AT TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY, SAN MARCOS ,TITLE: TRANSFORMATION PARTNERSHIPS IN MALAWI’
THURSDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER, 2013
SALUTATIONS
It is an honor for me to deliver the Grosvenor Center’s 15th Annual Distinguished Lecture here at the Texas State University. I am deeply grateful for the welcome that I have received. Your warmth and hospitality are true of the motto of the State of Texas – Friendship. Believe you me, I have felt the real essence of friendship in this State of Texas. Thank you.
Let me start by extending my appreciation to the co-sponsors of my lecture; the Gilbert M. Grosvenor Centre for Geographic Education, The Meadows Centre for Water and the Environment and the 100 x Development. I am grateful for the invitation that I deliver this lecture at this University which is renowned for its academic rigor, world class research and award winning professors.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen;
I have chosen to speak on ‘Transformation Partnerships in Malawi’ because I believe that most of the problems of our time, would be best addressed through collective action and better modeled relationships that are mutually beneficial and empowering.
My working definition for Transformation Partnerships is that these are partnerships that help to drive positive and long lasting change and are based on shared vision among multiple stakeholders. I for one believes that new patterns of development must be based on partnerships shaped by common interests, and shared purposes. If we are serious about achieving a better and fairer world, we cannot afford to do business as usual. We have to challenge the status quo, change the rules of the game, and seek more effective ways of engaging with each other.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, I will start by being personal, and share my story. Thirty years of working with grass roots communities in my country Malawi, being a champion for social justice, a women’s rights activist and voice for the poor has brought me valuable firsthand knowledge about partnerships. I will cite a few lessons that have had a lasting impact on my life till today and helped to shape my presidency
Lesson one is: through working together, we can achieve more. I remember when I founded the National Association of Business Women in 1990 we were only a handful of women pioneers. However, we were determined to overcome the structural barriers that marginalized women in business, and so we combined our unique skills and worked together to make inroads into the male dominated business world. Our determination and collective efforts paid off beyond our imagination, and the Association grew from ten women to fifty thousand women, producing some of Malawi first women millionaires!
Ladies and Gentlemen, my second lesson is: poor people are not sitting back, waiting for hand outs; poor as they are, they want to be engaged in finding solutions to their problems. I recall going out in the most remote districts of Malawi and finding women who literally had no money but were rich in hope, determination and ideas. I worked with these women to grow their ideas and hope, helped them access micro credit, and in no time they were growing their own businesses, controlling their own income, and had moved from not knowing where the next meal would come from to being providers in their homes. I just so happened to be there to help them access opportunities for income generation but they were not passive recipients of ideas from an external person.
The third and last lesson I want to share is that local communities and institutions know their situation better than external players. I have therefore always encouraged foreign organizations to draw on the knowledge of local institutions when they design and implement their projects and programs. Too often the result of not doing this is that resources are spent on the wrong priorities, and sometimes the tragedy is that these arrangements weaken the local systems and do not aid sustenance of action. When foreign organizations leave the country, local institutions still do not have the capacity to continue with work started.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, I carried these lessons with me to the Presidency when I took office in April last year. Since then I have seen that my Government’s and my own most successful work has been done by working in partnership.
By way of background, I became President of Malawi in more or less similar circumstances like those that surrounded Texas’s own son President Lyndon Johnson in 1963. I was sworn in after the sudden death of my predecessor President Bingu wa Mutharika.
But unlike President LBJ, I took over office at a time when my country faced social, economic and political disorder. Malawi’s economy was on the verge of collapse following an extended period of economic mismanagement. This resulted in an economy that faced three years of declining GDP. In 2009 Malawi’s GDP annual growth rate was 9%, it declined to 7% in 2010, 4% in 2011, and in 2012 it had declined to 2%. The country faced severe shortages of foreign exchange due to an overvalued exchange rate, as well as inability of companies to get the foreign exchange required to import the inputs required for production, high costs of imports, and severe shortages of fuel. These economic conditions had a crippling effect on our citizens – the quality of health care and delivery of education were hugely compromised, and productivity in the private sector dwindled as most companies downsized or closed their businesses altogether
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At the same time, Malawi’s democratic values had been eroded. The previous Government had enacted retrogressive laws which gave the State excessive power; the freedom of the press was suppressed and people’s human rights and freedoms were impinged upon.
I also inherited a nation that was fractured along many lines. There was rampant nepotism, corruption, distrust among the people, and a glaring distance between the leaders and the citizens. A clear manifestation of this distance played out in tragic events of 20th July 2011, just under a year before I took office, when twenty people lost their lives after they were shot by the Police during the peaceful public protests.
If that was not enough, Malawi’s diplomatic relations with most of its regional neighbors and other Western Governments had soured. Due to serious concerns over the poor human rights record and economic governance, some development partners suspended their direct budget support to Malawi.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, by any measure I was faced with a daunting task of healing a fractured nation on many fronts. In my maiden State of the Nation Address, I spelt out my vision for Malawi which is ‘to eradicate poverty through wealth creation and economic growth’. I committed that my administration would work relentlessly towards two goals:
• Firstly, to unlock the potential of the Malawian people to regain their freedom, dignity and sense of pride and thereby give Malawi the opportunity to realize her social, political and economic freedoms;
• Secondly to drive a people’s agenda that enhances opportunities; reduces inequalities; and overcomes poverty.
It is against this call to duty that I saw transformational partnerships not as a nice to have, but as a necessity to move our country forward. Firstly, in order to rebuild the foundations to govern following a very turbulent period in Malawi’s history. And secondly, to move beyond these foundations to address some of Malawi’s most complex economic and social challenges in new and innovative ways.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
One of the very first gestures I made was to reach out across party lines and form a government made up of different political parties. I saw that unity was an important ingredient for the rapid realization of the goals I had set out to accomplish in recovering the country’s economy and the healing of our past wounds. I created the opportunities to collaborate with other political parties and to draw from our different strengths in order to develop Malawi further. I am therefore pleased, to note, that Malawi has remained unified, and that in spite of different political leaning, leaders of political parties work together in finding solutions to national issues.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, I also sought to repair Malawi’s severed relationships with other countries and development partners. I knew that Malawi is part of a global community and we cannot work in isolation. I reached out to the region and reiterated Malawi’s commitment to good neighborliness, not just for co-existence but also to achieve deeper regional integration, growth of trade prospects and to leverage on our individual strengths. I worked to restore diplomatic relations with the UK Government; I negotiated with the US Government on the resumption of the suspended Millennium Challenge Compact for Malawi. My Government also negotiated with various multilateral and bilateral agencies on their support for Malawi. I made a call for renewed relationships that are mutually beneficial and support our national priorities.
Finally, in order to deepen local ownership of our development efforts, and to generate consensus on what is important for Malawi, I convened a National Dialogue on the Economy in June 2012. I brought together government agencies, the private sector, civil society, development partners, and academia as experts and critical actors for our development.
The outcome of the dialogue was the Economic Recovery Program (the ERP), which has been the cornerstone of Malawi’s economic recovery since. The ERP focused on reforms of the monetary and fiscal policies, improvements in political governance and growth plans in Agriculture, Energy, Tourism, Infrastructure and Mining. An inclusive dialogue on the ERP was in my opinion, an important starting point of a shared economic vision for Malawi. Over the last year, through the ERP, we have moved from completing short term stabilization measures and cushioning the vulnerable from the impact of these reforms, to being in a position to focus on the long-term drivers of growth.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have said that the next phase of Malawi’s history is about poverty eradication through economic growth. My government is looking to new transformational partnerships with business to make this a reality.
As such we have carried out institutional and legal reforms to ensure that the private sector in Malawi flourishes.
The government is ensuring the predictability of the market to aid private sector growth. And we are working to the improve Malawi’s position on the World Bank Ease of Doing Business Ranking. I continue to invite the Private Sector to assess Malawi’s economic performance and to give me advice on government’s economic policies. I strongly believe that a strong private sector will in turn be a strong partner for government in addressing Malawi’s development needs. Business is indeed a powerful source of innovation and implementation power.
I have high hopes for Malawi’s membership of the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, announced by President Obama last year. Under this initiative, my government will work with the private sector and development partners to transform the agriculture sector so that the sector can make more contributions to drive our economy. We will focus on commercialization, mechanization, modernization and diversification of the sector. The government is making major policy changes to improve investment opportunities and trade. In return G8 members have identified development assistance totaling up to 493 million US Dollars to fund the country investment plans for agriculture laid out by the private sector firms. The partnership has facilitated co-creation of solutions; there is a shared vision and we are all accountable for the outcomes.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
Partnerships have proved particularly effective in helping us address some of the most pressing social issues in Malawi – including maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition.
Firstly, I will talk about maternal mortality. It is a tragedy and an irony that many women in Malawi lose their lives whilst giving birth to another life. However, in the last year, we have reduced our maternal mortality ratio from 675 women dying per 100,000 live births, by a third to 460. There is no doubt that this is still unacceptably high - 20 times higher than the US maternal mortality rate (which is 21 women dying per 100,000 live births.) But it is major progress in the right direction. We have managed this through a multi stakeholder transformational partnership between local chiefs, the private sector and development partners.
Given the scale of the challenge, one of the first things I did upon assuming office was to set up the Presidential Initiative on Maternal Health and Safe Motherhood. I have engaged the partners I mentioned earlier and we are leveraging our competencies to accelerate the reduction of maternal deaths. The Chiefs are changing negative traditional and cultural practices that lead to women’s deaths, the government is rolling out programs that enhance safe motherhood, development partners are providing the financing, and the private sector is building health infrastructure in rural areas. I am using my political platform to champion change at all levels, and mobilize more people and resources to the cause.
The safe motherhood partnership is not only increasing the number of safe births, it is having an impact on women’s lives more broadly. More women are demanding their human right to have their babies delivered by skilled birth attendants. More men are involved in child birth preparation and post natal care. And more communities are sending girls to school.
My second example is in the area of HIV/AIDS. It is a well known fact that one of the biggest scourges ravaging our families, communities and societies in Africa is the HIV/AIDS epidemic. However, as I look at the future, I am hopeful. In Malawi, we have made tremendous progress in reducing the number of new infections. About Seven million people – that is half of the country’s population, has been tested for HIV and knows their status. We have been able to put almost half a million people on life prolonging medication. And, as Secretary of State John Kerry announced in June this year on the 10th Anniversary of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Malawi is among the thirteen countries that have reached a programmatic ‘tipping point’ in their AIDS epidemic – meaning the number of annual new adult HIV infections is below the annual increase in adults on ART.
The national response to HIV and AIDS that has led to these results has been driven by a partnership of the government, private sector, development partners, civil society and faith based organizations.
Our faith based organizations have played a critical role in challenging the shame, stigma, denial, discrimination, inaction and mis-action associated with HIV and AIDS.
The government has taken bold and innovative steps in policy, for example being the first to implement a simplified, public health approach to Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission and treatment called Option B+. This option offers all pregnant women – regardless of their CD4 count or clinical staging – lifelong ART. It protects and maintains the mother’s health while providing lifelong reduction of HIV transmission to uninfected sexual partners and enhancing prevention of mother-to-child transmission in future pregnancies and Option B+ has taken Malawi closer to an HIV free generation.
Our global partners have provided steadfast support, and in this regard, I want to express my gratitude to people of the US for your contributions in Malawi’s fight against AIDS, particularly through PEPFAR and the Clinton Global Health Initiative.
We have also seen that partnerships are particularly effective in complex, multi-sector challenges like malnutrition. In many developing countries, malnutrition continues to be a major challenge because it falls “between the cracks” – it is not fully an agriculture sector problem, nor fully a health sector problem, it is both.
Malawi therefore launched the Scaling Up of Nutrition (SUN) campaign which brings together different government bodies, private sector, development partners and civil societies in comprehensive programs and advocacy to combat malnutrition and reduce stunting which is as high as 47% in children under five years.
Our current target is to halve the rate of stunting by 2016.
I am pleased to share that these efforts are already paying off. The UNICEF 2013 Progress Report on Committing to Child Survival indicates that Malawi has already reached the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 for the reduction of child deaths ahead of the 2015 deadline. The report shows that Malawi has recorded the second highest rate of reduction of child deaths among the all low income, high mortality countries, and our rates are lower than our neighbors, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Kenya.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
truly transformative partnerships tackle some of the hardest political, economic and social issues of our times head-on In my view, they are most effective when they are based on some of the key values and building blocks I have referred to and illustrated in this lecture – mutual respect, inclusiveness, boldness, and steadfast commitment, combined with a full understanding of the local context.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, I started this lecture at a personal level, went on to share my country’s experience, and I wish to conclude on my lecture on a global note. I now wish to make a call for transformational partnerships between Africa and the Western World. Our mode of partnership has been evolving. As leaders in Africa, and in the developing world, we welcome the gradual change in emphasis and tone.
The recognition that our relationships need to be multifaceted partnerships, not just instances of richer countries giving aid, and developing countries receiving it, with limited input into how it is used. Instead, Africa is increasingly talking about moving from aid to trade, from aid to investment, and about how aid can be most effectively structured to meet the needs of our people and to underpin our development. I therefore welcome what President Obama is championing that Africa and the West need partnerships that add value to each other and not extractive partnerships.
Right now, the world is talking about “Africa on the move” and African countries are “Lions on the move’’ and the continent is the new frontier for development. We, African Leaders and African citizens welcome smart and transformational partnerships, and our mantra is ‘nothing for us without us’. We want to actively engage in homegrown solutions to address Africa’s challenges.
Finally, from here I will be going to New York to address the UN General Assembly whose theme is centered on the Post-2015 development agenda., There I will also be making a case for the need to “shift” and create a new way of looking at partnerships globally. We need to develop more effective ways of working together. We all need to write the story of our transformation together. This is what I am trying to do at the local level in Malawi, but we need to find a way to translate this in how we think about development globally. I therefore welcome your partnerships in helping me realize my vision of eradicating poverty and bringing prosperity to Malawi. Transformational partnerships can make the world a better place… transformational partnerships can help us realize President Lyndon Johnson’s vision of ‘A Greater Society’.
Once again, let me thank you so much for the invitation, for listening to this lecture. Something in me tells me that I will be back here at this University… but perhaps not to deliver a lecture, but instead for something a bit more creative! I have pleasantly read an article in the New York Times that cited Texas State University as having one of the nation’s top undergraduate programs in musical theater and acting….So maybe it is time to reveal my hobby, if I am not in my office thinking about transformational partnerships, you can be assured I am somewhere with my family enjoying something musical…so I certainly think that I am attracted to this University on many fronts! So I promise to be back!
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, it was an honor to address you and I thank you so much for your kind attention.
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