THE BOTTOMLINE [12]
MARISEN MWALE (MAESTRO writes)
#Malawi Can Be Great Again: It Is Possible

It is possible for our nation Malawi to be a Great Nation again. It is possible for us to rejuvenate the #pride we used to have in ourselves as Malawians. #Ndizotheka. It is possible to #invest in our young people, and to create 1 million even 2 million or even 5 mulliin jobs in a short span of time and sustain that. If we became less #capitalist, if we became more #communal or #socialist oriented as a nation - and less self centered as leaders. ..... or rather there was political will from regimes and all of us as a nation. It could be possible to invest in us as Malawians. If we became more welfare centered and decided to share the national economic cake more equitably or equally we could go a long way in developing the nation than developing a small elite group of people. How could we do that? There is what I could call beginner economic prescriptions or dosages..... structural socially based packages that in the short through the medium to the long term we could realign with our economy for changes that could benefit a majority of our populace. We could for instance slacken on privatization and liberalization policies as enshrined in World Bank or IMF policies but rather re-nationalize in terms of companies, industries, the agricultural sector in government ownership terms of such. Introduce more government run national companies , industries and commercial agricultural entities... in the transport sector in the National bus company for example. In the consumer sector in the PTCs for example through Press Trust.      In the construction sector through PVHO for example. In the same construction sector which could be pivotal in the job creation agenda, we could as was the case before through the PVHO use our own engineers from Poly and the young people trained through TEVET or the Community Colleges in road constructions and in the building of our infrastructure and create so many jobs instead of relying on private construction companies like Motor Engil or Strasburg (just an example). We cannot train our own people and fail to utilize that labour pool by prioritizing privatization in the construction or such other sectors and that's logic. In the same vein a nationalized Mining sector could be an avenue to tap on the pool of trained University engineers, semi - skilled TEVET and Community College graduates and the unskilled young people with little or nothing to do albeit through a nationalized government Mining sector. In the agricultural sector through schemes and commercialization in a Nationalized agricultural sector we could utilize the pool of LUANAR and MUST University graduates and the large pool of subsistence farmers to still generate millions of jobs from the grassroots to the elite. There are so many other examples in Tourism (Nationalized Tourism that involves locals in ownership), in Fisheries (Lake Malawi - Maldeco - Commercialized Fisheries through fish ponds, dams etc) in Forestry (timber and milling – Nationalized companies and Plantations albeit government owned) where a majority of humble and elite Malawians can be employed and we could rejuvenate some now White Elephants in all these national sectors .... ndiye ndizoteka ndithu as some leaders like Dr Saulos Klaus Chilima was saying in his campaign and #Manifesto toward the 2019 General Elections to create jobs if we became less selfish and less Capitalist in Macroeconomic terms!

BY

Marisen ‘Maestro’ Mwale