We are now deep into the season of annual lakeshore conferences. This is not unusual though. In fact, someone once said that Malawians have a penchant for conferences. It has now become fashionable for professional bodies to organise these annual gatherings towards the end of the year.
Local and international speakers are invited to make presentations on various thematic areas. Every year, delegates to such conferences come up with resolutions. It is also fashionable for these conferences to splash out awards to some ‘well deserving individuals’ as a way of recognising them.
Get me right here. The conferences, in themselves, are not a bad idea as they accord the membership an opportunity to network and share knowledge and industry-specific best practices. They also offer the corporate sector an opportunity to elevate their brands by sponsoring such annual gatherings. And they are also an opportunity for the obvious reason I should not bother mentioning.
However, questions have always arisen on the effectiveness of these annual lakeshore conferences in addressing challenges being faced by the country. Some schools of thought have deemed these conferences as merely talk shows— something which is debatable.
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A story is told of a consultant from Egypt who was invited to facilitate a food security conference in the country. As a part of his preparations for the conference, he arrived in the country a week earlier to familiarise himself with issues in the country related to the subject he was to tackle at the conference. For a week, he went on an observatory and exploratory tour which took him to some districts, especially those along the lakeshore. The consultant could not understand why even lakeshore districts were also food insecure despite being few kilometres away from the vast expanse of the fresh waters of Lake Malawi. He also observed the same pattern in the Shire Valley, where, to his dismay, he saw the majestic Shire River effortlessly snaking down the valley with its huge mass of water up to the Zambezi River. Probably, what surprised him most was that while in Mangochi, he met some religious leaders who had sailed by boat on Lake Malawi from Makanjira to Mangochi, apparently to join their colleagues at the Boma, to pray for rains!
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On the day of the workshop, the consultant narrated how his Egypt had used the Nile River for its agriculture production. He took the delegates unawares when he shared with them what he had witnessed during his weeklong stay in the country. He could not hide his disappointment over what he had seen during his tour. At the end of his opening remarks, he told the delegates that he could not continue with the workshop. He said it would be a waste of time for him to be talking to a group of people who already had solutions to their problems but simply felt short of thinking outside the box. He stormed out of the conference in frustration and went back to his home country, leaving the delegates shell-shocked.
This story might sound mythical but is not far from reality. The point I am driving home is that most of the challenges faced in the country may not necessarily emanate from lack of resources or expertise but it is probably something to do with our mindset. Addressing some of these challenges may not even require external interventions or donors. We have solutions amidst us.
The Malawi 2063 is probably one of the best documents that Malawians have ever produced. It has well-crafted ideas and strategies which, if implemented to the letter, could turn around this country. But it looks like what may pull us back from realising these aspirations, as outlined in Malawi 2063 vision, is our mindset. We seem to be obsessed with that attitude of being resigned to fate, while waiting for God’s intervention.
It is, however, pleasing to note that the Malawi 2063 has placed mindset change as one of the enablers for the attainment of Malawi’s aspirations. Under this enabler, engagement of visionary and transformative leadership, patriotism, religious values, integrity, hard work, self-reliance and positivity have been singled out as catalysts for mindset transformation. Probably one of the interesting declarations is this part, which reads:
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“As Malawians, we denounce our hitherto attitude of dependency on donors and handouts, materialism and self-accumulation through corrupt practices. We will instead embrace and commit to self-discipline, self-initiative and self-dependency.”[MW2063,Page 24]
Indeed, we, as a country, cannot earn a good reputation by being perpetually reliant on donors and handouts. It is, indeed, important that we, as Malawians, must instil within ourselves this ‘ndizotheka’ (it’s possible) mindset. We must embrace a culture of positive values such as unity, patriotism, hard work, honesty, integrity, self-reliance, dislike for handouts and corruption.
These are, however, elements that cannot be attained at once. It is not just a one-off event. It is a process which requires concerted national dialogue and engagement while rethinking the totality of our value system as a nation.
Sadly, the more we want to change things, the more we let them remain the same.
