Launched by two presidents — Peter Mutharika in October 2019 and Lazarus Chakwera in May 2021 — the United States of America-funded project was not the kind a leader would not want to be associated with.
Targeting to construct 250 secondary schools, the project was billed it would increase access to secondary school education in Malawi as it would create space to 40,000 learners.
Now details have emerged that the Ministry of Education will not be able to construct the 250 secondary schools as per grant agreement.
The number has since come down to 99, thanks to lack of human resources capacity, bureaucratic bottlenecks and politicking by some stakeholders in the process.
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The revelations came up in the week when officials from the Ministry of Education appeared before the Parliamentary Cluster Committee on Education.
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Led by Principal Secretary for Basic Education Rachel Chimbwete Phiri, the officials told the committee that they would get to the bottom of what happened for the ministry to fail to construct 250 new secondary schools as earlier agreed with the donor, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
“The ministry is reflecting on the challenges and what we have done well in the implementation of the project,” Chimbwete Phiri said.
Four years on, government has managed to construct only 66 secondary schools under the programme.
The ministry officials told the MPs that the reduction in number of schools is also due to inflation, the devaluation of the kwacha, and also contractual differences.
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In addition, sources in the project have told Malawi News that the project has also been saddled by politicking.
“Political interference has contributed to the delay as every Member of Parliament wanted at least a secondary schools in their constituencies. This stalled the process of executing the project,” said one official.
Displeased by government’s failure to meet the target, the parliamentary committee plans to engage USAID.
“We are going to plead with USAID; we still need the school. The impact on where the school has been constructed is too huge. We just have to plead for more community secondary schools,” said chairperson of the committee, Brainax Kaisi.
Asked to comment on the development, US strategic communications specialist Marcus Muhariwa referred us to the speech made by Charge’ d’ affaires Amy Diaz during the recent official handover of the 66 schools in Salima at a function presided over by President Chakwera.
“The Seed [Secondary Education Expansion for Development] project has demonstrated the power of making touch decisions, sometimes difficult decisions, and by working together to overcome some dramatic national and global challenges,” Diaz said.
She said the US government constructed the secondary schools to boost access to education for young Malawians especially girls.
The Seed project, a partnership between USAID and Pepfar, aimed at improving secondary education access nationwide while also achieving key gender-based and public health outcomes such as reducing early pregnancy, early marriages, and cases of HIV.
Under the Seed project, the Ministry of Education was expected to construct four classrooms, one science classroom, and administrative and storage facilities at each of the 250 schools.
In addition, Unicef committed to stocking each school with desks, chairs, textbooks, and lab equipment. However, the development scores of learners, including girls, have been robbed of their right to quality education.
