Malawi’s best time is now
Forget all the pains Malawians are facing since the withdrawal of donor aid. Forget the rampant unavailability of medicines in hospitals. Forget the crumbling provision of social services in the public and private sectors. Forget the nose diving of the kwacha against major trading currencies. Forget that there is looming hunger. Just completely ignore all the negative forces mother Malawi is facing. In the midst of all these challenges is Malawi’s golden opportunity – the need for the emergence of leaders that may give Malawi the rebirth from the ashes of poverty.
This is the time that Malawi’s great and true leaders emerge with vigour, vision and bravery. This entails leaders in all the sectors: economy, health, environment, water and sanitation, and many more. It is only when things are bad in any situation that great people rise up, start seeing things differently, start thinking and making extraordinary things from the ordinary. This is the opportunity Malawi has and the most appropriate time for the best leaders to emerge is now. For so long, we have been taking things for granted and now that the tide has turned then we are challenged to think beyond measure.
It is self-evident that we are so much obsessed with the political executive such that we bombard it with many titles of failure when anything seems to be going wrong. But where are we as leaders? Our import cover is under strain day in day out. It is obvious that we need to undertake initiatives that will promote exports. This is where a new breed of brilliant entrepreneurs should emerge and show that they are great leaders that can attract much forex to the country. It helps nothing to be crying day in day out, tears alone are nothing. It is our hands that matter now, that we till the soil till we end the reign of the perennial pharaoh of hunger and dawn in the epoch of food sufficiency.
The fact that hunger has established its kingdom amidst us is a great opportunity to Malawians as well. To begin with we are a country that should not be ravaged by hunger. This hunger is raping us because though we have all the necessary resources, the greatest one of it all being land, we are unable to undertake farming aggressively. Why is it that every year we plant and harvest tonnes and tonnes of tobacco, some that we even fail to sell at the auction, but we are unable to replicate the same success in maize, beans, peas and other domestic crops? This is now the time that great leaders emerge in Malawi’s agriculture sector – not those that will only philosophise and give statistics at conferences all just for referred papers and newspaper headline but those that will forgo their white collars and be in the fields to transform agriculture in Malawi. We do not need a Jewish prophet nor a son of one to prophesy that our land can give us more than what we need.
This is the time for the emergence of great leaders in the economic circles. Why do we import cereals when we can have entrepreneurs that can be producing cereals and export them? This is Malawi’s best time for the birth of a new generation of risk taking business men and women that are ready to go into the uncharted waters and produce things that can transform Malawi. While we all mourn over the falling of the kwacha, it is when one Malawi’s great business thinker and philanthropist Mr. Napoleon Dzombe establishes a factory that produces tooth picks from bamboos. The very same bamboos that for time immemorial were of no economic value to us have attained an admirable value. That is leadership, that is thinking. Now bamboos can be another income source and the raw materials for producing materials, including tiles, for exports. This will heighten Malawi’s export base and also minimise the widening gap between imports and exports.
It is obvious that we are slowly drifting into desertification. The energy demands are increasing. Rampant deforestation is certainly leading to some climate challenges. Even this climate change is an opportunity – it is a pointer to the silent business of environmental conservation. Growing forests can therefore become a business such that we could be producing charcoal from our private forests for sale. In the end we are not depleting the natural resources but planting for the energy needs of the future.
This is no time for the glorification of our sorrows and lamentations. This is no time for pleading for the resurgence of donour funds. This is no time for hating ourselves over what we did not do. The past must be allowed to go and a new thinking to emerge that is forward focused and believing in success.
Robin Sharma well explains that every time you dwell on the past you steal from your future. Every minute you spend focusing on your problems you take away from finding your solutions. And thinking about all those things that you wish never happened to you is actually blocking all the things you want to happen from entering your life … use the lessons you have learnt from the past to rise to a whole new level of awareness and enlightenment.
Let us give ourselves an opportunity to try our own ways in shaping our future. If we fail, we will rise up till we succeed. All the economies that have succeeded have failed many a times on their path to success only that all what we see now is their success regardless of the sweat and tears and blood.
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