"It's shameful that the UDF party wants to take us back to the dark days,"

Mr Gwanda Chakuamba (2003)

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Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Malawi impresses IMF--gets US$18 m
By GERALD NAMWAZA - 19 December 2007 - 13:05:38

INTERNATIONAL Monetary Fund (IMF) Monday approved a US$18.1 million (about K2.6 billion) disbursement to Malawi under Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) arrangement.

The executive board of the IMF says it was compelled to dish out the cash after Malawi successfully met the economic targets in the fourth and fifth review of the three year programme started in 2005.

“The completion of the review enables the release of SDR 11.45 million (about US$18.1 million), bringing total disbursements under the arrangement to SDR 33.4 million (about US$52.9 million),” reads part of the IMF statement.

Following the executive board discussion on Malawi, Takatoshi Kato, Deputy Managing Director and Acting Chair praised the country for its unflinching resolve to grow the economy.

"Malawi has shown commendable performance under its PRGF-supported program. Economic growth remains high and inflation has continued to decline. This should continue to support Malawi's poverty reduction and development efforts,” Kato says.

This should come as good news to Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe, who last month in Blantyre, told journalists the economy was on the right track and that the IMF was impressed with the country’s progress.

Inflation has gone down from 9.6 percent in January this year and was at 7.2 percent in October while the local economy is estimated to grow at about 7 percent, a situation that prompted Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) to cut the bank rate from 17.5 percent to 15 percent last month.


"The domestic debt burden has declined further, though somewhat less rapidly than expected. Fiscal policy implementation has been supported by strong revenue performance, and the recent improvement in the government's control of payroll execution has facilitated the lifting of the program's ceiling on the wage bill,” says the IMF statement.


However, IMF says government's domestic borrowing targets came under pressure from unforeseen challenges, including delays in aid disbursements and unexpectedly high interest payments.

"The improvement in the macroeconomic environment has permitted the monetary authorities to bring inflation down to single digits while maintaining a stable exchange rate. Inflation is expected to remain in single figures.

However, monetary policy implementation came under some strain in mid-2007, and the authorities need to address the ensuing rapid monetary expansion.

"The program envisages economic growth in 2007 /08 spreading beyond the agricultural sector and remaining high. Further declines in the domestic public debt burden should continue to support robust private sector credit growth,” Kato says in the statement.

The IMF, has since advised government to put greater emphasis on structural reforms and improve public financial management in addition to creating a better business environment.

The three-year PRGF arrangement for Malawi was approved on August 5, 2005, for a total amount of SDR 38.2 million (about US$60.4 million) to support the government's economic program for 2005-2007 after being suspended in 2001 when the previous government went off track.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Malawi qualifies for Millennium Challenge Account
BY DICKSON KASHOTI
07:55:49 - 14 December 2007

Malawi is now eligible for a large-scale grant from the Millennium Challenge Account, bringing hope for a significant new flow of funding that could have a major impact on Malawi’s efforts to reduce poverty through sustainable economic growth.

However, United States of America ambassador to Malawi, Alan Eastham could not say how much Malawi expected to receive at a press conference convened to announce the Millennium Challenge Corporation decision.

He said the amount would depend on negotiations between the MCC board and the government of Malawi.

But information made available to The Daily Times indicate that some countries have received amounts ranging from US$285 to US$ million 700 for a five-year period.

Eastham said Malawi’s eligibility for the MCC assistance means the country may now begin the process of applying for a large-scale grant, popularly known as compact, under this foreign aid program funded by the US government aimed at reducing poverty through economic growth.

“Malawi’s selection is in recognition of the substantial steps taken by the government of Malawi towards addressing corruption and putting in place other sound policies to promote economic development,” Eastham said.

Malawi has scored 54 percent in its control of corruption, 80 percent in rule of law, 68 percent for voice and accountability, 59 percent in political rights and 65 percent in civil liberties, according to rates from the Freedom House and World Bank Institute.

But Eastham said although the announcement of the eligibility is an essential step toward obtaining an MCC compact facility for Malawi, it does not guarantee funding, saying the MCC will ask the government of Malawi to begin a broad based consultative process to develop a proposal for a five-year program.

“There is no pre-established dollar figure for Malawi’s compact at this stage. The level of assistance the MCC could eventually provide will be based on the strength of Malawi’s proposal, as well as the availability of funding. Negotiating compact agreement is a complex and often lengthy process,” said the ambassador.

Eastham then applauded Malawi for the feat, saying this is the only country in the world that has qualified for the eligibility of MCC funding.

The MCC board has also selected Mauritania to participate in MCC’s Threshold Programme, a programme designed to assist countries that do not yet qualify for the compact grants but that are close to qualifying and have demonstrated a commitment to enact reforms necessary to improve policy performance that may eventually help them qualify for the compact assistance.

The board also welcomed MCC’s intention to invite Albania, Paraguay and Zambia to submit a stage 11 threshold proposal to build upon their current threshold programmes that expire in 2008.

The following countries are participating in the MCC programme and were selected as eligible for 2008 compact funding: Armenia, Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, El Savador, Georgia, Ghana, Honduras, Jordan, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Senegal, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Ukraine and Vanuatu.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts

Evelyn Hockstein for The New York Times

The secret of Malawi’s success: heavy subsidies for fertilizer, farmers say. The World Bank had pressed for their elimination. More Photos >

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Published: December 2, 2007

LILONGWE, Malawi — Malawi hovered for years at the brink of famine. After a disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid.

But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the world is instead feeding its hungry neighbors. It is selling more corn to the World Food Program of the United Nations than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe.

In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. In October, the United Nations Children’s Fund sent three tons of powdered milk, stockpiled here to treat severely malnourished children, to Uganda instead. “We will not be able to use it!” Juan Ortiz-Iruri, Unicef’s deputy representative in Malawi, said jubilantly.

Farmers explain Malawi’s extraordinary turnaround — one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa — with one word: fertilizer.

Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.

Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain. Malawi’s soil, like that across sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of its farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices.

“As long as I’m president, I don’t want to be going to other capitals begging for food,” Mr. Mutharika declared. Patrick Kabambe, the senior civil servant in the Agriculture Ministry, said the president told his advisers, “Our people are poor because they lack the resources to use the soil and the water we have.”

The country’s successful use of subsidies is contributing to a broader reappraisal of the crucial role of agriculture in alleviating poverty in Africa and the pivotal importance of public investments in the basics of a farm economy: fertilizer, improved seed, farmer education, credit and agricultural research.

Malawi, an overwhelmingly rural nation about the size of Pennsylvania, is an extreme example of what happens when those things are missing. As its population has grown and inherited landholdings have shrunk, impoverished farmers have planted every inch of ground. Desperate to feed their families, they could not afford to let their land lie fallow or to fertilize it. Over time, their depleted plots yielded less food and the farmers fell deeper into poverty.

Malawi’s leaders have long favored fertilizer subsidies, but they reluctantly acceded to donor prescriptions, often shaped by foreign-aid fashions in Washington, that featured a faith in private markets and an antipathy to government intervention.

In the 1980s and again in the 1990s, the World Bank pushed Malawi to eliminate fertilizer subsidies entirely. Its theory both times was that Malawi’s farmers should shift to growing cash crops for export and use the foreign exchange earnings to import food, according to Jane Harrigan, an economist at the University of London.

In a withering evaluation of the World Bank’s record on African agriculture, the bank’s own internal watchdog concluded in October not only that the removal of subsidies had led to exorbitant fertilizer prices in African countries, but that the bank itself had often failed to recognize that improving Africa’s declining soil quality was essential to lifting food production.

“The donors took away the role of the government and the disasters mounted,” said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist who lobbied Britain and the World Bank on behalf of Malawi’s fertilizer program and who has championed the idea that wealthy countries should invest in fertilizer and seed for Africa’s farmers.

Here in Malawi, deep fertilizer subsidies and lesser ones for seed, abetted by good rains, helped farmers produce record-breaking corn harvests in 2006 and 2007, according to government crop estimates. Corn production leapt to 2.7 billion metric tons in 2006 and 3.4 billion in 2007 from 1.2 billion in 2005, the government reported.

“The rest of the world is fed because of the use of good seed and inorganic fertilizer, full stop,” said Stephen Carr, who has lived in Malawi since 1989, when he retired as the World Bank’s principal agriculturalist in sub-Saharan Africa. “This technology has not been used in most of Africa. The only way you can help farmers gain access to it is to give it away free or subsidize it heavily.”

“The government has taken the bull by the horns and done what farmers wanted,” he said. Some economists have questioned whether Malawi’s 2007 bumper harvest should be credited to good rains or subsidies, but an independent evaluation, financed by the United States and Britain, found that the subsidy program accounted for a large share of this year’s increase in corn production.

The harvest also helped the poor by lowering food prices and increasing wages for farm workers. Researchers at Imperial College London and Michigan State University concluded in their preliminary report that a well-run subsidy program in a sensibly managed economy “has the potential to drive growth forward out of the poverty trap in which many Malawians and the Malawian economy are currently caught.”

Farmers interviewed recently in Malawi’s southern and central regions said fertilizer had greatly improved their ability to fill their bellies with nsima, the thick, cornmeal porridge that is Malawi’s staff of life.

In the hamlet of Mthungu, Enelesi Chakhaza, an elderly widow whose husband died of hunger five years ago, boasted that she got two ox-cart-loads of corn this year from her small plot instead of half a cart.

Last year, roughly half the country’s farming families received coupons that entitled them to buy two 110-pound bags of fertilizer, enough to nourish an acre of land, for around $15 — about a third the market price. The government also gave them coupons for enough seed to plant less than half an acre.

Malawians are still haunted by the hungry season of 2001-02. That season, an already shrunken program to give poor farmers enough fertilizer and seed to plant a meager quarter acre of land had been reduced again. Regional flooding further lowered the harvest. Corn prices surged. And under the government then in power, the country’s entire grain reserve was sold as a result of mismanagement and corruption.

Mrs. Chakhaza watched her husband starve to death that season. His strength ebbed away as they tried to subsist on pumpkin leaves. He was one of many who succumbed that year, said K. B. Kakunga, the local Agriculture Ministry official. He recalled mothers and children begging for food at his door.

“I had a little something, but I could not afford to help each and every one,” he said. “It was very pathetic, very pathetic indeed.”

But Mr. Kakunga brightened as he talked about the impact of the subsidies, which he said had more than doubled corn production in his jurisdiction since 2005.

“It’s quite marvelous!” he exclaimed.

Malawi’s determination to heavily subsidize fertilizer and the payoff in increased production are beginning to change the attitudes of donors, say economists who have studied Malawi’s experience.

The Department for International Development in Britain contributed $8 million to the subsidy program last year. Bernabé Sánchez, an economist with the agency in Malawi, estimated the extra corn produced because of the $74 million subsidy was worth $120 million to $140 million.

“It was really a good economic investment,” he said.

The United States, which has shipped $147 million worth of American food to Malawi as emergency relief since 2002, but only $53 million to help Malawi grow its own food, has not provided any financial support for the subsidy program, except for helping pay for the evaluation of it. Over the years, the United States Agency for International Development has focused on promoting the role of the private sector in delivering fertilizer and seed, and saw subsidies as undermining that effort.

But Alan Eastham, the American ambassador to Malawi, said in a recent interview that the subsidy program had worked “pretty well,” though it displaced some commercial fertilizer sales.

“The plain fact is that Malawi got lucky last year,” he said. “They got fertilizer out while it was needed. The lucky part was that they got the rains.”

And the World Bank now sometimes supports the temporary use of subsidies aimed at the poor and carried out in a way that fosters private markets.

Here in Malawi, bank officials say they generally support Malawi’s policy, though they criticize the government for not having a strategy to eventually end the subsidies, question whether its 2007 corn production estimates are inflated and say there is still a lot of room for improvement in how the subsidy is carried out.

“The issue is, let’s do a better job of it,” said David Rohrbach, a senior agricultural economist at the bank.

Though the donors are sometimes ambivalent, Malawi’s farmers have embraced the subsidies. And the government moved this year to give its people a more direct hand in their distribution.

Villagers in Chembe gathered one recent morning under the spreading arms of a kachere tree to decide who most needed fertilizer coupons as the planting season loomed. They had only enough for 19 of the village’s 53 families.

“Ladies and gentlemen, should we start with the elderly or the orphans?” asked Samuel Dama, a representative of the Chembe clan.

Men led the assembly, but women sitting on the ground at their feet called out almost all the names of the neediest, gesturing to families rearing children orphaned by AIDS or caring for toothless elders.

There were more poor families than there were coupons, so grumbling began among those who knew they would have to watch over the coming year as their neighbors’ fertilized corn fields turned deep green.

Sensing the rising resentment, the village chief, Zaudeni Mapila, rose. Barefoot and dressed in dusty jeans and a royal blue jacket, he acted out a silly pantomime of husbands stuffing their pants with corn to sell on the sly for money to get drunk at the beer hall. The women howled with laughter. The tension fled.

He closed with a reminder he hoped would dampen any jealousy.

“I don’t want anyone to complain,” he said. “It’s not me who chose. It’s you.”

The women sang back to him in a chorus of acknowledgment, then dispersed to their homes and fields.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Malawi gets World Bank K2.9bn grant
BY DICKSON KASHOTI
08:00:11 - 16 November 2007

The World Bank has given Malawi a grant of K2.9 billion (US$20 million) following the country's successful implementation of macro-economic programmes.

The money would be used for poverty reduction projects.

World Bank Country Manager Timothy Gilbo told the press during a signing ceremony of the grant in Lilongwe Thursday that this was the first in a series of three annual US$120 million poverty reduction support credit (PRSC) agreement with the bank to be provided to Malawi through the International Development Association (IDA).

The bank is expected to give Malawi up to US$360 million in credit in the next four years and Gilbo said although the PRSC is a family of credit, Malawi’s PRSC-1 is a grant.

Gilbo said the PRSC programme would be IDA’s instrument for provision of budget support to Malawi within the Common Approach to Budget Support (CABS) framework.

He added that it would support the government of Malawi’s efforts to undertake the policy and institutional reforms necessary for successful implementation of the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS).

“The PRSC series is a central pillar of the bank’s efforts to support implementation of the MGDS... we are very pleased to have approved our first grant within the framework of the CABS,” he said.

Gilbo said this was the first time the World Bank was giving a PRSC to Malawi, adding this would not go through Parliament for approval because it was a grant and not credit.

He said the PRSC programme was expected to bridge a financing gap in MGDS implementation, consolidate policy and institutional reforms in the macroeconomic gains that Malawi has registered over the last three years and contribute to improving aid effectiveness by being part of a harmonised approach to budget support.

It would also impact on agricultural incomes, employment generation in the private sector and public service delivery’s contribution towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Gilbo said Malawi has received the grant because of its significant progress in restoring macro-economic stability, adding Malawi has successfully concluded three reviews of the IMF supported Poverty Reduction Growth Facility (PRGF) and is about to conclude fourth and fifth reviews.

He said due to continuing strong fiscal management, domestic borrowing by the government has declined from 25 percent of GDP to 12.4 percent of the GDP as at end June, 2007, inflation declined to 7.1 percent in September while real GDP growth was 7.9 percent in 2006 and is projected at 7.5 percent in 2007.

Gilbo, however, said reforms to reduce the cost of doing business have been slow, observing that Malawi dropped from 110th in 2006 to 127th in 2007 on the ease of doing business rankings.

Minister of Finance Goodall Gondwe thanked World Bank for the grant, which he signed on behalf of the government of Malawi.

Gondwe said the grant would support efforts by government in the functioning of agricultural markets with a focus on establishment of additional auction floors for agricultural products and putting in place a better targeted and more private sector inclusive system of providing fertilisers and seeds to farmers.

He also said it would help in economic governance with a focus on reforms that improve payroll management and external accountability of the government of Malawi.

“The specific reforms to be undertaken have been classified as follows; agriculture and land reforms, private sector development reforms, social protections reforms and public sector and finance management reforms,” he said.

Gondwe said World Bank has been a very consistent development partner for Malawi since 1966 in terms of project, programme, relief and other development support but has, however, been an observer as far as budget support is concerned.
“The decision by the bank to join the CABS group through provision of financial resources is a very welcome one not only because of the financial resources but more so because the bank is an ‘opinion leader’ as far as the donor community is concerned,” he said.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Madonna, Gucci team up for Malawi charity gig

Thu 15 Nov 2007, 16:45 GMT
[-] Text [+]

NEW YORK, Nov 15 (Reuters Life!) - Madonna is joining forces with luxury goods maker Gucci to raise funds for orphans in Malawi, from where she has been trying to adopt a child since last year.

The U.S. singer and Gucci will host a fundraising event with dinner, musical performance and a party on Feb. 6 next year to mark the opening of Gucci's largest store in the world, on New York's Fifth Avenue.

Madonna said the event will benefit UNICEF and the charity she co-founded in 2006, Raising Malawi, which focuses on trying to end the poverty and hardship suffered by Malawi's one million orphans, many of whose parents died of AIDS.

"I am grateful that Gucci is joining forces with me to bring attention to a country with millions of children in desperate need of our help," Madonna said in a statement.

"Raising Malawi has already done tremendous work in helping these children. But we have much more to do and this event will surely bring us closer to our goal."

Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie's bid to adopt David Banda from Malawi has hit several stumbling blocks since they took the 13-month-old boy from the African country last year. He had been placed in an orphanage by his father after the death of his mother.

Rights groups have accused Madonna of using her fame and wealth to circumvent the country's adoption rules although the singer has insisted she is following the law.

Malawi's High Court is to hold a hearing next year into whether Madonna and Ritchie are suitable parents and should adopt the child.

The New York event is expected to raise at least $2 million with Madonna joined by a list of celebrity co-chairs in the event including Adrien Brody, Arpad Busson, Salma Hayek and Francois-Henri Pinault, Tea Leoni, Lucy Liu, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Gucci, which is owned by French retailer PPR , has been a UNICEF corporate partner since 2004.

Caryl Stern, president and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, thanked Madonna and Gucci and said AIDS remained one of the most devastating public health problems in recent history.

"Every day, 6,000 children lose a parent to AIDS, and 1,400 children die from AIDS," Stern said in the statement.

Malawi: Government Pushes Green Vehicles




Blantyre

As crude oil prices hit a record high, the Malawi government has launched a project to ensure that all vehicles in the country switch to the cheaper and greener alternative fuel - ethanol - in a few years.

Besides promoting the production of ethanol from sugar molasses, the 5-year US$1 million project, funded by the Malawi government, is investigating the possibility of converting conventional vehicles into dual-fuel vehicles, or flexible-fuel - 'flex-fuel' - vehicles (FFVs), which can run on a combination of fuels.

"The country's decision to use ethanol is in line with procedures aimed at emission reduction as demanded by the [UN Framework on Climate Change]," said Kendron Chisale, Malawi's deputy director of science and technology. "In the end, Malawi will benefit because we will be able to mitigate some of the climate change related natural catastrophes." The department hopes to have some adapted vehicles on the road within a year.

Freeman Kalirani, a researcher at the government-owned Lilongwe Technical College, led a team that modified a Mitsubishi Pajero to run on ethanol or petrol, or a combination of ethanol and petrol in a single tank.

He said the research team would continue comparing the engine performance of ethanol-powered and petrol-driven vehicles. "We will test and check on the long-term effects of ethanol on the fuel system of vehicles. We will also gather data on the performance of a flex vehicle and build capacity for Malawians to maintain ethanol-driven or flex vehicles."

The modified vehicle completed a test drive of over 2,100km at an average speed of 110km/hr on ethanol; consumption at 8km/litre was high because of the speed and age of the car; newer vehicles consume between 10km/litre and 15km/litre.

Import flex-fuel vehicles

According to Presscane Ltd, 1 of the 2 companies producing ethanol, Malawi has been using ethanol-blended fuel since the energy crisis in the early 1970s. Petroleum companies such as BP Malawi, TOTAL Malawi and Chevron Malawi blend 10 percent ethanol with 90 percent petrol.

A switch to ethanol would not only benefit the environment but also create employment opportunities in the country's sugarcane industry, and help Malawi save forex currently being spent on fuel imports

Between 1995 and 2000, Malawi imported around 80 to 90 million litres of petrol each year, with the cost rising from $13 million to $36.1 million over the same period. In the first half of the year, a barrel of bioethanol in Brazil, was half the price of a barrel of oil, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. The current price of crude oil is about $90 per barrel.

Malawi's department of science and technology, in partnership with the privately owned Ethanol Company of Malawi (ETHCO), is also promoting the importing of Brazilian 'flex-fuel' vehicles that can run on ethanol. Matthews Chikaonda, chief executive officer of Press Corporation Limited, a local conglomerate that owns ETHCO, said the country produced enough molasses, a by-product of making sugar, to produce ethanol.

He said the country would save millions of dollars once all vehicles started using locally produced ethanol instead of imported petroleum. "A switch to ethanol would not only benefit the environment but also create employment opportunities in the country's sugarcane industry, and help Malawi save forex currently being spent on fuel imports."

More research before production

Chikaonda said the only two companies producing ethanol from sugar molasses in Malawi were ETHCO, which produces 7 million litres of ethanol a year at its plant in Dwangwa, a town in central Malawi, and Presscane, another Press Corporation investment, which delivers 10.8 million litres from its plant in southern Malawi.

Each of the factories has a design capacity of 16 million litres a year, but is operating below capacity because of the low availability of molasses. The department of science and technology said there was a possibility that the two factories could produce ethanol at full capacity because there was room for for expansion in existing sugarcane plantations.

ETHCO general manager Daniel Liwimbi said there was need for proper government planning to expand ethanol production capacity to cater for the whole country. "Government should plan to increase production if the whole project is to be a success. With increased production from sugarcane molasses, capacity could reach up to 30 million litres per [cane-growing] season."



Some consumers cautioned that further research was needed and government should tread carefully in its search for alternative cheaper fuels. "It is too early to start celebrating. Let us be honest with ourselves and answer questions such as, 'are we ready to meet the demand once we abandon imported fuels?' An honest answer would be 'no' at this point in time," said Marcel Phiri, a car owner in the commercial capital of Blantyre.

Mayeso Mzunga, who transports goods, said he welcomed the news but also stressed the need for more research. He suggested the concurrent promotion of imported petroleum and locally made ethanol until such time as the country was ready "to fully go ethanol".

Monday, November 12, 2007

Malawi to turn new 43-metre memorial tower into tourism centre

lundi 12 novembre 2007


Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika said Sunday afternoon that his government was planning to turn a natural park area surrounding a newly opened 43-metre memorial clock tower into a recreation and tourism centre in the heart of the capital Lilongwe.

Speaking during the commissioning of the centre and commemoration of Armistice Day to mark the end of the two World Wars, Mutharika said the centre is a true expression of appreciation to those people who gave their lives to bring freedom to Africa and other parts of the world in general.

The president said his government was committed to fully honour the fallen heroes who played significant roles in the history of the country when they, under colonial master Britain, travelled to Kenya, Somaliland, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Burma to fight during the two wars.

\« This memorial centre will honour the fallen heroes of First and Second World Wars, including Malawians, who fought tirelessly and surrendered their lives to bring peace and freedom to us,\ » he said.

The 1.3 billion kwacha (US$24 million) centre will have statutes of the country’s heroes, recreation facilities and military rooms for the annual military parade that is part of Armistice Day.

Military representatives from neighbouring Zambia and Mozambique attended the event in the Malawi capital.

Malawians, then called Nyasas (from Nyasaland, as the country was known then), like their counterparts elsewhere in colonial Africa, were among those who joined hands with their colonial masters to fight in the two great wars of World War 1 from 1914 to 1918 and World War 11 from 1939 to 1945.

© APA News


Thursday, November 08, 2007

Malawi firefighters to visit St. Albans


For The Charleston Gazette

The St. Albans Fire Department will host two firefighters from an African nation later this month to help teach them modern emergency-response techniques.

Fire Chief Steve Parsons told the City Council Monday night he met the two individuals — Prescort Sailasi and Nitron Rajabn — while he was in Malawi conducting missionary work. Although he extended invitations for them to visit St. Albans, he was surprised when they were able to accept his offer by arranging a grant from an African cell phone company.

Parsons said that although their department has only six firefighters, it covers a territory roughly the size of Charleston and South Charleston combined with a population of 1.2 million people.

All of that is done with only one fire truck with an eight-section hose and a single nozzle.

Despite the lack of equipment, Parsons helped the fire department battle a chemical plant blaze he described as comparable in size to the Nitro tire fire several years ago.

He expects a great deal of culture shock when his guests arrive.

“It will literally be like a Martian coming to visit,” he said. “They’ve never been out of their state, much less their country.”

Parsons said Sailasi and Rajabn are from the township of Blantyre, which is in southern African nation of Malawi.

Besides instruction, Parsons said he hopes to be able to arrange equipment donations for the men’s department.

He said he can easily find material to be donated, but is having difficulty arranging funding for transporting it to Africa.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Paper says Muluzi has pledged to fund Nujoma’s trial
by NATION
REPORTER (11/3/2007)

photograph by A publication by Namibia’s ruling party says former president Bakili Muluzi pledged to bankroll Sam Nujoma’s trial to the tune of over K1 million (R50,000) but Sam Mpasu, spokesperson for Muluzi, said he was not aware of the pledge.
Namibia Today, an official publication of the South West Africa Peoples Organisation (Swapo) which is chaired by Nujoma, said in its issues of August 24, and 30 that Muluzi and his senior special advisor (name withheld), pledged to pay R100,000 (K2,100,000) in legal fees to help fight a case in which a human rights NGO, Nation Society for Human Rights (NSHR), reportedly dragged Nujoma to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on crimes related to the missing of political activists.
The paper claimed that Muluzi pledged to contribute R50,000 in legal fees and the other half would come from his senior special advisor
When contacted to shed light on the issue, Mpasu said: “What we know is that Nujoma and Muluzi were in good terms when both of them were presidents and their relationship is still there. In fact, UDF and Swapo are sister parties, they invite us when they have their conventions. We also invite them when we hold ours. We learn from each other.”
Mpasu said he knows the person mentioned in Namibia Today as Muluzi’s senior special advisor as an Asian-Malawian currently based in the United Kingdom but added that it would be difficult to comment on the alleged pledge because he only heard from the media that a human rights organisation plans to take Nujoma to the ICC.
We were unable to speak to the senior special advisor.
But reads the story: “Former Malawian president Dr. Bakili Muluzi and his Senior Special Advisor...have jointly pledged to pay R100,000 towards legal fees to fight a submission by the Nation Society for Human Rights (NSHR) to the International Criminal Court (ICC) where it wants founding president Sam Nujoma and three other Namibian leaders to be tried for people who went missing under the care of Swapo during the struggle and shortly after independence.”
The paper quotes Muluzi’s senior special advisor as having stated that Muluzi was disappointed with Phil Ya Nangoloh’s conduct, the executive director of NSHR.
“In the most unlikely event that the neo imperialists and eurocentrics succeed in getting the International Criminal Court to take up the matter, I have been asked to inform you that Dr. Muluzi will donate R50,000 towards legal fees, and I shall donate an additional R50,000,” Nambia Today quotes Muluzi’s senior special advisor as saying.
In an email response from Windhoek on the matter on Tuesday, Nangoloh said that they are worried with Muluzi’s gesture as reported in Swapo’s official publication in Namibia.
Said Nangoloh: “We deem Mr. Bakili Muluzi’s gesture in a very serious light. Firstly, it is not appropriate nor is it honourable for him to put his nose into Namibia’s domestic affairs however the close friendship between him and Nujoma.”
Nangoloh said it is surprising that Muluzi made such a pledge when there is a lot of suffering in Malawi, even among members of his own political party.
“Mr. Nujoma himself has not contributed a cent to his own defence. We believe that Muluzi and Nujoma have secretly planned to return to power during the next elections in both countries, and this, we suspect, was the main reason Muluzi paid a mysterious visit to Namibia in March this year and he was Nujoma’s guest of honour,” The email response reads in part.
NSHR, a well known human rights organisation in Namibia, last year in November submitted a report to ICC implicating Nujoma, former defence minister Errki Nghimtina, former chief of the defence forces, retired Lt. General Salomon Hawala and Colonel Thomas Shunya to be tried on the role they played in the missing of political activists during the country’s independence struggle and immediately after independence.
NSHR on its official website details in 15 sections their report to the ICC on the missing people and Nujoma’s alleged role.
Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) Executive Director Undule Mwakasungura on Wednesday said he was aware of the issue, having been briefed by Namibian human rights organisations.
“We are trying to see how we can come up with a campaign against Muluzi’s intentions. There is no way Muluzi should be supporting a person who is being accused of various human rights violations,” Mwakasungura said.
According to Mwakasungura, Muluzi and Nujoma are birds of the same feather as both of them want to bounce back to power.
Mwakasungura urged Muluzi against supporting Nujoma financially for a trial on human rights violations even if they share the same ambitions, saying doing so would be morally wrong.
ICC is an independent, permanent court that tries persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The ICC is based on a treaty signed by 105 countries in the world.
The ICC is a court of last resort and does not act if a case is investigated or prosecuted by a national judicial system unless the national proceedings are not genuine.

Malawi cuts bank rate to 15 pct as inflation eases

Thu 1 Nov 2007, 13:37 GMT
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By Mabvuto Banda

LILONGWE (Reuters) - Malawi's central bank cut its bank rate to 15 percent from 17.5 percent on Thursday in response to sliding inflation.

"The monetary policy committee observed with satisfaction that all macroeconomic indicators continue to perform well, and the reduction in the bank rate was necessary to sustain growth," central bank spokeswoman Miriam Wemba said.

The cut follows a reduction from 20 percent in August, and comes in the wake of good maize harvests over the past two years that have helped drive down food inflation.

Headline inflation in the southern African nation eased to single digits for the first time in four years in January and has continued to slow, reaching 7.1 percent year-on-year in September.

Malawi's economy is growing rapidly, buoyed by the agricultural sector.

The International Monetary Fund last month upped its forecast for growth in 2007 to 7.5 percent from 5.6 percent.

Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe said he expected more rate cuts with inflation set to continue easing.

"With the latest inflation for September now at 7.1 percent, revised strong growth of 7.5 percent for this year, I mean the bank rates had to be reduced," he told Reuters.

"We expect further cuts if we continue at this pace."

Analysts welcomed the move.

"It's a timely move and I think it will greatly help in accelerating the pace of lending by the financial system," said Andy Kuigomba, Head of Treasury at Nedbank, one of the leading banks in the country.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Malawi ex-minister charged over 14-year-old corruption allegation

BLANTYRE (AFP) — A former Malawian minister who was also a top aide to retired President Bakili Muluzi has finally been charged with three counts of abuse of office dating back 14 years, court officials said Friday.

Former education minister Sam Mpasu had a case to answer and should "defend himself" on November 27 said a spokesman for the magistrates' court in the capital Lilongwe.

He is accused of having flouted government procedures in procuring millions of notebooks and pencils from a British firm.

Mpasu, who survived initial corruption probes on the same matter, is suspected of having received kickbacks in return for awarding the tender to the company.

The materials were meant for a free primary school programme introduced in 1994 by the Muluzi administration.

A former speaker of parliament, Mpasu has always denied any wrong-doing.

He says he used his powers as minister to fast-track the procurement of the notebooks and teaching aids to coincide with the introduction of free primary school education.

The public prosecutions office in the poor southern African nation has said about 92 million dollars (64 million euros) was lost through fraud and corruption from 1994 to 2004, when Muluzi was in power.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

How rich Africa could beat poverty Print E-mail

Image
Photo by: Frederick Onyango
An elderly woman and a young girl wait for relief food in Marsabit district in Kenya. African resources do not create new wealth in Africa because they are not processed on the continent, but are shipped to the industrialised countries in raw form.

October 26, 2007:
Africa is not a poor continent. Rather it is the people who are. The continent has the largest world deposits of diamonds, gold, coal, copper and manganese. It has large deposits of minerals, huge reserves of crude oil and natural gas and vast forests, fisheries and land for agriculture and cattle ranching.

Africans rank among the poorest in the world in the midst of plenty for three main reasons. First, since the early days of colonialism, there has been incessant plunder and exploitation of Africa’s resources by the developed world to the detriment of economic development in Africa.

Second, there is deliberate marginalisation of Africa in global financing, foreign direct investment and access to science and technological innovation that could have created new wealth for Africa.

In other words, African resources do not create new wealth or employment in Africa because they are not processed on the continent but are shipped to the industrialised countries in raw form.

And finally, most African governments have, so far, not taken concrete action to ensure that we change globalisation system in our favour.

We have not developed home grown strategies to deal with our specific situations. In most cases, we have depended on “surrogate economists” to advise us and ended up with wrong diagnoses, wrong prescriptions and hence wrong results.

Africa must agree on economic strategies and technological innovations that are tailored to respond to the challenges of poverty alleviation and help to bridge the “technology divide” between industrialised and developing nations.

These measures must prevent the existence of extreme poverty amidst abundant wealth; hunger and malnutrition amidst food surpluses; diseases and death amidst breakthroughs in medical and health sciences; and ignorance amidst phenomenal advancements in information and communications technology.

Malawi is responding to the challenge of poverty through a variety of measures including implementing its home grown strategies and taking full ownership of its economy and destiny.

During the past three years, Malawi has beaten all odds and introduced its own “Green Revolution”. It has implemented a successful agricultural subsidy programme that enabled the country to move from chronic food shortages, famine and malnutrition, to huge food surpluses.

As a result, Malawi has independently been rated among the 12 best managed countries in Africa.

The country has also moved from rampant corruption to a well-managed economy with a high rate of economic growth; and it has empowered the poor urban and rural communities through affordable loans and public works programmes.

Malawi is meeting the challenge of poverty eradication through the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) that aims to provide a new window of opportunity for the Government, the private sector and the donor community, to combine forces towards achieving sustainable economic growth and to alleviate poverty.

The Government has also decided to have a holistic policy framework that combines the management of consumption and public expenditure with a sound structure of production, manufacturing and income generation.

This not only takes care of the supply side of the economy through application of new technologies, but also changes the colonial economic framework under which we “produced what we did not consume and consumed what we did not produce”.

The Government has decided that to effectively reduce poverty, the Malawi economy must grow at a minimum annual rate of six per cent.

To achieve this, the MGDS has six key “priorities within priorities” that we know can pull the country out of the “poverty trap”.

The index has (1) agriculture and food security; (2) irrigation and water development; (3) transport and communications infrastructure; (4) energy and power development; (5) integrated rural development; and (6) management and prevention of HIV/Aids pandemic. We have also placed high priority on public health and education, especially science and technology.

We have given priority to investment in physical and social infrastructures such as roads, energy, telephone and communication networks, public health, education...to increase industrial production, manufacturing and trade.

As an integral part of this strategy, we have in place the Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP) that aims to create a favourable and enabling environment for local enterprises to invest and create new wealth for FDI to flow into Malawi.

The new strategy has resulted in the growth of the Malawi economy from a mere two per cent in 2004 to a phenomenal 8.5 per cent in 2006.

To break the “vicious cycle of poverty,” Malawi will not take a posture of “business as usual” but has set up clear “performance criteria” in the national budget to evaluate its actions.

To enhance the performance of our economy, Malawi decided to shift from preparing “expenditure budgets”, to preparing “growth budgets” to provide the nation with a new economic vision, a sound policy for resources mobilisation, and the best practices in science and technology.

This will help transform Malawi from a predominantly importing and consuming economy to a manufacturing and exporting one. Nonetheless, the industrial nations must agree to change their mindset.

In this regard, let me draw your attention to the remarks made by the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who in his report to the House of Commons on the Group of Eight Summit said “the wealthy nations of the world simply cannot any longer ask the developing world to stand on its own feet but shut out the very access to our markets necessary for them to do so”. The world is one and Africa is part of it.

Industrialised nations must work to enable African countries to participate effectively in global negotiations to benefit from technology, global finance, international trade and prosperity.

The continued ruthless plunder and exploitation of Africa’s minerals is no longer a viable option for a new world order. Equity, justice and fairness must be adhered to in all negotiations involving the rich and poor nations.

The more Africa can acquire technology for industrialisation and agro-processing, the more the continent will contribute positively to global prosperity.
An economically and politically stronger Africa is a better trading partner for the industrialised countries than a weaker one.

Wa Mutharika is President of the Republic of Malawi

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Not for our Muluzi to learn from

BY Steven Nhlane10:04:46 - 24 October 2007

This column has never been mean when it comes to giving praise where it is due. Among those who can bear testimony to this include Kalonga Gawa Undi on the recent Kulamba ceremony in Zambia and the elevations of Chikulamayembe and Kyungu chieftaincies to the status of Paramount Chief as well as Kaluluma to Senior Chief. But former Mozambican President Joachim Chissano's achievement for winning the Africa Leadership Prize does not draw any comparisons. The prize goes with a whopping U$5million (K700million) to be given out over a period of 10 years. There are other prizes. These include U$200,000 (K28million) annually for life, thereafter, and U$200,000 (K28million) a year for 10 years towards public interest activities and good causes.Chissano has beaten the likes of South Africa's Nelson Mandela, Botswana's Ketumile Masire, Sam Nujoma of Namibia, Tanzania's Ali Hassan Mwinyi and Benjamin Mkapa, Daniel arap Moi of Kenya, and of course, our own Bakili Muluzi. Chissano, we are told, won the prize for his achievements in bringing peace, reconciliation, stable democracy and economic progress to his country as well as for not seeking a third term which the constitution allowed.It is very tempting for many Malawians to remind our own former president, Bakili Muluzi, that what Chissano has achieved, he too could have achieved, in fact with much ease, considering that Malawi was much better off in many ways than Mozambique in 1994 when our Muluzi became president of this country. The main difference is that when Chissano took over the reins of power, he focused his fight on poverty brought about by the ravages of a 16-year-war, and the need to bring about democracy in his country. On the other hand, when our Muluzi wrested power from Kamuzu, he expended most of his energies on fighting political enemies rather than poverty. The other difference between the two former presidents is that when Chissano saw that he had done enough for his country, he voluntarily stepped down so that others waiting in the wings, could continue to build on the strong foundation he had laid down; a virtue that continues to elude our Muluzi to this day. And so we can say without fear of contradiction that as things are now, our Muluzi is far past the learning process, because he will not want to contradict himself now by bowing out of the presidential race after already declaring himself a candidate.By his own declaration---if what a BBC website report is anything to go by, he does not want to be an ex-president, meaning that should he be allowed to contest and then win the presidency, he will want to rule this country for life. It does not occur to him that there are over 14 million Malawians, many of whom are better qualified to rule this country than him. True, Chissano is a role-model not just for Africa but for the rest of the world, but his achievements are not for our Muluzi to learn from.
Chissano’s win, lesson for Muluzi

BY The Daily Times14:09:54 - 23 October 2007

That Mozambique’s former president Joachim Chissano is the first laureate of the inaugural Mo Ibrahim award only serves as a timely lesson to our own former president Bakili Muluzi who refuses to retire from active politics, but instead is armed to the teeth to bounce back to presidency.One could only imagine how Muluzi would convey his congratulatory message to his buddy Chissano.The Mozambique ex-president track record is an illustrious one. He came to power in 1986 upon the death of Mozambique’s first president Samora Machel. Having steered the country to peace, stability and democracy and strong economic progress, he voluntarily stepped down from power in 2004, despite the country’s constitution allowing him to run for a third term in office.Today, Chissano wallows in the aura of a real elder statesman, honouring invitations from organisations like the United Nations to be either an envoy or a peace negotiator. The wads of dollars he will get from the prestigious award only add to an already comfortable retired president.But to Muluzi, this entire tale does not count an inch.Here is a man who unsuccessfully manoeuvred for a third term in office by trying to amend the constitution of the country that barred him from doing so.He did not stop at that, but went further to implement his Plan B by imposing a successor on his party, eventually on all Malawians, whom he wanted to remote-control when out of office. Having failed on his Plan B, he is now decisively geared to execute Plan C, which is to stand for presidency again in 2009 and remove Mutharika from power at all cost. His party seems powerless to stop him in his tracks. Honestly, this is a terribly sad tale for an ex-president.With such a tale, the country should in the meantime forget about producing an elderly statesman like Chissano that we could all be proud of.With the record Muluzi holds after handing over power to his successor, who could assign him as a peace negotiator elsewhere, let alone an envoy?How proud would the United Democratic Front party and the entire country be if Muluzi had won the award? This country cries for an elder statesman who everybody would look up to in times of political impasses like the recently ended budget saga.This country desperately needs a peace ambassador that the UN could send to mediate between warring factions elsewhere. Unfortunately, the sole candidate for the post lives in his own world and believes completely otherwise. He has turned his retirement home into a campaign centre for his comeback and is geared to spend every penny in his kitty to fulfil his ambition.We only wish Chissano’s win could pump sense into Muluzi’s head for him to appreciate that not all is lost after relinquishing power to a successor.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Mozambique's Chissano wins Africa leadership prize

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Mozambique's former President Joaquim Chissano, who stood aside after leading his country to peace and democracy after years of civil war, won the first Mo Ibrahim Prize for African leadership on Monday.

The $5-million prize -- the world's largest individual award -- was presented by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan at a ceremony in London's city hall.

Chissano, a former revolutionary who fought Portuguese colonial rule, served as president of the southern African country from 1986 until 2005, winning praise for his pragmatic policies in a nation once one of the poorest in the world.

He won acclaim for stepping aside after 18 years in power, when he could have stood for a further five-year term, saying he wanted to create political space for democracy to thrive.

"President Chissano's achievements in bringing peace, reconciliation, stable democracy and economic progress to his country greatly impressed the committee," Annan said in awarding the prize.

"So, too, did his decision to step down without seeking the third term the constitution allowed."

Chissano, celebrating his 58th birthday on Monday, was not in London to receive the award.

He was in the South Sudanese capital, Juba, on a mission as U.N. special envoy to peace talks between the Ugandan government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.

Chissano has also been working with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which issued war crimes indictments against five top LRA commanders in 2005.

GOOD GOVERNANCE

Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born telecommunications entrepreneur, established the prize as a way of encouraging good governance in a continent blighted by corruption and a frequently loose adherence to democratic principles.

Annan said he expected the award to make African leaders more aware of their records on human rights and democracy.

"The prize celebrates more than just good governance," said Annan, who stepped down as U.N. head at the end of 2006.

"It celebrates leadership. The ability to formulate a vision and to convince others of that vision; and the skill of giving courage to society to accept difficult changes in order to make possible a longer term aspiration for a better, fairer future."

Winners will receive $5 million over 10 years and then $200,000 a year for life, with another $200,000 annually for "good causes" they espouse.

In contrast, the Nobel Peace Prize, which Annan won jointly with the United Nations in 2001, pays $1.5 million.

Chissano, a former leader in the Frelimo guerrilla movement which fought Portuguese rule in Mozambique for decades until independence in 1975, was only the second person to serve as president of Mozambique.

He succeeded liberation hero Samora Machel, who was killed in a plane crash in 1986.

A quiet man, Chissano showed his negotiating skills when he concluded a peace deal in 1992 to end a 16-year war with Renamo rebels, laying the foundation for his country's first multi-party elections in 1994.

While highly regarded for the role he played in reviving Mozambique's economy, he has areceived criticism for his close friendship with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Malawi says Aug inflation eases to 7.2 pct year-on-year

Tue 25 Sep 2007, 10:05 GMT
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By Frank Phiri

BLANTYRE (Reuters) - Malawi's headline inflation eased to 7.2 percent year-on-year in August, compared to 7.4 percent in the previous month, largely due to lower food prices, its National Statistical Office said on Tuesday.

Food inflation, which accounts for 58.1 of the impoverished impoverished southern African nation's Consumer Price Index (CPI), dipped to 6.6 percent from 6.7 percent in July, the NSO said.

Malawi has had a bumper maize crop this year, helping to lower the cost of the key staple. The country had a surplus of 1.3 million metric tonnes of maize in the 2006/2007 growing season, more than three times the surplus in the previous year.

Economic analysts, however, expressed concerns that rising fuel prices could force Malawians to dig deeper into their pockets to cover higher transport and farming costs, reversing the gains made on the inflation front.

Malawi, a landlocked nation with no oil refineries, is a net importer of fuel. The government announced last week a sharp increase in the price of petrol, blaming the move on the rising price of oil on international markets.

"The fuel hike will hit farmers because it is peak time for agriculture when inputs need to be transported to farms and produce to markets to fetch money for buying the inputs," Andrew Kumbatira, an economic analyst in Malawi, said.

The Reserve Bank of Malawi has eased the pinch with a more accommodative monetary policy. Last month the central bank cut its bank rate to 17.5 percent from 20 percent, citing the improved outlook for inflation and other economic fundamentals.

Muluzi disqualified from Mo award
BY GERALD NAMWAZA
10:06:29 - 24 September 2007

FORMER president Bakili Muluzi has disqualified himself from the Mo Ibrahim governance award following his interest to bounce back into politics after serving the country for 10 years.

The award, launched in October last year, carries a US$5 million prize and targets African heads of state who deliver on security, health, education and economic development to their constituents.

Among those short-listed for the award this year are Muluzi, Joachim Chissano of Mozambique and Daniel arap Moi of Kenya.

“It is [the award] available only to a president who democratically transfers power to his successor and so I doubt if Muluzi, who now wants to bounce back to power, would qualify,” said a UDF politician who is unhappy with Muluzi’s intended comeback.

He said officials from the Ibrahim Mo Foundation were scheduled to come in the country next month to assess the suitability of Muluzi for the award.

But UDF spokesperson Sam Mpasu Sunday said he was not aware of Muluzi’s nomination for the good governance award, but added that all former presidents qualify for the award.

“I don’t know if Muluzi was nominated but what I know is that one does not have to be nominated for the award. It is just automatic if one was a former head of state,” Mpasu said.

But following Muluzi’s interest to come back to power after incumbent President Bingu wa Mutharika ditched the party that sponsored him, analysts doubt if Muluzi stands a chance for the continental award.

Recipients of the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership will get US$500,000 a year in their first 10 years out of office, and US$200,000 a year for the rest of their lives.

The prize will be the world’s most generous award, according to the foundation.

2007 Global Creative Leadership Summit Gathers Leading Minds to Develop New Platform for Globalization

European Commission President Barroso, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Prime Minister Balkenende of the Netherlands, Nobel-Laureate Eric Kandel, MIT Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte, Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, and artist Jeff Koons help devise cross-disciplinary solutions to 21st century critical issues.

New York, NY (PRWEB) September 29, 2007 -- The second annual Global Creative Leadership Summit kicked off Sunday, bringing together the world's leading minds in government, business, the arts, media, science, and technology to identify new ways for individuals, organizations, and nations to develop solutions to meet the sprawling new demands of the 21st century. Over three days at the Metropolitan Club in Midtown Manhattan, the conference established a new, cross-disciplinary platform for addressing the broad and far-reaching challenges of globalization and cultural diversification, which experts agreed has blurred the borders between superpowers and emerging and developing nations.

Louise T. Blouin MacBain, founder and chair of the Louise T. Blouin Foundation, which presented the Summit, said in her summary of the event, "Culture is at the heart of every global conflict and every global opportunity today. There is friction between our ideas, but at this summit the great thinkers, political and business leaders, scientists, and artists came up with what we need to create a smoother path forward: concrete action, and knowledge to share with others."

Because we share a common purpose of transforming the challenges and threats of our new global culture into unprecedented opportunities and successes.
As part of a concerted effort to move quickly from the Summit's discussions and proposals to real-world implementation, Ms. MacBain announced that in addition to a report on the Summit's findings to be prepared and disseminated, a number of initiatives would be launched shortly to turn talk into action. These next steps include:

- Development of a new initiative towards a Global Rule of Law, developed in collaboration with delegates such as David Boies, which will signify a renewed commitment to upholding certain universal principles. Signing on to the Global Rule of Law would in turn inspire increased investor confidence to begin or boost relationships with these emerging economies.
- Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of the MIT Media Lab, announced that as part of the "Give 1 Get 1" program of his "One Laptop Per Child" initiative, from November 12 to November 26 for $399 any American or Canadian buyer would send one energy-efficient laptop to a child in a developing nation in addition to receiving a laptop themselves.
- The Louise T Blouin Foundation will create an internet platform to help to co-ordinate existing efforts from NGOs, companies, global agencies. "Project LINK" will allow information to be shared more efficiently between organizations and encourage joined-up thinking, as well as providing a mechanism for individuals to make financial donations in different areas. As one example, to meet the need for increased numbers of toilets in Tanzania, Project LINK will aim to deliver both through local suppliers, as well as international funders.
- Online activity will include a project will also include a presence on the "Second Life" community website, where experts and international agencies can interact directly with users.
- In a novel approach to addressing climate change, the Foundation will advocate for a "footprint tax," which would place a monetary value (and, potentially, a penalty) on carbon usage by all individuals, companies, and nations.
- The Foundation will assemble a series of potential scenarios called "What If?" highlighting the evolution of current threats if they are left unaddressed, such as climate change, the proliferation of biological and chemical weapons, poverty, and health-care access.

The Summit's diversity of voices included several heads of state, many of whom were in New York City to also attend the United Nations General Assembly. They included European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso's closing remarks regarding the evolving definition of political leadership in a global society, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's insights regarding the effects of globalization on security issues, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands' thoughts on the future of education, President Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi's address on poverty and the potential for innovation and technology in Africa, President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson of Iceland's remarks on motivating citizens and companies to take action on the issue of climate change, and President Stjepan Mesic of Croatia's thoughts on the parallels of the Yugoslavian conflict and Iraq and other possible future conflicts.

The discussion sessions were highly dynamic, matching experts from multiple fields to address an issue. In a discussion about creativity and contemporary challenges, titled "Globalizing the Mind," Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales said technology is facilitating innovative connections and creative collaborations around the world, and that his young daughter is growing up "bathed in information." Columbia University professor and 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winner Eric Kandel added that projects like Wikipedia are crucial to forging understanding among disparate cultures, which are learning to accept others' values in the global landscape. The panel also included artist Jeff Koons, neurologist Oliver Sacks, Genesis Foundation Founder John Studzinski, and Royal Institution of Great Britain Director Susan Greenfield.

Dr. Kandel was one of several experts from the field of science, particularly neurology, to participate in the Summit, where one of the recurring themes was how scientists can contribute to cultural and political solutions on the global landscape. The topic of empathy and how historically distinct or distant cultures can adapt to living and working closely together was especially resonant at the Summit. Oliver Sacks, for example, joined Dr. Kandel at "Globalizing the Mind;" John Gage of Sun Microsystems spoke on the "Spotlight on Africa" opening panel; Howard Gardner, Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education discussed how to change people's minds about climate change; Joseph LeDoux, Professor of Neuroscience at New York University, addressed social tensions at "Islam & Globalization" and psychology and cultural identity at "Inside the Brain of the Terrorist;" and Richard Silberstein talked about a neural basis for creativity.

Paying close attention to local cultures and values was the focus of a discussion among corporate executives regarding growing global brands, which included fashion designer Calvin Klein. President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana appeared at the panel, titled "Markets without Borders," where he asked the CEOs for advice in attracting capital investment to his nation. Mark Angelson, former CEO of RR Donnelley, responded by listing three priorities he looks for: 1) public-sector integrity; 2) strong existing or planned infrastructure; and 3) government investment and training to create a skilled workforce.

A key Summit theme was that national borders have been blurred by globalization in the realms of business, the arts, science, and urban development. Discussing NATO's recent transformation as a political-military alliance in his keynote speech, Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said, "Borders don't buy you security, deterrence is finished as a defense, and distance is no longer a defense."

In another panel earlier on Monday, titled "Trade Saves," John Eatwell, President of Queen's College, Cambridge University, noted that globalization has created a sense of interdependence among nations that acknowledges that "trade in the macro sense is not a zero-sum game, with advantages for the winners," and that "trade in the micro sense has challenges." Robert Hormats, Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs, added that trade and global commerce have the potential to reduce tensions that lead to violent conflict--"trade is aid," as many panelists repeated. "Trade doesn't create development--it creates an environment where development and growth are more possible," Hormats said. But, he continued, without local protections for labor, the environment, and human rights, trade can create a "lopsided system."

Louise T. Blouin MacBain announced several steps to maximize the Summit's real-world effectiveness in the coming year, including preparing a white paper that will be distributed to the United Nations, African Union, European Union, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and NATO. She emphasized the importance of utilizing the Internet's global, democratic reach to share the concepts and best practices that were formulated at the Summit with partners around the world. Ms. MacBain will also travel to developing and emerging nations in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia to guide those ideas toward concrete implementation.

Citing innovations that gained momentum at the event such as Nicholas Negroponte's "Give 1 Get 1" program, which aims to provide children in developing countries with low-cost laptop computers, and David Boies' Global Rule of Law concept, Ms. MacBain assured delegates that the Summit's work was not limited to its three-day conference. "The wonderful benefit of gathering so many great international minds is that the Summit's work can continue every day going forward, in every corner of the world," she said. "Because we share a common purpose of transforming the challenges and threats of our new global culture into unprecedented opportunities and successes."

Friday, August 24, 2007

IMF hails Malawi on aid usage
By DANIEL NYIRENDA - 24 August 2007 - 08:35:05

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) senior official has hailed Malawi for being a good user of foreign aid inflows.

Benedicte Christensen, Deputy Director of the African Department, said Malawi has plans for using additional donor inflows.

Briefing members of international NGOs early this month through a conference call, he singled out the Sector Wide Approach (SWAp), a health sector donor supported programme aimed at ensuring that the health sector has enough resources to avoid brain drain.

He said the sectoral programme was particularly developed in Malawi such that there are advance plans for how money could be spent.

Christensen said the country’s PRGF-supported programme has a wage bill ceiling that is a performance criterion.

IMF employs wage bill ceilings in a number of Fund-supported programmes, especially when wage dynamics threaten macroeconomic stability and when a country's budgetary and other control systems are weak.

According to Christensen, an adjuster applies to that wage bill ceiling and would allow for additional expenditure under the SWAp programme, in case additional donor funds emerge during the programme period.

“In other countries cases, this is not the case. As you probably know, the health sector is one of the weaker ones in many of the African countries. It is weak on administrative capacity, on the ability for planning.

“So, therefore, if there is a good case with good plans for spending additional aid money, it can be spent, and that is the case in Malawi. In other cases where we don't have that well-developed sectoral programme, we have reviews every six months and those reviews under the programmes do allow us to look at the spending, also social spending,” Christensen says in a transcript posted on IMF website.

During the conference call, several IMF officials emphasised on the need for low-income countries to make full use of aid inflows through increased spending and absorption.

Mark Plant, Deputy Director of Policy Development and Review Department, said the IMF board reaffirmed that the Fund needs to work with low-income countries to create an enabling environment for full use of aid.

“When we talk about spending, we are talking about the government making room for increased spending as a result of the inflow of aid, so that the government budget expenditures on health and education, and whatever the aid is going to be used for, increases,” Plant said.

The absorption, Plant said, is when aid given to a country effects a transfer of real resources, real goods and services from abroad into the country- drugs to combat malaria or HIV/Aids or it could be that the foreign exchange is used through the private sector, so the private sector then increases its absorption of foreign resources.

He said in that way aid could be helpful, when resources move from abroad into the low-income country.

Sanjeev Gupta, Senior Advisor in the Fiscal Affairs Department said effective use of aid inflows might require some aid to be saved temporarily, but there are limits to how much a country can save.

“Donors have an interest in seeing that resources they transfer are, in fact, used for intended purposes, and there are domestic political pressures in aid-receiving countries to spend aid to improve economic and social outcomes,” Gupta said.
Mixed reactions in Africa’s anti-graft fight PDF Print E-mail
Written by Joseph Kayira
Friday, 24 August 2007
CorruptionAnti-corruption campaigns are increasingly geared towards silencing leaders' political opponents, say accused...

Cases in countries such as South Africa, Malawi, Zambia and Nigeria show that in the course of removing the rot from the public service and instilling fiscal discipline instilling fiscal discipline, African leaders will apply all sorts of deception – be it politics or petty jealousies.

In June 2005, South African President Thabo Mbeki sacked his deputy of six years Jacob Zuma after his former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik was convicted on fraud and corruption charges.

Zuma has since been charged with graft himself.

Apart from the graft case, the African National Congress (ANC) deputy president was saved by the courts when he was accused of raping an HIV-positive family friend.

The verdict saved Zuma who was once seen as Mbeki’s successor in 2009 from political oblivion.

He remains a widely popular figure but despite this broad appeal the rape case and the pending graft charges, will make it almost impossible for Zuma to recover his former prominence.

“I think the judicial proceedings have been beyond reproach, but whether this means that Zuma political future is still intact is still in question,” said Ebrahim Fakir, senior researcher at the Centre for Policy Studies at the time.

Zuma an ethnic Zulu from Kwazulu-Natal province has been instrumental in mediating for peace between the ANC and the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party at the height of violence in the 1990s.

His position in the ANC strikes a tribal balance in an organization dominated by leaders from the Xhosa tribe of freedom icon Nelson Mandela and Mbeki.

Further north in Malawi, President Bingu wa Mutharika has been touted as an economic engineer who is poised to transform the economy of the tiny southern Africa nation.

The IMF and the World Bank, which act as catalysts for donors to release funds for development are pleased with Mutharika’s economic programme.

He has made headlines the world over for his tough stance on corruption and he describes it as a cancer that is affecting prospects for economic growth.

“It is appalling that some Malawians engage in corrupt practices as a way of promoting their personal selfish economic and financial gains at the expense of national goals and aspirations,” explains Mutharika.

Determined to fight corruption in all its forms, Mutharika has pounced on former president Bakili Muluzi who he accuses of plundering public resources in the 10 years he was in office from 1994 to 2004.

Vice President Cassim Chilumpha too has not been spared the rod. He is currently under house arrest for plotting to assassinate Mutharika.

Government has also shown interest to pursue “the education scam case” in which millions of dollars went down the drain through dubious contracts when Chilumpha was Minister of Education in the Muluzi administration.

While both Chilumpha and Muluzi acknowledge that corruption hinders economic growth because it increases the cost of economic transactions including investment processes they deny any wrongdoing and feel they are victims of a political witch hunt disguised as a fight against corruption.

Just next door in Zambia, former president Frederick Chiluba accused of siphoning $488,000 while in office.

As soon as he assumed the high office, his handpicked successor Levy Mwanawasa launched an anti graft campaign which has seen the ex-president and his associates answering charges on corruption.

Just last week, a British judge found Chiluba and his associates guilty of siphoning $46m from the treasury.

Chiluba, whose wife will also be tried in July for buying properties with money stolen from state coffers, says the court order “bordered on racism”.

Following the ruling Chiluba is personally expected to return $41m.

Information and broadcasting minister, Mike Mlongoti says Chiluba must return the money or his property will be seized.

“The attorney general would file papers to issue a seizure notice for the funds which were frozen in 2006 in Britain, Belgium and other parts of the world,” he said.

In West Africa, outgoing Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has had a sour relationship with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar all in the name of fighting corruption.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) accused Abubakar of diverting public funds and that he should be indicted for corruption.

Obasanjo wanted the Senate to exploit a clause in the Constitution which says that a person cannot qualify for elections as president if indicted for fraud.

Apparently, it was a calculated move to block Abubakar from contesting the presidential poll, recently won by ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Yar’Adua.

The accusations were part of a long running battle for supremacy in the PDP. Abubakar, who was saved by the courts, accused Obasanjo of wishing to hold on to power beyond his constitutional mandate.

Obasanjo steps down after failing to successfully stay for a third term. He wanted another term of office fearing his policy of economic reform could be reversed after he retires.

Such is the state of affairs in African democracies and it remains to be seen if leaders will rise above politics in their quest to root out corruption in all its forms.