By Leo Maluwa
The National Planning Commission (NPC) recently organised a public lecture on ‘Redeeming the SDG: More Money or More Value for Money?’
The lecture was delivered by renowned Danish economist, Bjorn Lomborg.
He opined that given the limited resources that are usually at its disposal, the government should prioritise and focus investment in sectors that produce the greatest social, economic and environmental benefits compared to the total cost invested to produce those benefits.
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The background to the argument was the observation that, half way through the implementation of United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), many governments are not on track to meet the targets at the expiry of the implementation period in 2030.
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Malawi is one of them.
Lomborg attributed this to lack of focus in resource allocation.
Now, the cost-benefit approach to resource allocation is not a new concept in resource management economics.
However, what stands out is Lomborg’s collaborative research with the NPC, which yielded an evidence-based list of sectors in Malawi that, if prioritised, have the potential to yield significantly more benefits for every Kwacha spent.
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This list of sectors was included in the Malawi Priorities book that was launched last year and is available on the NPC website.
To the surprise of one of the key public finance stakeholders, who was in the audience, the chairperson for the Budget and Finance Committee of Parliament, this list of priority sectors has never been presented to her committee before and she was unaware of its existence, let alone findings of the study.
The revelations that the chairperson was not aware of the identified list of sectors that should be prioritised for Malawi raises important questions about the effectiveness of communication strategy used to advocate for various elements of Malawi 2063 (MW2063).
The issue of advocacy is particularly important because the thorough review of why the preceding long-term vision for Malawi, Vision 2020, failed to meet its objectives found that, among other things, poor advocacy was one of the main contributing factors.
That review revealed that in some cases, government employees required to perform particular activities were not aware of those roles.
MW2063 has many aspects and its actualisation requires not only public sector actors, but also private citizens taking particular courses of action.
To actualise the industrialisation component of the vision, for example, private actors, either domestic entrepreneurs or external investors through foreign direct investment, have to establish actual manufacturing industries.
The National Export Strategy II identified a list of industries in which Malawi can do better and which should be prioritised.
The local entrepreneurs have to be motivated to explore industries in the identified sectors. The question is how many people in Malawi know that list of industries?
In a country of more than 20 million people, it is unlikely that even 1,000 people would be able to list those industries.
It is one thing to be made aware of what one has to do and another to be persuaded to perform that activity.
NPC’s communication focus should, therefore, be not only on raising awareness but also deliberate at changing the attitudes of Malawians and making them to take particular actions in pursuing particular components of MW2063 implementation.
Since the agro-processing industry was identified as one sector in which Malawi can do better, it would be ideal if some Malawian youths were waking up each day thinking hard, brainstorming and researching on what specific steps they should take to open their own agro-processing factories.
There is a need for regular reviews of the effectiveness of the communication strategies used to advocate MW2063 to determine if it is causing the communication recipients to take action so that the country can avoid a repeat of failure experienced with Vision 2020.
The Malawi Government, through the NPC, is doing a commendable job in conducting analyses and generating evidence-based results.
It is imperative that the generated findings find their way to reach and persuade various economic actors and cause them to perform the required particular actions.
