said. “No one is entitled to sick leave nor is there transport to hospital. I gave birth at home because it was too late for me to get to hospital.”

Martha is back in the tobacco fields carrying the baby on her back. Chances are slim that she will return to school.

Some 15 percent of girls and 12 percent of boys drop out of school, according to Malawi government statistics. Around 22 percent of primary school age girls never attend school at all, while 60 percent of those enrolled do not attend regularly.

The TECS corporate newsletter confirms that children with few options are pulled from school. Some are “coaxed from the poverty-stricken homes to work in order to keep body and soul together. They are exposed to hazardous environments where they work long hours and do jobs not befitting their ages and they are often beaten and abused.”

That was the fate of 16-year-old Ekari Maliwasa, says she has just returned to her village in the south of Malawi after working for five years in the tobacco estates in the northern part of the country.

“My parents took me with them to work in the tobacco estates in the north [when I was 11] and I only escaped back to my village two months ago after realizing that I was being abused. I am now staying with my elderly grandmother,” says Maliwasa. She says the estate manager beat her whenever he found her resting from the hard work in the tobacco fields. Ekari also went without food or drink for long hours, she said, and was not allowed take a break until she had worked for five hours.

Enforcement of Labor Standards Difficult

Maliwasa's treatment, like that endured by many of Malawi's child laborers, violated not only international standards but also legally binding treaties. Malawi is a signatory to a number of conventions against child labor including the 1973 International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 138 which sets a minimum working age of 18, and the 1999 ILO Convention 182 which outlaws child labor.

The country also ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. (ILO has set 2016 as the deadline for countries around the world to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.)

Child labor cannot be ended overnight says TECS Executive Director Bobby Maynard. “You can manage the supply chain to a certain degree but you can't control it fully,” he says. “The problem is that over 80 percent of tobacco is grown with no contracts from the tobacco companies -- as such it is difficult to intervene directly.”

Tobacco companies note that they are involved in policing child labor violations at estates where they have direct control, and that they subscribe to Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), whose first principle is “no child labor.” But their results in curbing the practice have not been impressive.

Relying on British American Tobacco's own internal documents, the University of California study found that, “rather than actively and responsibly working to solve the problem of child labor in growing tobacco , the company acted to co-opt the issue to present themselves over as a 'socially responsible corporation' by releasing a policy statement claiming the company's commitment to end harmful child labor practices, holding a global child labor conference with trade unions and other key stakeholders, and contributing nominal sums of money for development projects largely unrelated to efforts to end child labor.”

International agencies are also involved. Kusali Kubwalo, communications officer for UNICEF Malawi, said the United Nations has joined Malawi's government and several non-governmental organizations to fight the problem from several fronts.

A national “Stop Child Abuse Campaign” aims to break the silence shrouding all forms of child abuse, including child labor.

“The campaign aims to mobilize leadership and a commitment at all levels to prevent and respond to all forms of abuse,” says Kubwalo. “Violations of children's rights take place every day in Malawi and are extensive, under-recognized and underreported.”

She insists that Malawi, as a signatory to the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is obligated to respect, protect, facilitate and promote the fulfillment of the rights it guarantees.

“This instrument must therefore be translated into concrete legislation, interventions and development programs,” says Kubwalo. “Ratification alone is not enough.”

Tea Growers Devising Plans to Overcome Low Prices

2008-03-11T01:30:00.000-07:00

By Pilirani Semu-Banda

Low prices continue to haunt Malawian tea on the auction floors, a bitter irony for some producers as the country is regarded as the pioneer of tea-growing in Africa.

Commercial production started way back in the 1880s during the British colonial era. Large tea estates have since then been a feature of the southern region of the country. Tea was planted for the first time in Malawi in 1878.

Currently Malawian tea is grown in the southern districts of Thyolo and Mulanje and the northern lakeshore district of Nkhatabay.

The tea-growing areas boast sprawling estates that are also tourist attractions.

The country’s current annual tea exports stand at about 43,000 metric tons, contributing three percent of global tea exports, according to the Tea Association of Malawi (TAML), an association of 10 major tea growers in the country.

The crop is the country’s second biggest foreign exchange earner, contributing 7.9 percent of total export earnings, says the Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (MCCCI). Tobacco remains the main foreign exchange earner.

The southern Africa country ranks second after Kenya as the largest producer and exporter of tea in Africa. It is also twelfth on the global list of tea producing countries.

But despite the country’s prominence in the cultivation of this crop, Malawian tea producers complain that the price for Malawian tea is low when compared to its neighbour, Kenya.

Auction floor prices at the end of last year (2007) showed that the local produce was selling at 1.44 dollars per kilogram for the top grades. Kenyan tea, on the other hand, was fetching up to 3.31 dollars per kilogram at the time.

A decrease was noted in the average price of the product during 2007. In 2006, prices averaged 1.22 dollars per kilogram compared to an average price of 1.02 during 2007.

Lack of competition on the tea auction floors in Malawi is the main factor that is crippling the local tea sector, according to Sangwani Hara, TAML chairperson.

He ascribed Kenya’s higher prices to the benefits of competition among a range of buyers. Another factor is that, unlike Kenya, Malawi does not have its own tea brand.

‘‘Kenya has a brand that attracts buyers. Here in Malawi, TAML is working on branding the local tea but it will need money,’’ Hara told IPS.

Malawian tea is exported to European, Asian and U.S. markets. Kenyan tea, on the other hand, also has big buyers coming from Egypt, Pakistan and Russia on top of the traditional markets that it shares with Malawi.

The MCCCI says the tea industry in Malawi has been stagnant for a long period of time even though tea production has been increasing. Additional investment is necessary through joint ventures with Malawian companies to improve the farming methods and processing of the crop.

Malawi’s tea production was expected to reach higher production levels of 45 million metric tons for 2007. Of the 45 million metric tons for 2007, about 2.5 million metric tons was sold locally, says Hara.

The problem of low prices has existed for the past few years. But tea growers want to take the bull by the horns and reverse this trend.

Hara indicates that TAML, in collaboration with the Malawi Investment Promotions Council, is working towards attracting more buyers. One of the strategies is to come up with the country’s own local brand of tea.

The MCCCI has identified a new opportunity in the processing of green tea for East Asian markets.

TAML has also partnered with the Malawi Tea and Coffee Merchants Association of Malawi (MTCAM), Tea Brokers Central Africa and Tea Commodity Brokers in social initiatives such as charity auctions. The proceeds are donated to AIDS orphans and other people with needs.

This initiative is about tea growers showcasing their commitment to corporate social responsibility while encouraging buyers to pay higher prices for the commodity as part of fulfilling their social duty.

Corporate social responsibility also extends to the workers on the tea estates who are very poor. The tea estates support the surrounding communities, which supply most of their workers, by providing social amenities such as health clinics, recreation facilities, schools and safe water.

Tea prices hit a record 29 dollars per kilogram at a charity auction held in Malawi’s commercial capital Blantyre on November 27, 2007.

Caught Between Two Economic Blocs

2008-02-01T01:49:00.000-08:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
Malawi finally has to face up to the dilemma of choosing between being a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) or to stick with the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) if it is to continue receiving funding from the European Union (EU).

Developing countries like Malawi have been promised assistance to adapt as they open their markets to the EU by agreeing to an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the EU.

EPAs are a new set of ‘‘trade and development’’ deals aimed at removing barriers and creating a free trade area (FTA) between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP).

The European Development Fund (EDF) is the instrument with which the EU has promised to help EPA signatories.

International law expert George Naphambo told the media that Malawi is compelled to choose between belonging to either SADC or COMESA because aid from the EDF will be disbursed on the basis of membership to a regional economic community such as SADC or COMESA.

Naphambo said a country cannot receive EU funding from both bodies, which are two different regional economic communities, as this would mean the country has double access to funds compared to other states.

‘‘It is clear that if Malawi is to benefit from EU funding, it has to belong to one regional economic community -- unless the EU comes up with a formula for funding countries which belong to more than one such community,’’ said Naphambo.

He said if this formula is not developed, there will be pressure on Malawi to leave either one of the bodies as soon as possible. ‘‘When push comes to shove, Malawi will have to make a decision because it cannot forego EU funding,’’ said Naphambo.

Economic analysts in Malawi are recommending that the small southern African country is better off staying on in COMESA instead of SADC since the rules of origin in COMESA offer better market access than those in SADC. Rules of origin refer to the country-based exclusion of certain inputs that go into exports.

SADC, on the other hand, is seen as outdoing COMESA as a major export destination, according to Andrew Kumbatira, executive director of the Malawi Economic Justice Network, the country’s primary influential non-governmental organisation that promotes economic and trade justice.

Kumbatira says no country should belong to two customs unions. ‘‘SADC will soon formalize its own regional customs union and the COMESA customs union is also set to come into effect by next year,’’ he says.

He recommends that Malawi should opt for COMESA since it offers a greater variety of economic dynamics than SADC.

COMESA is the largest economic bloc in Africa, comprising 20 countries with a population of about 385 million people, total gross domestic product of 165 billion dollars and overall exports of 25 billion dollars, according to a 2006 COMESA report.

SADC, on the other hand, is geared towards the political development of its members, according to influential human rights activist Mavuto Bamusi, who also thinks COMESA is the preferable bloc for Malawi to align itself with.

Bamusi says that, as Malawi is at the moment looking at trade as the best development pillar to put in place, COMESA would be its best bet.

‘‘Of course, the decision is not an easy one. Malawi has to be very strategic in making the decision since there are also political implications that will arise. In SADC, Malawi subscribes to a number of very important protocols on issues like anti-corruption and women’s participation -- these issues cannot just be left hanging.

‘‘There has to be a strategy on how the country will still apply these commitments,’’ says Bamusi.

He says Malawi’s predicament on its dual membership with SADC and COMESA is a long-standing issue which should now be resolved quickly -- but not because of the EPAs. ‘‘Malawi should make an independent decision on this and not do it just to make the EU happy.

‘‘The EU should not hold Malawi or any other country to ransom over the EPAs. The EDF should not be aligned to the EPAs -- as civil society organisations we are against such an alignment,’’ says Bamusi.

Bamusi, who also opposes the EPAs, says the EU should be obliged to compensate countries that will be ‘‘harmed’’ by the EPAs. ‘‘We are saying that countries like Malawi have so much more to lose than gain in the EPAs. They should be compensated regardless of what customs union they belong to,’’ argues Bamusi.

Malawi should make its choice between COMESA and SADC now because it will be safer sticking to one bloc to avoid a situation where it could be ‘‘tossed from one bloc to another" based on regional integration.

Malawi’s trade minister Ken Lipenga is on record that the government is still consulting on the way forward on the COMESA-SADC predicament. (END/2008)

''Trade Capacity Is Worse Despite Preferential Access''

2008-01-29T00:47:00.000-08:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

LILONGWE, Jan 28 (IPS) - Malawians still await the details of the impending economic partnership agreement (EPA) which their government is entering into with the European Union (EU).

Ten of the country’s most influential non-governmental (NGOs) have embarked on various initiatives to signal their grave concern about the implications of the EPA for Malawi.

The EPAs are a new set of deals aimed at creating a free trade area (FTA) between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.

In April last year, five organisations wrote to EU president Angela Merkel arguing that the EPAs will not allow Malawi and other poor countries to protect their domestic industries with tariffs and other means.

In their latest statement, the NGOs feel ‘‘compelled to challenge the government in court for violating people’s rights’’ if Malawi goes ahead with the signing of the EPA.

The organisations are: the Malawi Economic Justice Network, ActionAid Malawi, Malawi Health Equity Network, Maphunziro Foundation, Manerela, the Institute for Policy Interaction, Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation, National Smallholders Farmers Association of Malawi, Youth and Children Shield, and the Joint Oxfam Programme in Malawi.

By signing the EPAs, the government of Malawi will be ‘‘tying the citizens into 25 years of acrimony’’, said the organisations.

The EPAs have been formulated in such a way that they will not benefit the people of Malawi nor add value to their ability to end poverty, said the organisations.

‘‘We alert the general public and civil society in Malawi not to fall for the intimidating and pressurising tactics that are being used by the EU to convince us that these EPAs are good for us,’’ the organisations declared.

According to the organisations, Malawi would need a capital injection of ‘‘a whooping 5.7 billion euros’’ to take care of supply-side constraints and other adjustment costs for the country to benefit from the proposed EPA trading framework.

‘‘Without such an injection, Malawi would remain the way it is -- with full exposure to the shocks that take place in the commodity market from time to time.’’

The NGOs pointed out that Malawi was party to the Lome’ convention, a trade arrangement that gave preferential treatment to ACP countries’s products between 1975 and 2000. However, during this period ‘‘our exports to the EU dwindled and supply-side constraints remain an issue for our industries.

‘‘What has changed to make us believe that these next 25 years with EPAs will be any different?’’ the NGOs asked.

Another contentious issue is that Malawi has been asked to liberalise 80 percent of all trade with the EU. The NGOs see it as an erosion of policy and developmental space.

The NGOs regard Malawi as a small and emerging economy with a lot of potential. History shows that for the EU to have reached its current scale of economic muscle it used a combination of policies aimed at boosting local production and protecting local industries against unfair foreign competition, said the organisations.

Malawi’s parliamentary committee on trade last month approved the signing of the interim framework agreement of the EPA. The temporary deal is aimed at averting disruption of trade between African countries and the EU, following the expiry of the Cotonou Agreement at the end of last year.

The signing of the EPA was initially slated for the end of last year but ministers from the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region, of which Malawi is part, said at the ESA-European Commission ministerial negotiating meeting in Brussels in November last year that it was not practical to do so.

In the meantime it has transpired that Malawi was due to sign an EPA on its own, leading the NGOs to say that Malawians are being misinformed as Malawi is not signing as part of a bloc of countries, as was originally envisaged.

The EPA will therefore put Malawi in direct competition with the EU at a time when Malawians are hopeful of rebuilding the jobs, industries and livelihoods that had been destroyed through that other imposed scheme, the World Bank’s structural adjustment programmes, according to the NGOs.

The government has not said much on the issue. Secretary for Trade Newby Kumwembe only said that the government was weighing up the options of the trade agreement before signing it.

‘‘We need to look at all outstanding issues and make a decision. We also need to look at how our products will be affected if we do not sign this deal,’’ said Kumwembe. (END/2008)

Crocodiles Make Fetching Water a Life Threatening Experience

2007-12-27T03:23:00.001-08:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda

BLANTYRE, Dec 24 (IPS) - Many communities around the world may take water for granted; but for those living along Malawi’s longest river, the Shire, water is something to die for. The 400 kilometre long river is the main outlet of Lake Malawi as it flows south into the Zambezi River.

While the Shire River is the most convenient water source for people living on its banks, it is also home to killer crocodiles. Women and children, required by tradition to fetch water for their households, are most at risk from the crocodile attacks.

"In one area in Machinga, locals estimate almost three deaths a month," states the United Nations Development Programme’s 2006 Human Development Report on Malawi.

Agnes Wilson, now in her late 50s, survived a crocodile attack seven years ago while fetching water from the Shire River in the south of the country. She escaped with her life but lost the use of her right arm.

"The crocodile attacked me just as I dipped the bucket I was using to draw water into the river. The beast tried to drag me to the deep end (of the) river, but I was luckier than others who have died. I was rescued by some men who were passing by," she recalls.

Despite almost losing her life, Wilson braves the crocodiles every day to fetch water. There is no other option for her and her community; the borehole nearest to her village is 15 kilometres away.

"I have just accepted the risk I face every time I go to the river. Either I die of thirst or die while trying to fetch water...I may die fighting for survival if a crocodile attacks me again," says Wilson.

There are no statistics available for the crocodile population in Malawi, but people like Wilson claim there are many, especially in the Shire River.

Traditional leaders in the south of the country, especially those from the Lower Shire Valley, have accused government of caring more about crocodiles than human beings.

Malawi is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which limits the culling of various animals, including crocodiles. Before the country signed up to CITES in 1982, it used to kill about 800 crocodiles annually; under the agreement, this number has now been reduced to 200 per year.

WaterAid, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) that helps the world’s poorest people gain access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education, indicated in a 2003 study that up to 44,000 people in the area had no access to safe water and had to resort to the crocodile-infested river for their water needs.

A programme officer for WaterAid in Malawi, James Longwe, says he knows of three women in Machinga who have been seriously injured by crocodiles while fetching water.

"One of the women lost an arm, while the other two have very deep wounds on different parts of their bodies following the attacks," says Longwe.

He says that some communities have lost count of the number of people who have been attacked by crocodiles.

Longwe adds that WaterAid, in partnership with local assemblies and a local NGO called Target for National Relief and Development, is helping communities at risk of crocodile attacks to have access to safe water by providing a gravity-fed water supply.

"We have managed to provide...safe water to 18,000 people. We hope to reach every one of the 44,000 people in need of safe water by the year 2011," says Longwe.

Crocodile attacks are not the only dangers facing communities along the Shire River.

The water quality from the river is itself poor: waterborne diseases such as cholera, diarrhea and dysentery are perennial problems in the area.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recorded over 4,000 cases of cholera, a disease associated with poor sanitation, and lack of hygiene and access to potable water, in the Shire region over a three month period last year.

In its planned Humanitarian Action Report for 2007, UNICEF says it is supporting cholera prevention awareness campaigns, helping construct and rehabilitate wells and sanitary facilities in 400 schools and 150 community-based childcare centres, and undertaking sanitary surveys of water sources.

The agency also says that it is providing buckets with messages in local languages about the safe handling of water and disposal of excreta and solid waste, providing soap and detergents -- and disseminating hygiene messages on prevention of cholera and other diseases.

The Malawi Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Report 2007 indicates that the country is making good progress towards reaching the MDG target which calls for the reduction by half of the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

The report states that access to water resources has significantly improved, from about 47 percent in 1992 to 75 percent in 2006.

"At this rate of change, the projection shows that by 2015 about 94 percent of the population will have sustainable access to an improved water source, which is above the MDG target of 73 percent," says the report.

''Foreign Traders Are Taking Our Jobs''

2007-12-27T01:25:00.000-08:00

By Pilirani Semu-Banda

LILONGWE, Dec 19 (IPS) - Foreigners working illegally as small-scale traders are increasingly being regarded as a threat to their local counterparts in Malawi. The outsiders are setting up businesses which, local Malawians believe, are displacing them.

Nadège Shabani, a refugee from Burundi, is a successful businesswoman plying her trade in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. She owns a thriving beauty salon, restaurant and a clothes shop.

She is an example of the foreigners who are being accused of ‘‘taking away’’ business opportunities from locals. Malawians believe that the foreigners possess business strategies and skills which most native traders lack.

‘‘I came to Malawi in 2004 to escape war in my home country. I used the money I came with to set up my businesses here,’’ says Shabani. She started her business with 6,000 dollars. Her ventures are now carting in a profit of about 2,500 dollars per month.

Shabani’s earnings seem like a fortune in a country where up to 45 percent of the population is classified poor, according to the 2007 Malawi Millennium Development Goal report.

When it comes to Malawian businesswomen, only five percent of them are aware of available trade opportunities, according to a 2007 study conducted on behalf of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) by the Federation of National Associations of Business Women in COMESA.

In contrast, Shabani is knowledgeable about different marketing methods and able to identify the most lucrative trade opportunities. ‘‘I am trying to make a living here so I have to be as shrewd as possible. I just have to work hard and employ every strategy which can see me live a better life,’’ she says.

But native Malawians are unhappy with people like Shabani. Grace Kalemera, who owns a beauty salon close to Shabani’s, complains that the Burundian ‘‘stole business from her’’ by establishing her shop so close to Kalemera’s.

‘‘Customers are more interested in sampling foreign services. They go to Shabani’s beauty salon because most of her employees are also foreigners,’’ claims Kalemera.

The Malawian businesswoman blames lack of vigilance by the authorities in effecting laws. ‘‘A lot of foreigners are left to take part in informal trade at the expense of indigenous business people,’’ laments Kalemera.

Trading spots that are close to refugee camps in Karonga in northern Malawi, Dowa (about 45 km north of the capital Lilongwe) and the capital itself are the most popular outlets among refugees.

Last month, police in the north of Malawi intercepted 71 illegal immigrants from Ethiopia on their way to the country’s capital.

But refugees are not the only group of foreigners perceived to be encroaching on small-scale businesses in Malawi. Nationals from China, Tanzania, Pakistan, India and Nigeria have also been accused of trading illegally in the country’s main cities of Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu.

In October this year, the Malawian government launched an operation to address the problem of Chinese and Nigerian traders accused of operating unlawfully.

Trade and Commerce Minister Ken Lipenga was quoted in the media as saying the operation was ‘‘to flush out illegal foreigners’’ and that the influx of Chinese and Nigerian traders was causing a big problem.

According to the government, most of these traders are contravening business licensing procedures for investing in a business by foreigners. A minimum of 50,000 dollars is required before the issuance of a trade permit to a foreigner.

A number of shops owned by Chinese nationals have since been closed down in Lilongwe. ‘‘It is imperative that foreign traders follow the country's investment procedures,’’ Lipenga said.

Between November 26 and December 1, 2007, the immigration department arrested 90 illegal immigrants in a routine exercise which happens every quarter of the year.

The exercise took place in the capital and at the tourist destinations of Zomba and Mangochi in the southern region, according to the immigration department. Traders from Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, China and India were arrested in the operation.

The department says all the Rwandans and Burundians have since been returned to a refugee camp in Dowa as they were found doing business without permits. The remaining foreigners were sent to court to formally be charged with the offence of contravening permit conditions.

According to the immigration department, being found doing business without a legal permit is met with one of two legal responses: the foreigners could have their permits cancelled or they could be deported.

There are over 8,000 refugees in Malawi, according to deputy minister of home affairs, Vuwa Kaunda. He says most of them are in the 18 to 25 age group.

‘‘Our rough statistics show that Malawi has 2,400 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, 3,600 from Rwanda, 1,840 from Burundi and about 1,000 Somalis,’’ says Kaunda.

The government, together with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has just concluded a verification and registration exercise of all refugees and asylum seekers residing in the country.

The purpose of the exercise was to collect and verify information about refugees and their families in the country to ensure that they are known persons to both the government and UNHCR.

All adults are registered and will be issued with identity documents confirming their status as refugees, according to Malawi’s ministry of home affairs.

These identity documents will, among other things, protect refugees and asylum seekers from being confused with undocumented or illegal immigrants,’’ states a press release issued by the government. (END/2007)

Obstetric Fistula: A Medical Nightmare for Malawian Women

2007-12-17T02:57:00.000-08:00

December 5, 2007

Pilirani Semu-Banda

Veronica Yakobe has been living a nightmare for more than two decades. Twenty-three years ago, during a prolonged labor when giving birth to her fifth child, the unborn baby was pressed so tightly in her birth canal that blood flow was cut off and the surrounding tissues died. Then a hole or fistula broke through the vaginal walls between the bladder and rectum. Obstetric fistula is serious medical condition which usually occurs during home births or in poorly equipped local clinics when access to emergency obstetric care is not available. Unfortunately, that was the case for Veronica. She has been unable to control her bodily functions since, and leaks urine and feces uncontrollably. In a bitter irony, after all that struggle, her baby was still-born.

These fortunate women await fistula surgery while many others go untreated. The destitute Yakobe, who comes from Malawi’s lakeshore district of Mangochi, became an outcast among her own community - no one wanted to get close to her because of the smell.
“I was forced to flee my own home. I settled on a plot adjacent to a cemetery on the outskirts of my village. I couldn’t stand the taunting from my own relatives and neighbors. Some were calling me a moving latrine,” says Yakobe. Despite her horrific medical condition, she has since given birth to three more children.

In this country where 40 percent of the adult population is illiterate, this middle-aged woman does not know how old she is.

What Yakobe does know is that in the last 23 years since the fistula developed, she has been to three government-run hospitals in the country trying to have the fistula repaired, but has been unable to find a competent surgeon.

Repairing a fistula is a delicate procedure that requires specially trained doctors. Then through a special initiative, a UN organization, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), began providing financial and technical support to some hospitals in Malawi to offer fistula repair. Finally, in June, Yakobe found salvation from the tortures the fistula caused.
Dr. Mark Linden of Nkhoma Hospital, a mission medical center under the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian, restored Yakobe’s dignity through an operation. He was able to repair the damage that obstetric fistula had caused her.

“Some women have a combination of both these fistulas,” explains Linden. “They are leaking urine and/or stools continuously.” He worries, “They are often rejected by their spouses and community,”

Linden confirmed that obstetric fistula occurs due to prolonged pressure of the child’s head against a part of soft tissue between the mother’s pelvis. The soft tissue becomes necrotic (dies) from the lack of blood supply and breaks down.

The doctor says that obstetric fistula is preventable. So long as a laboring woman is monitored and transported to a suitable facility in the event of a problem, virtually nobody should have to suffer from it.

“Obstetric fistula is a serious problem in Malawi and repairs are only done in four referral hospitals: in Mzuzu, Blantyre, Lilongwe and Nkhoma,” says Linden. It is not known how many obstetric fistula cases there are, since no major survey has been carried out to assess its prevalence.

Fistula repairs started at Nkhoma in 2001. According to Linden, once they got UNFPA funding, they also began to get private donations and funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) which has enabled them to offer the treatment free of charge. He says the funds cover the patient’s hospital stay, food, and surgery as well as transport home.

Despite all the efforts by doctors like Linden, there is still some bad news: not all patients with obstetric fistula are successfully repaired. In 2001, Nkhoma hospital carried out repairs on 16 patients and 31 percent of those were not cured. Between 2002 and 2006, the hospital has recorded an average of 20 percent unsuccessful repairs.

In Malawi, where up to 65 percent of its 13.6 million people live below the poverty line, there was no means of transportation for 32-year-old Jostino Frank when she went into labor.

With UNFPA support, the Government of Kenya is working to integrate obstetric fistula into the country's ongoing Safe Motherhood programs. © Sven Torfinn/Panos/UNFPA •Frank lives in a village in Dedza, Central Malawi. The nearest hospital is a two hour walk from her home. Her mother-in-law assured her that she would help with a home delivery, but she could not handle the delivery when it became complicated.
“After struggling with labor pains for close to 12 hours, my mother-in-law eventually took me to a traditional birth attendant, but I had already miscarried by the time I delivered,” says Frank. This was Frank’s fifth pregnancy. She gave birth to her first child when she was 18.

Following her ordeal, Frank could no longer control her bladder; the government hospital closest to her home had no medical solution for her problem.

“[All they could do is tell] me to not have sex for six months but this did not solve the problem,” says Frank.

Just like Yakobe, Frank was shunned by her community.

“Only my husband was supportive. He took me to neighboring Mozambique to see a traditional healer but I wasn’t cured. It was only when someone in my village advised me to go to Nkhoma hospital that I got real deliverance,” she says.

It has been nine months since she received treatment and Frank is now three months pregnant. This time, she has vowed to leave her village and camp at the hospital as soon as she reaches her eighth month of pregnancy.

Doctor Linden advises women who have been repaired to undergo a caesarean section if they become pregnant again.

Nkhoma Hospital indicates that one of the major challenges in treating fistula repair is that so few communities are aware that the problem can be treated successfully.

Frank agrees as there are a lot of cultural misconceptions associated with the condition. She says most women with fistula and their families believe that they have been bewitched, which is why they are rushed to traditional healers.

Incredibly, some believe that women who get obstetric fistula are being dealt spiritual punishment for being too lazy to push out and deliver the baby. Others are accused of infidelity.

However the Director for Reproductive Health in Malawi’s Ministry of Health, Dr. Chisale Mhango, blames the high prevalence of obstetric fistula on early marriages that lead to too-early childbirth. He also cites the country’s inadequate infrastructure for childbirth as another significant factor.

We’re failing to cope with maternity cases in this country. Most women have no choice but to give birth at home with no medical care. They only go to hospitals after everything else has failed,” worries Mhango.

He says the government is trying its best to increase infrastructure for childbirth. A related statistic shows that currently 28 percent of mothers say they had not wanted a baby when they got pregnant. He says poor access to family planning services is what leads to this kind of situation.

Mhango says the country is only able to carry out caesarean sections on three percent of pregnant women per year, as opposed to the World Health Organization’s analysis that five percent of pregnant women need it. A developed country such as the United Kingdom in contrast, has gone to the opposite extreme by carrying out caesarean sections on 23 percent of pregnant women every year.

The UNDP says that Malawi is struggling with far too high a maternal mortality rate (over 1,100 per 100,000 live births) and a devastating infant mortality rate of 94 deaths per 1,000 live births.

20-year-old Londina Isaki sits in a waiting ward at Nkhoma Hospital as urine drips down her legs. Ten other women are also waiting to be repaired – some have waited for over two weeks.

Dr. Linden says fistula repair is only one of the many services offered at his hospital and that service delivery has not been easy since the hospital has limited operating time and human resources. Combined with the fact that Nkhoma is a mission hospital, it has difficulties making ends meet and depends on donors for financial support. The medical personnel at Nkhoma are overburdened with every kind of medical case, as it is the only hospital facility serving the needs of a population of 60,850

Malawi’s people suffer terribly from the country’s critical shortages of medical personnel. Up to 120 registered nurses leave the country every year for the US and UK for better-paying jobs. The ratios are staggering: currently, there is one nurse for every 50 patients, but there are even fewer doctors - one doctor is responsible on average for 64,000 patients.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 women develop obstetric fistulas each year and over two million women currently live with fistula injuries. In the meantime, the many women who begin first pregnancies when they are still just young girls and who endure baby after baby in rapid succession until their vaginal walls give out, must just get in line behind all the other Malawians with medical needs.

Coffee Industry Gets Brewing Again

2007-11-21T01:03:00.000-08:00

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
LILONGWE, Nov 21 (IPS) - Malawi’s coffee producers have come up with innovative plans to kick start the country’s sluggish coffee industry, including the marketing of specialty blends which are uniquely Malawian.

Despite the boom in coffee consumption in many markets, Malawi has in recent years been struggling to find buyers for its locally produced coffee. Out of a total volume of 2,500 metric tons produced last year for the international market, local farmers only managed to export 1,307 metric tons.

There has been a downward trend in Malawi’s coffee bean production every year since 1991, when the country reached a peak of 7,720 metric tons of coffee beans. Coffee growers only produced 3,703 metric tons in 2001, dropping to 2,500 metric tons in 2006.

The Coffee Association of Malawi (CAMAL), an organisation representing cooperatives and large and small commercial farmers, attributes the progressive decline in production to the departure of growers from the industry and the reduction in hectares under the crop.

‘‘Coffee used to be one of the major contributors of foreign exchange earnings but this is no longer the case,’’ says CAMAL’s technical and marketing executive, Peter Njikho. Currently, Malawi’s major foreign exchange earners include tobacco, cotton and sugar.

CAMAL wants to reverse the downward trend by pursuing higher value markets for its coffee. ‘‘Malawi has to search for buyers beyond its traditional reliance on the one or two commodity buyers that have regularly bought from here,’’ says Njikho.

The country’s traditional buyers have been the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany and South Africa. But this year, Malawi coffee has the potential of reaching other markets in Switzerland, the U.S., Canada and Japan.

CAMAL has managed to attract buyers from these countries. One of the selling points is that Malawian coffee tends to be softer on the palate and have lower acidity than its African counterparts.

To push for an increased market awareness of the quality of Malawi’s coffee, CAMAL has joined forces with the Malawi Investment Promotion Agency (MIPA), the United Nations Development Programme’s Growing Sustainable Business (GSB) programme and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

GSB broker Jan Willem van den Broek says Malawian coffee producers have become increasingly aware of the high quality of their coffee beans and the potential to sell in coffee specialty markets.

‘‘Since last year, measures have been taken by CAMAL to transform the country into one of the world’s premium specialty coffee producing nations,’’ says van den Broek.

He explains that Malawi has both the climate and altitude to produce high-quality coffee but that most of the country’s coffee is being exported as ungraded green beans.

Through the new initiative, CAMAL has embarked on processing its own local blends and brands. One such brand is the Mzuzu Coffee being produced in the northern region of Malawi by the Mzuzu Coffee Planters Cooperative Union.

The union, which comprises of 3,200 smallholder farmers, produces some of the highest-quality coffee in Malawi.

‘‘The cooperative not only exports green beans, but also roasts and brands its specialty coffee under the name ‘Malawi’s Mzuzu Coffee’. In 2005, roasted Mzuzu coffee won the country’s first coffee cupping competition, and since then it has been showcased at numerous international cupping competitions,’’ says van den Broek.

The increased market awareness by CAMAL has also managed to attract international coffee experts and buyers such as David Roche from the Coffee Quality Institute in the U.S. and Craig Holt from Atlas Coffee Importers. The Coffee Quality Institute is a non-profit organization that works to improve coffee quality worldwide.

Roche and Holt recently met with Malawian coffee producers and made a presentation on improving the quality of the coffee.

The initiative by CAMAL is aimed at improving exports and thereby foreign exchange while boosting coffee producers’ profits.

Producers are worried that they, like producers in other African countries, are facing potentially harmful non-tariff barriers from the European Union (EU).

Some European conservationists are saying that transporting products by air to sell in other countries increases pollution and is therefore bad for the environment. This could frustrate Malawi’s efforts in opening new markets for its produce.

CAMAL is therefore also working hand-in-hand with nine other countries (Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe) to render their coffee globally marketable despite the barriers they may be facing from the EU.

The African countries are fighting the challenges as one front under an umbrella body called the Eastern African Fine Coffees Association (EAFCA). During a recent visit, EAFCA’s executive director, Philip Gitao, commended local coffee producers for their efforts to work together.

He was attending the ‘‘Test of Harvest’’ competition aimed at encouraging growers to come up with coffee that could compete on the international market. The winner of the competition received a full sponsorship to utilise laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland. The Mzuzu Coffee Planters Cooperative Union scooped up the first two positions. (END/2007)

Lack of Running Water Puts Girls' Education at Risk

2007-11-07T04:42:00.000-08:00

By Pilirani Semu-Banda

Rita Kalikokha of Dowa, a rural district in central Malawi, thinks about abandoning school every time she menstruates.

The hard-working, resolute 13-year-old attends a primary school that has no running water. All 350 pupils at Rita’s school have only two pit-latrines to share, and there is no tap where they can wash their hands after using the toilet.

Rita says she and other adolescent girls find these poor sanitation conditions even more awkward when it is time for their monthly periods: "It’s so difficult to concentrate in class when you know there is no water to clean up with at break time. I usually prefer staying home every time my menses come."

She says many girls in her school drop out as soon they reach adolescence as they cannot bear the inconvenience and embarrassment of having to do without water. Government statistics in Malawi show that that 10.5 percent of girls drop out of school each year as compared to 8.4 percent of boys. In addition to this, around 22 percent of primary school age girls do not attend school at all, while 60 percent of those enrolled do not attend regularly.

However, Rita’s problems concerning water are not confined to the school environment. Her village has no access to safe water. As the only girl in a family of five children, she is bound by tradition to fetch water to satisfy the needs of all four of her brothers and both her parents.

"There is very little time for me to do my homework as most of my days are taken up by my trips to fetch water."

She walks a distance of four kilometers to and from the nearest well. Her family uses this water for cooking, washing household utensils and drinking. Rita also has to ensure that there is enough water for herself, her father and mother to bathe. Her four brothers usually use a nearby stream to bathe – the same stream used by villagers as a toilet.

Child mortality is particularly high in the Dowa area, where almost every fifth child does not reach the age of five, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

But the problems with water provision and sanitation are not confined to rural areas in Malawi. Slums in towns and cities face similar difficulties as residents have to wait in long queues to buy water from kiosks or from boreholes.

In Ntopwa, a squatter area in Malawi’s commercial capital of Blantyre where most people eke out a living on less than a dollar per day, women resort to scooping out water from ditches of stagnant rain water. The troughs are their only water source, as they cannot afford to buy water from kiosks or boreholes. Waterborne illnesses such as diarrhea, dysentery and cholera are therefore very common in this area.

Many girls in Blantyre have similar experiences to Rita and other rural girls because the Ministry of Education frequently fails to pay water bills for local primary schools.

In the first six months of the year, more than 124,000 pupils had to use bushes around their schools to relieve themselves because Blantyre’s Water Board disconnected the water supply at 22 schools due to the government’s failure to pay bills.

Permanent Education Secretary Anthony Livuza had to plead with the Water Board to reconnect the water supply to avert an outbreak of diseases in the schools. The water supply company eventually reconnected the water, but asked the ministry to speed up paying for the service.

The United Nations Development Programme’s 2006 Human Development Report indicates that up to 33 percent of Malawi’s 12 million inhabitants have no access to safe water, while only 27 percent of the people have access to improved sanitation.

The country’s Minister of Water Development, Sidik Mia, says that having so many people without access to proper water and sanitation services jeopardises the socio-economic development of Malawi: "The effects of this go on to spread in the health, education and agriculture sectors."

He says government’s new national sanitation policy will give priority to the requirements of schools and will serve the public better with an integrated water resources management policy.

Meanwhile UNICEF is assisting in Rita’s Dowa region, where wells are being drilled for schools which currently have no water supply. The U.N. agency is in the process of installing hygienic latrines and washbasins in schools. It is also helping households in 30 communities to install hand washing facilities outside their pit latrines.

WaterAid, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) that helps the world’s poorest people gain access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education, is helping Malawians to influence government and other NGOs to allocate more resources to water, sanitation and hygiene.

A policy and advocacy manager for WaterAid in Malawi, Amos Chigwenembe, says the organisation aims to help 136,000 people have access to safe water and another 131,000 to gain access to sanitation every year by 2010.

Malawi’s potential in achieving MDGs

2007-11-07T04:32:00.000-08:00

October 24 is the anniversary of the entry into force of the United Nations Charter in 1945. Malawi became a member of United Nations on December 1, 1964 and the UN has been a national development partner since. The UN General Assembly also instituted 24 October as the World Development Information Day, to draw the attention of the world to development problems and the need to strengthen international cooperation to solve them. Pilirani Semu-Banda reports on the UN’s activities in Malawi and reflects on the Malawi’s progress in achieving MDGs.

Patuma Suluma from Ntaja, Machinga, is a 37-year-old single mother of three. She is also a guardian of three other children left in her custody following the death of their mother -- Suluma’s younger sister -- two years ago.

Suluma’s husband died in 1997 after failing to obtain treatment for malaria.

“I helplessly watched him die. Hiring a car or even a bicycle to transport him to hospital was out of question because our children would have starved if we had used the little money we had,” says Suluma.

Soon after her husband’s death, Suluma moved back to her home village, because as a Standard 5 graduate, employment is difficult to come by.

Her livelihood is from subsistence farming and she also works for other people to supplement her income.

Her eldest son is 15 years old and still in primary school. He cannot attend school all the time, as he has to look after his siblings when his mother is busy with farm work.

‘‘All the six children in my household fail to attend school continuously as I cannot afford to cater for all their school needs,” worries Suluma.

Suluma and her six children live in a two-roomed shack. The pit latrine they use is almost full but she does not have time to dig another.

Sadly, Suluma’s daily struggles are not an exception in Malawi.

Today, as Malawi joins other countries in commemorating 62 years of United Nations, the UN family in Malawi is preparing the next five year programme that will continue to support the alignment of Malawi’s development resources behind a results-oriented, MDG-based national development plan.

People like Suluma are at the centre of their focus. The UN is fully committed in providing support to Malawi government’s efforts in attaining the Millennium Development Goals and improving the quality of life for its people, according to UN Resident Coordinator in Malawi Michael Keating.

“The UN has always been intimately involved in Malawi’s development agenda since the country gained independence in 1964. We want to be there every step of the way and want to see the development agenda translate more and more into better quality of life for every person,” says Keating.
He cites the development of the country’s Constitution, the establishment of constitutional bodies such as Parliament, the Anti-Corruption Bureau, the Electoral Commission, the Law Commission and National Aids Commission as some of the major activities that the UN has been part of in Malawi.

In 2000, Malawi was among the 189 nations, which adopted eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at eradicating poverty, fighting hunger and disease, promoting gender equality, access to education, encouraging investments in basic infrastructure and fighting environmental degradation. Malawi pledged to achieve the goals by 2015.

At the midpoint to the target date, Malawi government recently released the country’s MDGs Report, which indicates that 45 percent of Malawians are still living below the national poverty line. The good news is poverty levels have declined by 9 percent from about 54 percent in 1998. The government is confident that it will meet the goal to reduce extreme hunger and poverty by 2015.

Keating says the majority of Malawians must have access to health and education, their human rights must be protected and they must participate in the economy if the MDGs are to become a reality.

“It’s great that Malawi is taking MDGs so seriously but more needs to be done especially in the areas of gender, maternal mortality and the environment,” says Keating.
“The UN is more than a donor. We also have a great deal of global experience, policy expertise and coordination skills. Apart from the developmental work we do, our role is also to support Malawi in achieving good governance and accountability, gender equality, the well-being of children, access to information, the right to justice and the right to food,” says Keating.

He says the functions of the UN touch the areas of capacity development and resource management, which are crucial for national development.

The UN Resident Coordinator says development is about giving everyone equal opportunities. For Malawi, according to the government report on MDGs, the poverty gap ratio has only increased by two percent from 1992 to 1996.

To ensure that MDGs are an integral part of national priorities in Malawi, the UN is tracking progress of the goals, assisting the government to develop policies and improving national capacity to implement development efforts, collaborating with development partners to enhance momentum in the country and is also providing assistance to address constraints to progress.

Keating is mostly concerned with the women’s share in wage employment in the non-agriculture sector and also the lack of access to credit for women. He also worries that the quality of education needs attention and particularly for girls.
The indicators in the MDG report show that the proportion of pupils starting Standard 1 who reach Standard 5 is projected to reach 87 percent by 2015, below the MDG target of 100 percent.

Other distressing indicators facing Malawi include the high maternal mortality rate, at 984 deaths per 100,000 live births, the proportion of land area declining from around 41 percent in 1990 to around 36 percent in 2006 and up to 97 percent of the population using solid fuel.
Over a third of Malawi’s population does not have access to safe water causing annual problems with waterborne diseases. HIV/Aids are also among the major challenges that the country is facing as at least one in every 10 people is infected. But this is also an area that realising good results in some issues. The country has managed to increase the number of people accessing ARVs from less than 4,000 in 2004 to over 80,000 in 2007, but more attention is needed to reverse the infection rates.

Other areas making inspiring progress is the fight against infant and child mortality. Deaths of children, under the age of 5 have declined by 29 percent in just four years since the year 2000.

This major achievement is attributed to simple but high impact interventions including immunisation campaigns against measles, tetanus and polio, breast feeding, increased use of safe water and sanitation and the use of bed nets to prevent the spread of malaria, according to Unicef Resident Representative Aida Girma.

“If the current trend continues, Malawi will attain the MDG on reducing child mortality as soon as 2013,” says Girma.

She however warns against laxity. Girma says despite this achievement, one in every 10 children are still dying of easily preventable diseases and that Unicef and other UN agencies will continue to partner with government to see an end to this.

The Malawian government through Minister of Economic Planning and Development Ted Kalebe pledges in the MDG Report to continue with its commitment to achieving the MDGs. Kalebe states that the Malawi government has already oriented its work around the goals.

“In Malawi, the MDGs will be implemented through the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS), which is an overarching medium term development strategy to run from 2006 to 2011,” states Kalebe.

UN’s Keating applauds this commitment saying the problem in Malawi has been the different agendas of development partners.

“The idea is that Malawi should have its own agenda and that development partners should be able to support that particular agenda,” he says.

Keating says the Growth Strategy gives every development partner a common point of departure and that the UN is always ready to coordinate this partnership to ensure that the consolidated effort is done well for the growth of the Malawi nation.

The UN in Malawi is currently producing its next five-year United Nations Development Assistance Framework. The UNDAF is part of United Nations reform agenda and forges greater coherence within the United Nations agencies, to maximise the impact of resources and skills by implementing one measurable national development programme.

The programme plan which will run from 2008, is focused on five priority areas namely; economic growth, protection of vulnerable people, provision of basic social services, HIV/Aids and good governance.

Pilirani

2007-11-06T02:26:00.000-08:00

Waste Not, Want Not

2007-04-11T00:20:00.000-07:00

Pilirani Semu-Banda

BLANTYRE, Apr 10 (IPS/IFEJ) - In many parts of Malawi, discussing human excreta is taboo. The mere mention of faeces, in any of the country's 10 official languages, makes those taking part in the conversation uncomfortable. But, excreta could be about to gain respectability.

Recent years have seen farmers start to use human waste for fertilizer: faeces and urine, combined with wood ash and soil, are serving as a replacement for chemical fertilizers. This came as farmers who could not afford the standard fertilizers went in search of alternatives to increase the size of their yields.

Chemical fertilizers cost up to 11 dollars for a 50 kilogramme bag -- a hefty expense in Malawi, where over 65 percent of people live below the poverty line of a dollar a day, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

Estimates from the International Labour Organisation indicate that farmers and their dependents make up 85 percent of Malawi's 12 million strong population.

"My family and I use the type of latrine where we are able to add ashes to our excreta every time we visit the toilet, and this in turn ends up speeding decomposition. The decomposed product is mixed with soil after about six months, and that makes a very effective fertilizer," says Patrick Moyo, who farms in the northern district of Mzimba.

Moyo told IPS he no longer spends money on chemical fertilizers, and that his annual maize and fruit yields have doubled since he started using fertilizer produced from human excreta. Communities in six of the 27 districts in Malawi have now made the switch from chemical fertilizers.

The Livingstonia Synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian, a leading protestant church in Malawi, has joined forces with an international non-governmental organisation -- WaterAid -- to promote the recycling of faeces.

Sangster Nkhandwe, director of the synod's development department, says the transformation of human waste into fertilizer is termed "ecological sanitation", and that it poses little danger concerning the transmission of disease through excreta.

"We've done several scientific studies on this technology and have found that there is no threat to human health at all…as micro-organisms are treated immediately ash is added to the human excreta," he told IPS.

"Human excreta contain valuable nutrients for agricultural use, but most of this is lost after the traditional pit latrines fill up and get abandoned…hence the use of eco-latrines, which are being used to reverse this situation."

According to a policy and advocacy manager for WaterAid, Amos Chigwenembe, three types of eco-latrines are being used in areas that have turned to waste recycling: the Arborloo, Fossa Alterna and Skyloo.

The Arborloo, he says, is the simplest of the three, in that it involves the smallest adjustment on the part of the community that is using it. The only thing required is for people to plant a tree in a conventional pit latrine after it has filled up with excreta.

"The tree grows and utilises the compost to produce large, succulent fruit. After a few years of latrine movement, the result is an orchard that is producing fruit with real economic value," Chigwenembe told IPS.

With the Fossa Alterna, two shallow pits are dug. One is used for defecation, while the other stores waste as it matures and develops into compost.

Chigwenembe explains that a thin layer of soil placed on the maturing pit is ideal for growing tomato or pepper plants, and that watering of these plants helps the composting process. This pit is emptied to receive the contents of the defecation pit when this becomes full, with the composted waste being used as fertilizer.

The Skyloo works on the same principle, using brick enclosures -- or "vaults".

"The faeces drop through a squat hole into the vaults and are left to mature. The vaults are rotated in a similar manner to the Fossa Alterna. After a suitable retention time, the contents of the vaults are placed on the garden or farm," said Chigwenembe.

Eco-latrine designs may use a round, domed slab as a seat for toilet users. This also suits the needs of low-income communities, as the slab does not contain any iron reinforcement bars, which are expensive and only available in Malawi's major cities. The weight and size of the slab makes it relatively easy to carry using the limited means of transport available to poor families, such as hand carts.

In addition to being eco-friendly, these technologies are also woman-friendly.

Nya Kaunda recalls that when her traditional pit latrine became unusable after her husband died in 2000, she resorted to relieving herself in nearby bushes as she could not manage to dig another latrine. Pit digging is very hard work, as the holes normally have to be big enough to accommodate ten years' worth of waste; as a result, this task is traditionally taken on by men.

But with the introduction of eco-latrines, Kaunda has been able to dig one pit latrine after another.

"It is not difficult to dig an eco-latrine because the pit is shallow, and building a shelter for it is no big deal. I am now able to use my toilet comfortably without fearing that some little kid will find me relieving myself as it was when I was using the bushes," she told IPS.

Tobacco Industry Going Up in Smoke

2007-04-02T05:29:00.000-07:00

Pilirani Semu-Banda

BLANTYRE, Mar 31 (IPS) - Tobacco prices and production levels are dropping amid pressure from the anti-smoking lobby and the general downturn in agricultural produce markets. But Malawi has still not made adequate progress in promoting crops to replace its primary foreign exchange earner.

Green gold is the term that Malawians use for the country's tobacco. The nation derives up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from the crop and 80 percent of the country's labour force works in the tobacco industry. Historically, the leaf has been regarded as an economic lifeline in a country without rich mineral endowments.

The southern African country is a major tobacco exporter in the world, accounting for five percent of the world's total exports and two percent of world's total production. In terms of burley tobacco, Malawi produces about 20 percent of the world's total, according to the World Bank.

The Tobacco Association of Malawi (TAMA), which promotes and protects tobacco farmers' interests, says that the leaf also accounts for 13 percent of the country's gross domestic product and makes up 23 percent of the tax base.

The crop is treasured because of historical associations. Commercial production can be traced back as far as 1889 when it was introduced by settlers from Virginia in the United States.

However, in recent years the tobacco industry has been struggling for survival. It is fighting global anti-smoking campaigns led by public health activists, backed by the World Health Organisation. Poor auction prices and a dearth of buyers are also among the challenges that Malawian tobacco producers are grappling with.

Caught in the middle of these challenges are the country's small-holder tobacco farmers. One of them is 55-year-old Dongo Msiska. All his life he has known nothing but tobacco cultivation.

At the age of 24, he took over a 50-hectare farm from his father. Since then the livelihoods of his family and those of his 33 employees have depended on the production of the leaf.

In the past three years, Msiska's income has dwindled rapidly in the face of poor auction floor prices. He has since been forced to cut production by half.

''I could not afford to buy enough production inputs with the little money I got for last year's crop. I had to reduce production and have since had to let some of my workers go,'' he says.

Msiska's woes were a result of last year's catastrophic decline of 15 percent in tobacco sales. Sales figures from the Tobacco Control Commission (TCC) indicated that the crop raked in 162 061 893 US dollars in 2005 but only 137 834 528 US dollars in 2006.

Malawian president Bingu wa Mutharika, himself a farmer, has admitted that the tobacco industry is not as viable as it used to be.

He and the ministries of agriculture and trade have urged tobacco farmers to consider diversifying production to cotton, cassava, pigeon peas, ground nuts, soya, dairy products, beans and rice as alternatives to tobacco.

Up to 40,000 farmers have heeded the calls to diversify in the past six years and have since abandoned tobacco production, according to the TCC.

But despite his calls for diversification, Mutharika has continued to fight for the survival of the tobacco industry. Major buyers of Malawi's tobacco were last year ordered by the president to leave the country or offer better prices on the auction floors. He accused them of running a cartel and fixing prices.

Mutharika imposed a minimum price of 110 cents per kilogram and, for higher grade leaf, 170 cents per kilogram but the buyers boycotted the market, forcing the government to concede defeat. The president has no kind words for the buyers and has since branded them ''thieves'' and ''exploiters'' for defying his price setting.

Meanwhile, Malawi is pursuing a deal that addresses issues of collective marketing as well as value-adding with the other tobacco-producing countries of Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. They aim to position the industry better in the world markets so that the countries can reap more from the crop, says the trade ministry.

The government is optimistic that handling the problems dogging the tobacco industry at a regional level will yield more positive results than working in isolation.

Despite the pressure on the industry the majority of Malawian farmers, through TAMA, have resisted a diversification strategy that excludes tobacco because the commercial value of the crop still remains the highest.

TAMA executive secretary Felix Mkumba argues that the leaf has a readily available market which is well guaranteed since everything that they produce is still sold, despite the low prices. ''Accepting total diversification will be suicidal.''

David Mkwambisi, a lecturer at the Bunda College of Agriculture at the University of Malawi, disagrees with TAMA. He does not consider tobacco to be the backbone of the country's economy anymore.

This is because the government and stakeholders have failed to introduce measures which would enhance crop production, he argues. The growers have been penalized with taxes which have not been ploughed back into the sector.

Therefore Mkwambisi contends that the global problems besetting the tobacco industry are not the primary concern. Domestic politics is the source of much of the tobacco industry's difficulties.

He also has questions about how the government is approaching the issue of diversification. ''Even though cotton was identified as a crop to replace tobacco, nothing has been done to promote cotton.

''Why did the president rush to announce the diversification towards cotton? Do we have markets for cotton, cassava, soya and beans? Why should we expand cultivation to those products if we have not found the markets yet?'' asks Mkwambisi.

He says that even if tobacco was not facing the current public health campaigns, it is extremely bad planning to depend on one crop for economic growth. ''As a country we have been standing on a slim edge economically by relying on tobacco only,'' warns Mkwambisi.

Meanwhile Malawi's tobacco production levels are plunging. The TCC has indicated that tobacco yields this year (2007) are down by 18 million kg from 158 million kg last year. The country's international buyers are demanding 170 million kg, which means that the supply from Malawi is short by 30 million kg. (END/2007)

''Deux éléphants piétinant l'herbe''

2007-04-02T03:10:00.000-07:00

Pilirani Semu-Banda

BLANTYRE , 29 mars (IPS) - L'adage africain selon lequel ''lorsque deux éléphants se battent, c'est l'herbe qui en souffre'' se confirme actuellement dans la politique du Malawi.

La brouille et la lutte pour le pouvoir qui s'en est suivie entre les deux plus grands leaders du pays -- le président Bingu wa Mutharika et son prédécesseur Bakili Muluzi -- ont affecté négativement un groupe spécifique de personnes : les citoyens touchés par la pauvreté qui constituent plus de 65 pour cent de la population.

Le pays ploie sous une pauvreté abjecte, une question qui préoccupe beaucoup Ulemu Kaziputa, un petit exploitant agricole. ''Avec toutes les difficultés économiques dans ce pays, nous avons besoin de dirigeants appropriés. Nous ne pouvons plus supporter des jeux politiques qui nous coûtent nos droits humains'', souligne Kaziputa.

Depuis février 2005, lorsque le conflit entre les deux leaders a éclaté, le Malawi a connu une tension politique qui a donné lieu à une scission dans les débats parlementaires et le système judiciaire.

La querelle entre Muluzi et Mutharika a atteint son paroxysme après que ce dernier a pris fonction sous la bannière du Front démocratique uni (UDF) -- qu'il a ensuite quitté pour former un nouveau parti politique. Mutharika n'a pas par la suite acquis un soutien dans les rangs de l'opposition et dispose d'une minorité au parlement.

La bataille entre les deux leaders a probablement contribué à amener le président du parlement Rodwell Munyenyembe à souffrir d'une grave attaque et d'un arrêt cardiaque en juin 2005. Il s'est effondré alors qu'il tentait de calmer une intense bagarre verbale qui a éclaté entre des forces rivales au cours d'un débat parlementaire.

Ceci intervenait juste après qu'il a décidé qu'une motion d'impeachment (mise en accusation en vue d'une destitution) ne pouvait être entendue à l'Assemblée nationale. Le président du parlement n'a jamais repris conscience. Il est mort quatre jours plus tard dans un hôpital sud-africain et la session parlementaire a été suspendue pour une durée indéterminée.

Cette suspension inattendue a fini par retarder un vote budgétaire vital qui aurait dû débloquer une aide financière pour s'attaquer à la famine affligeant quelque cinq millions sur les 12 millions d'habitants du pays. Un rapport des Nations Unies indiquait que des hôpitaux étaient débordés de patients souffrant de maladies liées à la malnutrition.

L'hostilité actuelle entre les deux leaders a également conduit à plusieurs affaires judiciaires. Ces procès politiques ont pris le pas sur d'autres procès parce qu'ils impliquent le procureur de la République du pays, le procureur général ou le Bureau anti-corruption -- contrairement aux affaires traitées par des juges ordinaires.

Un procès politique qui domine actuellement les tribunaux est celui où le gouvernement accuse le vice-président du pays, Cassim Chilumpha, et l'homme d'affaires Yusuf Matumula de trahison et de conspiration pour assassiner Mutharika.

Chilumpha a été arrêté en avril dernier avec 10 autres individus pour avoir soi-disant recruté des hommes pour tuer son patron. L'Etat a depuis abandonné les charges contre la plupart des personnes arrêtées, excepté le vice-président et Matumula, tous deux de proches alliés de Muluzi.

Il y avait d'importantes chamailleries entre Mutharika et son adjoint depuis la rupture entre le président et Muluzi. Plusieurs hauts responsables de l'UDF l'ont suivi lorsque le président a quitté le parti qui l'a amené au pouvoir, mais Chilumpha est resté loyal à l'ancien président.

Un peu avant que le gouvernement n'accuse Chilumpha de complot pour assassiner le président, Mutharika a annoncé que son vice-président avait démissionné de ''façon constructive'' de son poste en ne prenant pas part à plusieurs réunions du cabinet. Le président a également accusé son adjoint d'insubordination et de gestion d'un gouvernement parallèle.

Cette question a créé une autre longue bataille juridique qui a, en fin de compte, vu Chilumpha être rétabli dans ses fonctions en tant que vice-président du Malawi.

Les Malawites croient que ces batailles juridiques perpétuelles ont contribué au retard dans l’examen des affaires judiciaires. Les prisons du Malawi sont pleines à craquer.

Selon la Réforme pénale internationale, le pays fait partie des nations africaines dont les prisons connaissent les pires niveaux de surpeuplement.

L'une des nombreuses personnes affectées par le retard dans les procédures judiciaires est Glady Zolima (45 ans). Son mari a été arrêté depuis plus d'un an parce que soupçonné d'avoir tué sa nièce. Elle doit parcourir 20 kilomètres à pied chaque jour pour apporter à manger à son mari parce les prisons n'offrent qu'un repas par jour à ceux qui sont en détention préventive.

''Je sais que mon mari est innocent, mais on lui a refusé la libération sous caution à cause de la gravité de l'accusation contre lui'', affirme Zolima. L'affaire ne va pas en audience parce que les tribunaux sont submergés ''d'affaires plus importantes''.

''Le gouvernement amène au tribunal ses petites affaires impliquant des politiciens plutôt que de juger des affaires de meurtre. Beaucoup d'innocents languissent dans les prisons du pays et se voient refuser la justice'', déplore Zolima.

Un groupe de défense des droits civiques, le Centre pour les droits humains et la réhabilitation, a condamné la bataille juridique entre les leaders puisque cela coûte cher aux contribuables malawites. Le centre a également attiré l'attention des Malawites sur les dangers de raviver l'animosité politique.

La lutte entre les camps de Muluzi et de Mutharika n'augure rien de bon pour la démocratie du pays. La tension règne parmi les partisans des deux leaders, avec toutes sortes de menaces planant tout autour chaque fois que l'un des dirigeants prend la parole à un meeting.

Dans son discours de nouvel an à la nation, le président Mutharika a déversé son courroux sur les membres du judiciaire et les journalistes et les a accusés d'être de connivence avec l'opposition pour renverser son gouvernement. Il a également averti qu'il prendrait des mesures non spécifiées contre Muluzi pour le faire taire.

Le politologue Noel Mbowela reconnaît que les batailles politiques entre le président et son prédécesseur sont désastreuses pour la démocratie du pays et nuisibles à son programme de développement.

''Elles favorisent également la haine entre les Malawites au lieu d'œuvrer pour des valeurs démocratiques comme l'unité. Le pays est peu à peu divisé à cause de ces deux leaders'', souligne Mbowela.

La Commission des affaires publiques, un regroupement d'organisations œcuméniques, travaille à réconcilier Mutharika et Muluzi. Cela semble ne pas marcher puisqu'aucun des deux ne veut faire de compromis. (FIN/2007)

NO MORE FISH TO FRY

2007-03-29T06:58:00.000-07:00

Scientists predict that global fish stocks are falling so swiftly that, unless drastic measures are taken, many species will disappear from our plates within the next 40 years. In Malawi, there are signs that it may already be happening
by Pilirani Semu-Banda

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Malawi hit the world's headlines last October when David Banda was adopted by Madonna. Prior to this, few people outside of Africa knew much about Malawi, apart perhaps from the fact that it has the fifth largest lake in the world.

But like the turmoil in the Madonna case, which saw human rights activists fighting against David’s adoption, Lake Malawi is in turmoil with its fish stocks diminishing and the fishing industry suffering low catches.

Lake Malawi contains the most diverse lake fish fauna in the world with an estimated 1,000 species. (1) But Maldeco Fisheries Limited, the only industrial fishing company operating in the country, is currently producing just over 30 percent of the fish it produced 10 years ago. (2)

Income lost

One person who is suffering the effects of the declining fish stocks in Lake Malawi is 44-year-old fisherman Samson Chelinda from the lake district of Mangochi. He laments his gradual loss of income from fish sales.

“My whole livelihood and that of my family comes from fish sales but now I struggle to make a living since I don’t catch as much fish as I used to. I now struggle to pay school fees for my children and I can no longer afford basic necessities,” said Chelinda.

Lake Malawi is a crucial source of income to many Malawians. According to the country’s 2006/2007 national budget, about 1.6 million out of 12 million Malawians are dependent on the fishing industry. In addition, more than 300,000 people make their living from activities related to the lake and its fish (3). These activities include fish processing, marketing of services and products, boat building and engine repair.

The industry also has a much wider importance. Fish provides over 60 percent of the dietary animal protein intake of Malawians and 40 percent of Malawians’ total protein supply. (4)

However, the budgetary report also confirmed the sharp decline in fish caught in Lake Malawi. The last available data shows that the quantity of fish delivered fell from 69,100 tonnes in 1998 to 44,849 tonnes a year later.

The plunging fish stocks is also negatively affecting Malawi’s tourist industry. With its deep, clear waters and mountain backdrop, the Lake Malawi national park is a natural aquarium and is among the most popular tourist destinations in the country (5).

Tour guide Maxwell Chefasi says the evidence is unequivocal. “There are some fish species which you don’t see anymore when you visit Lake Malawi. The fish stocks are slowly diminishing,” says Chefasi.

Time to act

The primary reasons for the shrinking fish stocks are unsustainable fishing practices and non-compliance with fishing regulations, according to Malawi’s Department of Fisheries. (6)

Malawians agree that something needs to be done to arrest and reverse the decline of the Lake Malawi. Indeed, the Malawian government has implemented several initiatives to boost fish stocks and to re-establish Lake Malawi as a sustainable resource.

The first is a ‘Fish Restoration Strategic Plan’ that involves Lake Malawi’s most popular species, called chambo (Oreochromis karongae). This once prolific species is on the brink of extinction and the programme involves restocking the lake with chambo bred outside the lake and then re-introduced.

The government has also placed a ban on the use of high-yield fishing gear in Lake Malawi between October and December, the crucial spawning season. Communities living on the shores of the lake are encouraged to police this initiative.

In addition, Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika launched a fish breeding programme for the export market in 2006. Under this programme, fish are bred and raised in cages which allows greater control over the population.

However, talking about initiatives and changes in policy is one thing, making them work and sustaining the initiatives is another. Only if Malawians adhere to the plans might there be hope that fish stocks will recover.

Worldwide problem

In Africa, declining fish stocks are not unique to Malawi. The fishing industry in neighbouring South Africa also had a turbulent 2006 which was characterised by low catches, smaller fish and longer trips to fertile fishing grounds. (7)

It is a similar story across the globe. A recent study of more than 100 fishing regions, published in the journal Science, suggested that if current trends are maintained, every seafood species will have collapsed below commercially viable levels by 2048. (8)

The report blamed the problem on over-fishing, pollution and habitat destruction — mostly on coastlines and in coral regions. Researchers assessed catch numbers recorded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Sea Around Us Project, at the University of Columbia. The stark conclusion was that fish stocks will collapse in the next 40 years.

They also analysed human impact on 12 regions, including the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Adriatic Sea, examined archives and sediment cores over a thousand-year period and looked at initiatives designed to promote species recovery.

Action required

The study by Science also found that the global cod catch has decreased from 3.1 million tonnes in 1970 to 950,000 tonnes in 2000, that and that fish stocks in North Atlantic are one sixth of levels 100 years ago.

On a positive note, the researchers stated that once marine ecosystems receive protection, they quickly recover. Increases in biodiversity were associated with large increases in fisheries production and with increased and lucrative, tourism, they reported.

It is clear that individual countries need to forge regional and global partnerships to ensure that the battle against the declining fish stocks is fought as a united front. This needs to happen soon but political commitment is still feeble.

Nowhere is the degree of urgency more apparent than on the shores of Lake Malawi. The worried looks on the faces of returning fishermen sum up the desperate plight of their traditional natural larder. Unless the tide is turned soon, the lake may become little more than pretty, yet lifeless, tourist attraction.

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References

1- United Nations Environment Programme - http://www.unep-wcmc.org/sites/wh/lakemal.html

2 - Maldeco Fisheries Limited Annual Report – 2006

3 - Malawi National Budget 2006/2007 – June 2006

4 - International Institute for Environment and Development - December 2004 - http://www.iied.org

5 - UNESCO World Heritage - http://whc.unesco.org

6 - Department of Fisheries in Malawi Report 2006 - Ministry of Environmental Affairs
7 - Business Report - January 16 2007 - http://www.busrep.co.za

8 – The Times – November 3 2006 - http://www.timesonline.co.uk

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© Pilirani Semu-Banda - February 2007

''Two Elephants Trampling the Grass''

2007-03-29T06:54:00.000-07:00

Pilirani Semu-Banda

BLANTYRE, Mar 20 (IPS) - The African adage that ‘‘when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers'' is currently particularly apt in Malawian politics.

The fall-out and subsequent power struggle between the country's two foremost leadersùPresident Bingu wa Mutharika and his predecessor Bakili Muluziùhas been detrimental to one specific group of people: poverty-stricken citizens who make up over 65 percent of the population.

The country is staggering under abject poverty, an issue that is of great concern to small-holder farmer Ulemu Kaziputa. ‘‘With all the economic hardships in this country, we need proper leadership. We can no longer do with political games that are costing us our human rights,'' Kaziputa insists.

Since February 2005, when the conflict between the two leaders emerged, Malawi has experienced political tension which has spilt over into parliamentary proceedings and the court system.

The quarrel between Muluzi and Mutharika reached a crescendo after the latter took office under the banner of the United Democratic Front (UDF)ùwhich he then left to form a new political party. Mutharika has subsequently failed to gain support within opposition ranks and has a minority in parliament.

The wrangle between the two leaders possibly contributed to the speaker of parliament Rodwell Munyenyembe suffering a severe stroke and cardiac arrest in June 2005. He collapsed while attempting to douse an intense verbal battle that had erupted between supporters of the warring forces during a parliamentary debate.

This was just after he had ruled that a motion to impeach Mutharika could not be heard in the national assembly. The speaker never recovered consciousness. He died four days later in a South African hospital and the parliamentary session was suspended for an indefinite time.

This unexpected recess ended up delaying a vital budget vote which would have unlocked aid money to address the starvation afflicting an estimated 5 million of the country's 12 million people. A United Nations report indicated that hospitals were over-flowing with patients suffering from malnutrition-related illnesses.

The ongoing hostility between the two leaders has also led to numerous legal cases. These political cases take precedence over other cases because they involve the country's director of public prosecutions, the attorney general or the official Anti-Corruption Bureauùas opposed to cases handled by ordinary lawyers.

One political case that is dominating the courts is where the government is accusing the country's vice president Cassim Chilumpha and businessperson Yusuf Matumula of treason and conspiracy to assassinate Mutharika.

Chilumpha was arrested last April together with 10 others for allegedly hiring men to kill his senior. The state has since dropped the charges against most of those arrested, except the vice president and Matumulaùboth close allies of Muluzi.

Squabbles were prominent between Mutharika and his deputy ever since the split between the president and Muluzi. Several senior officials of the UDF followed him when the president left the party that put him into power but Chilumpha remained loyal to the former president.

Just before the government accused Chilumpha of conspiracy to murder the president, Mutharika announced that his deputy had ‘‘constructively'' resigned from his position by failing to attend several cabinet meetings. The president also accused his deputy of insubordination and running a parallel government.

This issue created another long court battle which eventually saw Chilumpha being reinstated as Malawi's vice president.

Malawians believe that these perpetual court battles have contributed to the backlog in court cases. Malawi's prisons are packed beyond capacity. According to Penal Reform International, the country is among those in Africa experiencing the worst levels of overcrowding.

One of the many people affected by delayed court procedures is Glady Zolima (45). Her husband was arrested over a year ago on suspicion that he murdered his niece. She has to walk about 20 km everyday to provide food to her husband because the prisons only supplies one meal per day to those in custody.

‘‘I know that my husband is innocent but he was denied bail because of the gravity of the charge against him," says Zolima. The case is failing to go to court because the courts are flooded with ‘‘more important cases''.

‘‘Government would rather take its petty cases involving politicians to court than try murder cases. A lot of innocent people are languishing in the country's prisons and are denied justice,'' worries Zolima.

A civil rights group, the Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation, has condemned the court wrangle between the leaders as it is costing the Malawian tax payer dearly. The centre has also alerted Malawians to the dangers of reviving political animosity.

The fight between Muluzi's and Mutharika's camps does not augur well for the country's democracy. Tension reigns among supporters of the two leaders, with all sorts of threats flying around every time either of the leaders addresses a rally.

In his presidential new year's address to the nation, Mutharika unleashed his wrath on members of the judiciary and journalists and accused them of conniving with the opposition to pull down his government. The president has also warned that he would take unspecified action against Muluzi to silence him.

Political analyst Noel Mbowela contends that the political fights between the president and his predecessor are bad for the country's democracy and detrimental to its development agenda.

‘‘These two are promoting hatred among Malawians instead of working towards democratic values such as unity. The country is slowly being divided because of these two leaders,'' Mbowela points out.

The Public Affairs Committee, a grouping of religious bodies, has been working to reconcile Mutharika and Muluzi. This seems not to be working as neither of the two wants to compromise. (END/2007)

Malawi Struggles With Environment MDG

2007-03-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

Pilirani Semu-Banda

BLANTYRE, Dec 27 (IPS) - Chicken was once considered a delicacy which rarely graced tables in Malawi. Now fish has taken over this position, despite Malawi being famous for its lake -- which is the fifth largest in the world by volume and contains an estimated 1,000 fish species.

‘‘It is terrible that fish is becoming rare and expensive when we have Lake Malawi right here. I do not know how this has happened,’’ says Kondwani Kabati, a restaurant chef in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe.

The answer to Kabati’s query can be found in an economic report which forms part of Malawi’s 2006/2007 national budget. It indicates a sharp decline in fish caught in Lake Malawi. The last available data is for the years 1998 and 1999. In 1998 the lake delivered 69,100 tonnes of fish which dropped to 44,849 tonnes in 1999.

Moreover, Maldeco Fisheries Limited, the only industrial fishing company presently operating in Malawi, indicates that it is currently producing just over 600 tonnes of fish annually, compared to 2,000 tonnes a year, a decade ago.

Someone who has direct experience of the decreasing fish stocks in Lake Malawi is 44-year-old fisherman Samson Chelinda from the lake district of Mangochi. He laments the gradual loss of income from fish sales over the years.

‘‘My whole livelihood and that of my family comes from fish. But now I struggle to make a living since I do not catch as much fish as I used to. I now struggle to pay school fees for my children and I cannot afford basic necessities like before,’’ says a worried Chelinda.

The lake is central to the livelihoods of many Malawians. According to the government’s economic report, about 1.6 million out of 12 million Malawians are dependent on the fishing industry. More than 300,000 people make their living from activities related to the lake and its fish.

These activities include fish processing, marketing of services and products, boat building and engine repair.

The industry is also of wider importance. Fish has been providing over 60 percent of the dietary animal protein intake of Malawians and 40 percent of Malawians’ total protein supply.

The primary reasons for the shrinking fish stocks are unsustainable fishing practices and non-compliance with fishing regulations, according to Malawi’s Department of Fisheries.

The depletion of fish stocks in Lake Malawi presents Malawi with a critical challenge which could be addressed through the United Nations’ seventh Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on environmental sustainability.

In committing to MDG seven, governments have promised to integrate the principles of sustainable development into policies and programmes aimed at reversing the loss of environmental resources.

The Malawian government has embarked on several initiatives to reverse the decline of fish stocks and to re-establish Lake Malawi as a sustainable resource.

The first is a ‘Fish Restoration Strategic Plan’ that involves Lake Malawi’s most popular species, called chambo (Oreochromis karongae). This once prolific species is on the brink of extinction. The programme involves restocking the lake with chambo. Juveniles of the chambo species are bred outside the lake and then re-introduced.

The government has also placed a ban on the use of high-yield fishing gear in Lake Malawi between the months of October and December, when fish spawn. Certain fishing practices disrupt the spawning. Communities living on the shores of the lake are encouraged to police this initiative.

Further to this, Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika launched a fish breeding programme for the export market earlier this year. As part of the programme, fish are reproduced in cages after successful studies in 2003.

Regarding the other targets contained in MDG seven, the government has taken steps to address the issues of sanitation and safe drinking water.

The 2006 Human Development Report (HDR) indicates that the country has shown some movement towards halving the proportion of Malawians without access to safe water. Presently 67 percent of the population have such access.

The figures for sanitation are less encouraging as only 27 percent of people have access to basic sanitation. The HDR report estimated that the country will require another 8.28 million dollars annually if it is to achieve the target for water and sanitation by 2015.

Irrigation and Water Development Minister Sidik Mia says that having so many people without access to proper water and sanitation services is an impediment to the socio-economic development of Malawi. The effects can be felt in the health, education and agriculture sectors.

The government is determined to redress these imbalances. Mia indicates that the development of water resources is among the government’s top developmental priorities. Budgetary allocations for water resources will be increased.

The government is also preparing an integrated water resources management policy and will soon be adopting a national sanitation policy. (END/2006)

Violence Threatens Women’s Meagre Gains

2007-03-29T06:50:00.000-07:00

Pilirani Semu-Banda

BLANTYRE, Feb 2 (IPS) - Chanju Mwale is a true role model. Not only does the 28-year-old possess good academic credentials as a lawyer, landing her the job of the Malawi Defence Force’s legal officer, but she is also the only female officer in the force who holds the rank of captain.

All of these accolades to her name did not protect Mwale against assault. She is recovering from serious wounds to her face after she was attacked by a junior officer at an end-of-year party in 2004.

A number of scars on her face bear witness to her ordeal—a painful reminder that even before the attack she did not receive the respect that she deserves from her fellow officers and soldiers. This encumbered her in the fulfilment of her duties as a captain which involved commanding a platoon of soldiers.

‘‘The lieutenant beat me up because I refused his sexual advances. This defiance of my authority happened in the presence of some very senior officers in the army but I have not had much support from the army,’’ says Mwale.

She has had ‘‘a terrible time’’ with the injuries. Three major operations were needed. But still a defence force disciplinary hearing only awarded her 72 US dollars in compensation for the injuries. She has sought court intervention outside the army. The matter is still in the courts.

‘‘The problem is that the army is a male-dominated institution which does not take kindly to women being in high positions. The Malawi Defence Force was used to being an all-male team until 1996 when women were allowed to join the army. They just cannot accept that a woman is capable of working as hard as they do,’’ Mwale points out.

Despite everything, her encounter with the lieutenant has made her even stronger and more determined.

‘‘People thought I would leave the army following the assault as I was badly injured and got little support from my superiors but I am staying. I will work at changing the perceptions. I know it is an uphill battle but I will not tire,’’ says a resolute Mwale.

One would have thought that women like her would not have to fight so hard. After all, Malawi was seen as a leader among the Southern African Development Community (SADC) states when they adopted the regional indicative strategic development plan (RISDP) with its commitment to gender equality.

The plan committed SADC governments to achieving 30 percent representation of women in decision-making positions by 2005; and repealing gender discriminatory laws and policies and enacting laws that will guarantee substantive gender equality, also by 2005.

Relevant for Mwale’s case, heads of state also committed governments to reducing acts of violence against women with 50 percent by 2007 and eradicating all forms of violence against women by 2015.

Malawi also acceded to the United Nations’ millennium development goals (MDGs) which have tasked countries globally with promoting gender equality and empowering women. Malawi is far behind as the percentage of women recruited by the Malawi Defence Force still only stands at three percent, according to Mwale.

Malawi has also missed the RISDP’s 30 percent target. The low level of women’s representation is not only confined to the army. Of the country’s 193-member parliament only 27 are women. At cabinet level the picture looks better with 6 women out of 22 ministers but among deputy ministers only one out of 14 is a woman.

Moreover, these statistics have not improved much since the country’s first democratic elections in 1994.

The statistics for the civil service are dismal as only five permanent secretaries out of a total of 51 are women while a mere three out of 16 diplomatic missions are headed by women. The judiciary has a paltry figure of four women judges out of 25.

A World Bank gender profile of Malawi shows some improvement in the education sector. Adult literacy among women has moved up from about 36 percent in 1990 to 54 percent at present. School enrolment of girls increased to 60 percent from 47 percent in 1990.

The youth literacy rate of females aged between 15 and 24 years has also improved from 75 percent in 1990 to the present 82 percent.

But, as Mwale’s case shows, violence against women threatens these achievements. This is true for all spheres of life. Subsistence farmer Dora Malimelo sees no reason of holding hopes that the situation will improve much for the average woman.

‘‘Violence against women is a growing tendency in this country because there is a total lack of respect for women in our community. In the past five years we have started to see ritual killings where women’s private parts are removed.’’

According to Malimelo, ‘‘domestic violence has escalated to such an extent that women are mutilated by their own husbands’’. Malawi has in recent times reported numerous cases where women are kidnapped, murdered or trafficked for prostitution and hard labour. (END/2007)

Outlook Remains Bleak for the Poor

2007-03-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

Pilirani Semu-Banda

BLANTYRE, Feb 21 (IPS) - Grace Kafere is tired. She has been on her feet for close to five hours, bending over as she moves up and down in a forest gathering twigs and branches to sell as firewood.

The 45-year-old single mother of five children lost her job as an administrative assistant three years ago. The firm where she was working went through a restructuring process. She has been unable to secure another job since then.

To survive she has had to sell most of her household goods, including a small electrical stove, to raise money for school fees. Her eldest child is 16 years old and in secondary school.

‘‘I have sold all the valuables I have ever owned and am trying small-scale business in order to keep my children in school. I sell everything I can lay my hands on—including wood which I sell to my neighbours who are also struggling to make a living,’’ says Kafere.

She can no longer afford basic food items such as bread and sugar on a regular basis. Most times, her family only has one meal a day as opposed to the three a day which they used to have before she was declared redundant at her workplace.

Kafere and her family also had to move from the three-bedroom house she was renting in a low density area to a one-bedroom shack in the densely populated outskirts of Malawi’s commercial capital Blantyre. She shares the bedroom with her three daughters and, at night, her sons turn the living room into a bedroom.

As if their living conditions were not bad enough, the Kafere family shares an outdoor kitchen, a toilet and one bathroom with seven other families who stay in similar shacks.

Kafere’s neighbour, Jackson Malire, also decries the poor standards of living. It is becoming worse as the years go by, he says. His family of six people survives on the proceeds from his job as a night-watchman where the pay is only about 20 US dollars per month.

‘‘I had a bicycle which I bought five years but I had to sell it a year ago because I needed money to pay for hospital bills for my wife. I cannot afford to replace that bicycle. It seems life is getting tougher,’’ says Malire.

Without the bicycle he has to walk to and from his workplace which is 25 km away from where he stays.

The dismal experiences of Karefe and Malire are not confined to their neighbourhood. Most Malawians are struggling in similar ways as poverty has worsened in Malawi, according to the most recent Human Development Report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Between 2005 and 2006 Malawi dropped one position from number 10 to number 11 on the list of the world’s 30 poorest countries. The country is ranked 166th out of 177 countries on the UNDP’s Human Development Index.

In 1997, Malawi was ranked at number 161 which means it has slipped five places in the last decade. The HDI, according to the UNDP, measures countries’ performance with regard to human development and includes the measurement of standard of living.

Over 65 percent of Malawi’s 12 million people live below the poverty line of less than 1 US dollar a day while 22 percent of the population is categorised as ultra-poor.

Some of the more distressing indicators include a maternal mortality rate which is over 1,100 per 100,000 live births and the deterioration of child mortality rates and access to sanitation and clean water.

A poverty and vulnerability assessment on Malawi released last year by the Malawi government and the World Bank also shows that people’s standard of living has not improved in the last 10 years. The assessment report shows that there has been little or no progress in reducing poverty and inequality.

Over a third of Malawi’s population does not have access to safe water. As a result people are ill or dying from diarrhoea, cholera and other water-borne diseases. HIV/AIDS is also among the major challenges that the country is facing as one in every 10 people is infected.

At an average of 39 years, Malawi has one of the lowest life expectancy rates in the world, UNDP resident representative Michael Keating points out. The crises in livelihoods are derailing the country’s progress towards achieving the first UN Millennium Development Goal.

MDG 1 requires that countries halve the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day and also halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015.

While acknowledging that the country is failing to achieve prosperity, government officials contend that Malawi is better off in other areas than other African countries. These include the immunization of children against measles and tuberculosis and primary school enrolment.

The Malawian government is positive that the economy will improve since the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund cancelled most of Malawi’s external debt of about 2.97 billion US dollars in September 2006. The country had completed economic reforms in adherence with these institutions’ conditionalities.

Malawians are also placing their hope in a promise by the country’s main donor, the British government. The British pledged 560 million US dollars in aid to Malawi over four years. (END/2007)

Malawi On Track to Meet Child Mortality MDG

2007-03-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

Pilirani Semu-Banda

BLANTYRE, Dec 14 (IPS) - Looking at Patience Ziyenda, 37, one would say that she is a jovial woman. But deep inside, Patience is sad. She is among the many women in Malawi who have been struck by the catastrophe of child mortality.

Patience lost three children under the age of five within a period of six years.

"My eldest child, who was four years old, has just died. I am so devastated because I thought she would live longer than her younger siblings," she says, as tears well up in her eyes. Her other two children died at the ages of six months and two years respectively.

Patience is explaining her ordeal while fetching water from a kiosk with eight of her friends. Her story is not unusual in Malawi. Although the women in the group seem to have no care in the world as they laugh at jokes, six of them lost children younger than five.

Katarina Temani, 27, a friend of Patience, says that she has one child left who is eight months old. Her two other children only reached the ages of four and three years. They died within a space of three weeks of each other.

"I am not sure if the baby I have left will survive. We leave it in God's hands," says Katarina.

Despite such tragic experiences, Malawi is among the few countries in Africa which are on track to meet the United Nations (U.N.) Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on reducing the under-five mortality rate. The fourth MDG is to cut this rate by two-thirds, by 2015.

Malawi's under-five mortality rate declined to 133 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2004, which translates into a 43 percent reduction in 12 years. The British government's Department for International Development is positive that Malawi will meet the 2015 target.

A U.N. report released on Nov. 22, 2006 indicates that despite sub-Saharan Africa being the most dangerous place in the world for newborns, Malawi is faring better than many of its counterparts in addressing infant mortality.

According to the report, published in Johannesburg and Geneva, more than a million babies in the region die each year before they are a month old because of a lack of essential health care.

Malawi, together with Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Madagascar, Tanzania and Uganda, is regarded as having made significant progress in reducing infant deaths over the last 10 years, thanks to increased government spending on basic health care.

Currently infant mortality stands at 94 deaths per 1,000 live births in Malawi. A decade ago, the infant mortality rate was pegged at 146 per 1,000 live births.

The Malawian government has intensified the promotion of low-technology and cost-effective measures such as vaccines against child illnesses, antibiotics to treat respiratory infections, and oral rehydration therapy against diarrhoea.

Other measures include the provision of free insecticide-treated bed nets against malaria, and education in improved family care and breast-feeding practices.

These measures form part of the integrated management of childhood illnesses programme which, together with the expanded programme of immunisation, has shown success in improving child survival. Illnesses such as polio and neonatal tetanus have been virtually eradicated.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is supporting Malawi's efforts to reduce child mortality, along with the Japanese government.

As one of Malawi's development partners, Japan is committed to helping the Southern African country attain the MDGs, including goal four on child mortality. Tokyo could be just the right partner to have when it comes to reducing deaths amongst children: Japanese figures show fewer than two deaths per 1,000 live births.

Kyoji Mizutani, resident representative of the Japanese International Co-operation Agency, describes the child and infant mortality rate in Malawi as "intolerable". Tokyo has provided financial aid for the procurement of drugs and preventive materials.

"Although Malawi has made some progress in reducing the death tolls of pregnant women and of infants, the situation still remains unacceptable," says Mizutani.

Annually, about 73,000 children in Malawi die from preventable diseases. One in every five children dies before she or he is a month old, and one in every eight dies before her or his fifth birthday.

Malnutrition is associated with 54 percent of all children's deaths in Malawi, says the country's former advisor for health, Wesley Sangala. According to him, seven in 10 deaths of under-five children are attributable to diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections, measles, malaria and nutritional deficiencies.

His words are echoed by Kusali Kubwalo, assistant communication officer in Malawi for UNICEF. She points out that malnutrition rates among Malawian children have not improved significantly since 1992.

Almost half of all children under the age of five (48 percent) are stunted, 22 percent are underweight, 59 percent suffer from vitamin A deficiency, and 80 percent are anaemic. "We have a very worrying situation and we have to accelerate our efforts to ensure child survival and development," says Kubwalo.

Malawi's Ministry of Health aims to accelerate progress towards achieving the fourth MDG. This will provide hope to Patience, Katarina and many other Malawian women. (END/2006)

2007-03-29T04:44:00.000-07:00

Pilirani Semu-Banda

2007-03-29T04:29:00.000-07:00

Pilirani Semu-Banda

ME

2006-05-21T09:39:00.000-07:00

2005-11-07T08:58:00.000-08:00

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