Friday, November 28, 2008
Raising the Voice of Farmers
One of my major activities is finally complete. I completed a two day lobbying and advocacy training with farmer leaders in Malawi. We invited the Executive Board of the Farmers Union of Malawi, the Lobbying and Advocacy Standing Committee, the Coalition of Women Farmers Association and our District Farmer Union Chairpersons. It was a great workshop. My Malawian colleague Cindy Kacherenga did the initial morning session which involved a session on roles and responsibilities of the different agents of Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM) with the emphasis on farmers having the main responsibility in raising their voice. The FUM Secretariat which I am a part of has a role in supporting the farmers. The issues come from the farmers the secretariat provides the necessary support such a research, technical advice and communication. This meeting also allowed us to get the participants, all of whom are farmers to prioritize the more than 70 issues that have been given to me since I arrived. We had them split into three groups on different themes and pick the six most pertinent issues. Then they chose the 3 most pertitnent from those and finally they chose one to work on in the workshop. For the next day and half I led them through the nuts and bolts of advocacy with a lot of group work where the real learning took place while they put into practice what they learned. At the end I expected them to present an actual advocacy message on their chosen topic. They could have
Monday, November 24, 2008
Witchcraft 'Plane' Crashes in Lilongwe
The following story was found on page 2 of the November 18, 2008 of The Nation newspaper in Malawi. Of course I would have loved to go and investigate this story but all evidence was destroyed as it always is.
Witchcraft 'plane crashes in Lilongwe
by Samuel Chibaya
Pandemonium erupted at Falls Estate in Lilongwe when a woman discovered an object suspected to be a 'witchcraft airplane' outside her house on Saturday morning.
In an interview with The Nation on Sunday, Maria Khudzani Banda, a resident of White Falls, said she discovered the strange object resting on four legs at the back of her house when she woke up on Saturday morning.
She said in the wee hours of Saturday morning, she heard a sound as loud as a gunshot near her house but saw nothing when she peeped through the window.
"I slept until morning when I woke up and went to the back of the house where I saw the object. The object contained bones, pinkish beads, a dead frog and a porcupine quill," claimed Banda.
When news went about the area, hundreds of people flocked to the house to look at the object.
"I reported the incident to the village headman. With the help of some men, he took the object away and burnt it somewhere. At first it failed to burn but the men later tore it apart and inside were a bottle of glycerine and hair oil. It then burnt," said Banda.
She said she was surprised to receive a visitor on Sunday morning who claimed to be a witchdoctor from Area 24 and offered to help her following the incident.
"I told him off because I don't believe in witchcraft. I only believe in God." she said.
Banda, who has lived in at Falls Estate for five years said sometime back, a mysterious fire was discovered burning at her door.
Meanwhile calm has returned to the area.
Witchcraft 'plane crashes in Lilongwe
by Samuel Chibaya
Pandemonium erupted at Falls Estate in Lilongwe when a woman discovered an object suspected to be a 'witchcraft airplane' outside her house on Saturday morning.
In an interview with The Nation on Sunday, Maria Khudzani Banda, a resident of White Falls, said she discovered the strange object resting on four legs at the back of her house when she woke up on Saturday morning.
She said in the wee hours of Saturday morning, she heard a sound as loud as a gunshot near her house but saw nothing when she peeped through the window.
"I slept until morning when I woke up and went to the back of the house where I saw the object. The object contained bones, pinkish beads, a dead frog and a porcupine quill," claimed Banda.
When news went about the area, hundreds of people flocked to the house to look at the object.
"I reported the incident to the village headman. With the help of some men, he took the object away and burnt it somewhere. At first it failed to burn but the men later tore it apart and inside were a bottle of glycerine and hair oil. It then burnt," said Banda.
She said she was surprised to receive a visitor on Sunday morning who claimed to be a witchdoctor from Area 24 and offered to help her following the incident.
"I told him off because I don't believe in witchcraft. I only believe in God." she said.
Banda, who has lived in at Falls Estate for five years said sometime back, a mysterious fire was discovered burning at her door.
Meanwhile calm has returned to the area.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Wealth does not always alleviate poverty
Quote (Answer) from Peter Harrold, World Bank, Ghana from Sector Wide Approaches: Do They Really Help The Poor? – Proceedings of a Regional Forum 13 to 16 November 2001, Accra, Ghana
Question: Why are Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) focused on poverty reduction and not on wealth creation?
Answer: Because you can have economic growth and wealth in a country without alleviating poverty, and therefore it is important to focus on poverty.
Question: Why are Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) focused on poverty reduction and not on wealth creation?
Answer: Because you can have economic growth and wealth in a country without alleviating poverty, and therefore it is important to focus on poverty.
Big Tobacco in Malawi
The following article chronicles some of the challenges in the agriculture sector with regard to child labour in Malawi.
Playing with Children's Lives: Big Tobacco in Malawi
by Pilirani Semu-Banda, Special to CorpWatch February 25th, 2008
Sickly and malnourished, Kirana Kapito began his working life on a large commercial tobacco estate in Malawi's northern region. The farms sell their produce on the country's auction floors directly to international corporations including Limbe Leaf Tobacco, majority owned by the Swiss-registered Continental Tobacco Company and U.S.-based Alliance One Tobacco. Kirana is one of 250 million children across the world involved in work that is damaging to their mental, physical and emotional development. Some 57 million of these endangered children live in Sub-Sahara Africa. And with an estimated 1.4 million child laborers, the small, southern African nation of Malawi has the highest incidence of child labor in southern Africa, according to the Olso, Norway-based, FAFO Institute for Applied Social Science. Kirana was eight years old when he first went to work in the fields. Estate owners transported him and his parents from their home village, Mulanje, along with 45 other families. The truck journey covered more than 1,000 kilometers and ended in the tobacco fields in Rumphi in northern Malawi. Kirana's mother, Jane Kapito, 45, says the family left home seeking a better life. “Four years later, my whole family is still struggling with poverty. My son has to work as hard as everyone else if we have to afford the basic necessities. The money that my husband and I receive from the tobacco estate is not enough,” she says. Now 12, Kirana has never been to school. For the past six months, his health has been failing and he can no longer work as hard as he used to. His mother says her little boy is malnourished and therefore contracts different infections easily. The family often goes without a proper meal for up to three days. “Just in the past two months, Kirana has been afflicted by malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia,” Jane Kapito said. “He's my only child and I am so scared of losing him.” This family's struggle is repeated throughout Malawi's tobacco industry, where poverty ensures that every member must contribute to the workload. Virginia Import Now Main Malawi Export Malawi's sprawling tobacco estates are not only a source of national economic pride, but of lovely pastoral vistas as well. Up close though, the sight of child laborers in the hot fields exposes the ugliness at their core. Commercial production of tobacco in Malawi goes back as far as 1889, when settlers from the U.S. state of Virginia introduced the crop. In those days “foreign masters” forced the native people and their children to work in the farms for little or no pay. Over a century later, this exploitation continues -- with no end in sight. Increasingly, critics are demanding that the tobacco companies take responsibility for ending the abuses. Given their key role in Malawi's economy, they wield significant clout. Malawi derives up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from agricultural crops, and the tobacco industry makes up 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Malawi’s exports account for five percent of the world's total tobacco exports and two percent of the world's total production. But the wealth generated by this resource is not spread evenly across the country. The Malawi Tobacco Control Commission (TCC), a local government watchdog for the tobacco market, estimates that it takes $1 for farm workers to produce a kilogram of tobacco, which they usually sell at $.70 for a loss of $.30 per kilo. Hardworking farmers who cannot make a living turn to child labor. TCC's 2008 campaign is demanding that farmers get a profit at least 15 percent above production costs. Despite the TCC campaign, farmers and their families are still at risk of losing money on their crops. And this year the farmers' plight may be further exacerbated by heavy rains that are predicted to cut the country's tobacco production by about 3 percent. Tenant Farmers’ Dilemma Up to two million Malawians, mostly poor, depend on tobacco and related industries for their income. Virtually all of the up to 900,000 adult growers are “smallholder farmers, tobacco tenants and casual farm workers,” according to a 2006 research paper by the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE), an independent center based at the University of California, San Francisco. Tenant farmers are allocated a plot of land by the estate owner and required to produce a specific yield. The owners loan the tenants inputs including seed and fertilizer and deduct the debt from future profits -- if any. The owners are also supposed to supply food rations, but when monthly allocations run out, workers and their children go hungry. Many also lack such basic necessities as medication, proper housing and safe drinking water. Not surprisingly, workers on tobacco estates and their dependants are among the poorest and most oppressed people in Malawi, according to a survey released last December by the Center for Social Concern, a Catholic organization that monitors the welfare of the people. A minimum of “78,000 children are working on a full- or part-time basis in the tobacco fields, according to the CTCRE study. “Forty-five percent of the child workers are 10-14 years old and 55 percent are 7-9 years old,” the study found. Meanwhile, the tobacco companies have received nearly US$40 million in revenues over four years through the use of unpaid child labor in Malawi. In 1995, the Malawi government, through the Ministry of Labor in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, started drafting a Tobacco Tenancy Labor Bill to regulate the relations and transactions between the tenant farmers and the landlords. The bill has been taken through a number of revisions but it has not yet been taken to Parliament. Supporting Children or Exploiting Them? Multinational tobacco companies are aware of the public relations implications of profiting not only from tobacco itself, but doing it through the cycle of poverty and child labor. Tobacco companies in Malawi including Alliance One, Africa Leaf (Malawi) Limited, Premium and British American Tobacco (Malawi) are sponsoring the Eliminating Child Labor in Tobacco Growing Foundation (ECLT). The project, which includes other agricultural industries, is run by Together Ensuring Children Security (TECS), a registered trust set up in 2001 by tobacco exporting corporations operating in Malawi: Africa Leaf, Dimon, Limbe Leaf and Stancom Tobacco. In 2001, ECLT budgeted US$2 million for a four-year effort to combat child labor. Six years later, in October 2007, the 20 companies within the supply chain of the tobacco industry had ponied up somewhat less than $100,000 of that amount, according to TECS'S corporate newsletter. The University of California researchers are skeptical of the inherent conflict of interest in having tobacco companies influence social policy. They concluded that in Malawi, transnational tobacco companies are using child labor projects to enhance their corporate reputations and distract public attention away from how they profit from low wages and cheaply produced tobacco. Others argue that even when useful, the TECS program is a drop in an ocean of poverty. Up to 45 percent of the population is poor, according to the 2007 Malawi Millennium Development Goal (MDG) report. Registered as a Trust under the Trustees Act of Malawi, TECS projects have taken what it calls “a poverty reduction strategy approach” to improve food security, water safety and HIV/AIDS intervention and education. The trust has built schools, planted trees and constructed shallow wells to address the use of child labor in tobacco farming, according to TECS Programs Director Limbani Kakhome. While not directly undermining child labor, these programs will eventually bear fruit in better social conditions that will diminish the problem, Kakhome said. “We are also addressing health issues to ensure that the children don't skip school because of illnesses,” says Kakhome. Once they stay home because they are ill, they are easily taken up by child labor.” It is difficult, he said, to supply the market for child labor once the children are absorbed into the school system, have safe water and are financially secure. Too Little, Too Late? It is too late for children like 15-year-old Martha Kalima who dropped out of school at 12 years old to work in the tobacco fields. Pregnant at 14, she continued working in the fields until she gave birth. The father was the 16-year-old son of another tenant farmer. “There is nothing like maternity leave for tobacco workers,” Kalima said. “No one is entitled to sick leave nor is there transport to hospital. I gave birth at home because it was too late for me to get to hospital.” Martha is back in the tobacco fields carrying the baby on her back. Chances are slim that she will return to school. Some 15 percent of girls and 12 percent of boys drop out of school, according to Malawi government statistics. Around 22 percent of primary school age girls never attend school at all, while 60 percent of those enrolled do not attend regularly. The TECS corporate newsletter confirms that children with few options are pulled from school. Some are “coaxed from the poverty-stricken homes to work in order to keep body and soul together. They are exposed to hazardous environments where they work long hours and do jobs not befitting their ages and they are often beaten and abused.” That was the fate of 16-year-old Ekari Maliwasa, says she has just returned to her village in the south of Malawi after working for five years in the tobacco estates in the northern part of the country. “My parents took me with them to work in the tobacco estates in the north [when I was 11] and I only escaped back to my village two months ago after realizing that I was being abused. I am now staying with my elderly grandmother,” says Maliwasa. She says the estate manager beat her whenever he found her resting from the hard work in the tobacco fields. Ekari also went without food or drink for long hours, she said, and was not allowed take a break until she had worked for five hours. Enforcement of Labor Standards Difficult Maliwasa's treatment, like that endured by many of Malawi's child laborers, violated not only international standards but also legally binding treaties. Malawi is a signatory to a number of conventions against child labor including the 1973 International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 138 which sets a minimum working age of 18, and the 1999 ILO Convention 182 which outlaws child labor. The country also ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. (ILO has set 2016 as the deadline for countries around the world to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.) Child labor cannot be ended overnight says TECS Executive Director Bobby Maynard. “You can manage the supply chain to a certain degree but you can't control it fully,” he says. “The problem is that over 80 percent of tobacco is grown with no contracts from the tobacco companies -- as such it is difficult to intervene directly.” Tobacco companies note that they are involved in policing child labor violations at estates where they have direct control, and that they subscribe to Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), whose first principle is “no child labor.” But their results in curbing the practice have not been impressive. Relying on British American Tobacco's own internal documents, the University of California study found that, “rather than actively and responsibly working to solve the problem of child labor in growing tobacco, the company acted to co-opt the issue to present themselves over as a 'socially responsible corporation' by releasing a policy statement claiming the company's commitment to end harmful child labor practices, holding a global child labor conference with trade unions and other key stakeholders, and contributing nominal sums of money for development projects largely unrelated to efforts to end child labor.” International agencies are also involved. Kusali Kubwalo, communications officer for UNICEF Malawi, said the United Nations has joined Malawi's government and several non-governmental organizations to fight the problem from several fronts. A national “Stop Child Abuse Campaign” aims to break the silence shrouding all forms of child abuse, including child labor. “The campaign aims to mobilize leadership and a commitment at all levels to prevent and respond to all forms of abuse,” says Kubwalo. “Violations of children's rights take place every day in Malawi and are extensive, under-recognized and underreported.” She insists that Malawi, as a signatory to the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is obligated to respect, protect, facilitate and promote the fulfillment of the rights it guarantees. “This instrument must therefore be translated into concrete legislation, interventions and development programs,” says Kubwalo. “Ratification alone is not enough.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: Since publishing this article, Project Manager and Acting Director of ECLT Foundation, Mr. Alain Berthoud, issued a response.
Response to “Playing with Children’s Lives: Big Tobacco in Malawi"by Alain Berthoud, ECLT Foundation Acting DirectorMarch 10th, 2008
Letter to the Editor of CorpWatch in response to CorpWatch article posted on their website on 25 February 2008 Dear Editor, On 25 February Corporate Watch published an article called “Playing with Children’s Lives: BigTobacco in Malawi", signed by Pilirani Semu-Banda Working with the ECLT Foundation as acting Director, and on behalf of the Foundation Board, I would like to make the few following comments which we would like you to add to your article and post on your website.
I remain at your disposal to further discuss ECLT’s mission and activities at your convenience ECLT is cited in the article, but was not contacted for comment. Therefore, as key donor to the mentioned project, we would like to describe in more detail who we are and the project activities. We hope this gives your readers a better perspective. ECLT is a sectorwide alliance grouping the major manufacturing and tobacco processing multinationals together with the growers associations, the global trade union federation dealing with agriculture and tobacco (IUF), and the program for the elimination of child labour, IPEC, of the ILO.
These members have agreed to work together to address the child labour issue in different regions of the world, acknowledging that none of them could individually solve such a complex problem. It is therefore a collective effort against child labour that goes beyond the very specific interests of each single actor. The collaborative efforts, commitment and community engagement of the ECLT are not shown in the article and are an important component in trying to make an impact on the serious issue of child labour. Concerning the ICLEP –Integrated Child Labour Eliminating- project that we support in Malawi, your article does not really explain our approach in addressing the issue of child labour in a global and integrated manner; nor does it discuss the concrete results and achievements, which are quite significant at local level.. Let us provide you with the following data; at the end of the present 4-year project (by mid 2010), with 4 million dollars invested, we will have reached about half of the children population in the concerned areas (15’000 children) or over 2/3 of the child population considered to be potentially involved in child labour. Although needs are immense, we do believe this is more than a drop in the ocean and that it certainly constitutes an example of what can practically be done to fight child labour when interested parties come together in a collaborative fashion. Anyone who has been in this region understands the need for adequate infrastructure, specifically schools. Although it is not exactly the tobacco companies’ core competency to set up schools, via our project tobacco companies together with the other ECLT partners have taken this on. 28 schools blocks have been built or renovated; teachers’ houses have been built to attract and keep the teachers motivated; local authorities and teachers are being trained in order to improve the quality of education. Child labour committees are in place in each community to fight child labour and to monitor children attendance at school; As a result enrolment rates increased by 20% during the first phase of the project, and continued to increase by 12% in the last year during which 500 children, strictly non-school going child labourers, and another 1’100 at risk children, have entered school. Sensitisation is done at all levels; at parents and community level to change attitudes regarding child labour as well as with district officials (including labour inspectors). This also means ECLT and its local partners are taking on the role of facilitating the implementation of the international conventions that, as you rightly say, Malawi has ratified. Poverty is an important cause, as well as the result, of child labour. Beyond the usual approach consisting in withdrawing children from work situation and reintegrating them in school, the ECLT funded project considers the living conditions of the parents so that they can afford to let their children go to school.
The following activities are undertaken:
Access to safe water and sanitation; 22’000 people have now access to a safe water source (topped shallow well or borehole) within a 500m range from their homes. Unfortunately, the burden of fetching water often falls to the child, and mostly girls. The project reduces this burden as well as prevents them from catching waterborne diseases.
Food security; A small scale irrigation scheme has been developed (600 treadle pumps supplied) together with crop diversification to ensure food security at the community level. It goes along with soil conservation and reforestation (300 nurseries, over 2 million trees planted). The burden of fetching wood also falls to the children, something the project attempts to alleviate by making a sustainable supply of firewood available.
Health; Malaria, and above all HIV/AIDS are widespread and certainly play a role in child labour. The project has set up outreach clinics tending to the community needs and training community agents for health prevention. A clinic was built in the project area –in Kasese- and works in collaboration with the existing government infrastructure. In only a few months, the public at large has been provided with tens of thousands of medical consultations. The holistic approach of the project is implemented together with the community leaders, the districts officials in charge of education, health, agriculture, etc… 500 of them have been associated with the project and trained on child labour issues in order to build capacity and to ensure the dynamic of the project will be sustained. At management level, oversight of the project as well as the sharing of good project practices and lessons learned is secured through a project steering committee on which key actors are serving (unions, growers, companies, ministry representatives) or acting as advisors (IPEC/ILO, Unicef, NGOs); it is chaired by the Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Labour. We are proud of the ECLT supported project in Malawi and believe it is an example of what can be done to fight child labour when cooperation of all interested parties is realized. Whether it is too little is a legitimate question, but the ECLT strives to establish demonstrably effective projects that can be 'scaled up' and adopted by other public and private organisations, to reach a much larger number of children and families. The ECLT believes the best approach to make progress on this serious issue is the one of focus and collaboration, and we welcome discussions with others that share that concern. Alain Berthoud ECLT Foundation acting Director, Geneva 4 March, 2008
Playing with Children's Lives: Big Tobacco in Malawi
by Pilirani Semu-Banda, Special to CorpWatch February 25th, 2008
Sickly and malnourished, Kirana Kapito began his working life on a large commercial tobacco estate in Malawi's northern region. The farms sell their produce on the country's auction floors directly to international corporations including Limbe Leaf Tobacco, majority owned by the Swiss-registered Continental Tobacco Company and U.S.-based Alliance One Tobacco. Kirana is one of 250 million children across the world involved in work that is damaging to their mental, physical and emotional development. Some 57 million of these endangered children live in Sub-Sahara Africa. And with an estimated 1.4 million child laborers, the small, southern African nation of Malawi has the highest incidence of child labor in southern Africa, according to the Olso, Norway-based, FAFO Institute for Applied Social Science. Kirana was eight years old when he first went to work in the fields. Estate owners transported him and his parents from their home village, Mulanje, along with 45 other families. The truck journey covered more than 1,000 kilometers and ended in the tobacco fields in Rumphi in northern Malawi. Kirana's mother, Jane Kapito, 45, says the family left home seeking a better life. “Four years later, my whole family is still struggling with poverty. My son has to work as hard as everyone else if we have to afford the basic necessities. The money that my husband and I receive from the tobacco estate is not enough,” she says. Now 12, Kirana has never been to school. For the past six months, his health has been failing and he can no longer work as hard as he used to. His mother says her little boy is malnourished and therefore contracts different infections easily. The family often goes without a proper meal for up to three days. “Just in the past two months, Kirana has been afflicted by malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia,” Jane Kapito said. “He's my only child and I am so scared of losing him.” This family's struggle is repeated throughout Malawi's tobacco industry, where poverty ensures that every member must contribute to the workload. Virginia Import Now Main Malawi Export Malawi's sprawling tobacco estates are not only a source of national economic pride, but of lovely pastoral vistas as well. Up close though, the sight of child laborers in the hot fields exposes the ugliness at their core. Commercial production of tobacco in Malawi goes back as far as 1889, when settlers from the U.S. state of Virginia introduced the crop. In those days “foreign masters” forced the native people and their children to work in the farms for little or no pay. Over a century later, this exploitation continues -- with no end in sight. Increasingly, critics are demanding that the tobacco companies take responsibility for ending the abuses. Given their key role in Malawi's economy, they wield significant clout. Malawi derives up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from agricultural crops, and the tobacco industry makes up 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Malawi’s exports account for five percent of the world's total tobacco exports and two percent of the world's total production. But the wealth generated by this resource is not spread evenly across the country. The Malawi Tobacco Control Commission (TCC), a local government watchdog for the tobacco market, estimates that it takes $1 for farm workers to produce a kilogram of tobacco, which they usually sell at $.70 for a loss of $.30 per kilo. Hardworking farmers who cannot make a living turn to child labor. TCC's 2008 campaign is demanding that farmers get a profit at least 15 percent above production costs. Despite the TCC campaign, farmers and their families are still at risk of losing money on their crops. And this year the farmers' plight may be further exacerbated by heavy rains that are predicted to cut the country's tobacco production by about 3 percent. Tenant Farmers’ Dilemma Up to two million Malawians, mostly poor, depend on tobacco and related industries for their income. Virtually all of the up to 900,000 adult growers are “smallholder farmers, tobacco tenants and casual farm workers,” according to a 2006 research paper by the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE), an independent center based at the University of California, San Francisco. Tenant farmers are allocated a plot of land by the estate owner and required to produce a specific yield. The owners loan the tenants inputs including seed and fertilizer and deduct the debt from future profits -- if any. The owners are also supposed to supply food rations, but when monthly allocations run out, workers and their children go hungry. Many also lack such basic necessities as medication, proper housing and safe drinking water. Not surprisingly, workers on tobacco estates and their dependants are among the poorest and most oppressed people in Malawi, according to a survey released last December by the Center for Social Concern, a Catholic organization that monitors the welfare of the people. A minimum of “78,000 children are working on a full- or part-time basis in the tobacco fields, according to the CTCRE study. “Forty-five percent of the child workers are 10-14 years old and 55 percent are 7-9 years old,” the study found. Meanwhile, the tobacco companies have received nearly US$40 million in revenues over four years through the use of unpaid child labor in Malawi. In 1995, the Malawi government, through the Ministry of Labor in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, started drafting a Tobacco Tenancy Labor Bill to regulate the relations and transactions between the tenant farmers and the landlords. The bill has been taken through a number of revisions but it has not yet been taken to Parliament. Supporting Children or Exploiting Them? Multinational tobacco companies are aware of the public relations implications of profiting not only from tobacco itself, but doing it through the cycle of poverty and child labor. Tobacco companies in Malawi including Alliance One, Africa Leaf (Malawi) Limited, Premium and British American Tobacco (Malawi) are sponsoring the Eliminating Child Labor in Tobacco Growing Foundation (ECLT). The project, which includes other agricultural industries, is run by Together Ensuring Children Security (TECS), a registered trust set up in 2001 by tobacco exporting corporations operating in Malawi: Africa Leaf, Dimon, Limbe Leaf and Stancom Tobacco. In 2001, ECLT budgeted US$2 million for a four-year effort to combat child labor. Six years later, in October 2007, the 20 companies within the supply chain of the tobacco industry had ponied up somewhat less than $100,000 of that amount, according to TECS'S corporate newsletter. The University of California researchers are skeptical of the inherent conflict of interest in having tobacco companies influence social policy. They concluded that in Malawi, transnational tobacco companies are using child labor projects to enhance their corporate reputations and distract public attention away from how they profit from low wages and cheaply produced tobacco. Others argue that even when useful, the TECS program is a drop in an ocean of poverty. Up to 45 percent of the population is poor, according to the 2007 Malawi Millennium Development Goal (MDG) report. Registered as a Trust under the Trustees Act of Malawi, TECS projects have taken what it calls “a poverty reduction strategy approach” to improve food security, water safety and HIV/AIDS intervention and education. The trust has built schools, planted trees and constructed shallow wells to address the use of child labor in tobacco farming, according to TECS Programs Director Limbani Kakhome. While not directly undermining child labor, these programs will eventually bear fruit in better social conditions that will diminish the problem, Kakhome said. “We are also addressing health issues to ensure that the children don't skip school because of illnesses,” says Kakhome. Once they stay home because they are ill, they are easily taken up by child labor.” It is difficult, he said, to supply the market for child labor once the children are absorbed into the school system, have safe water and are financially secure. Too Little, Too Late? It is too late for children like 15-year-old Martha Kalima who dropped out of school at 12 years old to work in the tobacco fields. Pregnant at 14, she continued working in the fields until she gave birth. The father was the 16-year-old son of another tenant farmer. “There is nothing like maternity leave for tobacco workers,” Kalima said. “No one is entitled to sick leave nor is there transport to hospital. I gave birth at home because it was too late for me to get to hospital.” Martha is back in the tobacco fields carrying the baby on her back. Chances are slim that she will return to school. Some 15 percent of girls and 12 percent of boys drop out of school, according to Malawi government statistics. Around 22 percent of primary school age girls never attend school at all, while 60 percent of those enrolled do not attend regularly. The TECS corporate newsletter confirms that children with few options are pulled from school. Some are “coaxed from the poverty-stricken homes to work in order to keep body and soul together. They are exposed to hazardous environments where they work long hours and do jobs not befitting their ages and they are often beaten and abused.” That was the fate of 16-year-old Ekari Maliwasa, says she has just returned to her village in the south of Malawi after working for five years in the tobacco estates in the northern part of the country. “My parents took me with them to work in the tobacco estates in the north [when I was 11] and I only escaped back to my village two months ago after realizing that I was being abused. I am now staying with my elderly grandmother,” says Maliwasa. She says the estate manager beat her whenever he found her resting from the hard work in the tobacco fields. Ekari also went without food or drink for long hours, she said, and was not allowed take a break until she had worked for five hours. Enforcement of Labor Standards Difficult Maliwasa's treatment, like that endured by many of Malawi's child laborers, violated not only international standards but also legally binding treaties. Malawi is a signatory to a number of conventions against child labor including the 1973 International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 138 which sets a minimum working age of 18, and the 1999 ILO Convention 182 which outlaws child labor. The country also ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. (ILO has set 2016 as the deadline for countries around the world to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.) Child labor cannot be ended overnight says TECS Executive Director Bobby Maynard. “You can manage the supply chain to a certain degree but you can't control it fully,” he says. “The problem is that over 80 percent of tobacco is grown with no contracts from the tobacco companies -- as such it is difficult to intervene directly.” Tobacco companies note that they are involved in policing child labor violations at estates where they have direct control, and that they subscribe to Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), whose first principle is “no child labor.” But their results in curbing the practice have not been impressive. Relying on British American Tobacco's own internal documents, the University of California study found that, “rather than actively and responsibly working to solve the problem of child labor in growing tobacco, the company acted to co-opt the issue to present themselves over as a 'socially responsible corporation' by releasing a policy statement claiming the company's commitment to end harmful child labor practices, holding a global child labor conference with trade unions and other key stakeholders, and contributing nominal sums of money for development projects largely unrelated to efforts to end child labor.” International agencies are also involved. Kusali Kubwalo, communications officer for UNICEF Malawi, said the United Nations has joined Malawi's government and several non-governmental organizations to fight the problem from several fronts. A national “Stop Child Abuse Campaign” aims to break the silence shrouding all forms of child abuse, including child labor. “The campaign aims to mobilize leadership and a commitment at all levels to prevent and respond to all forms of abuse,” says Kubwalo. “Violations of children's rights take place every day in Malawi and are extensive, under-recognized and underreported.” She insists that Malawi, as a signatory to the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is obligated to respect, protect, facilitate and promote the fulfillment of the rights it guarantees. “This instrument must therefore be translated into concrete legislation, interventions and development programs,” says Kubwalo. “Ratification alone is not enough.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: Since publishing this article, Project Manager and Acting Director of ECLT Foundation, Mr. Alain Berthoud, issued a response.
Response to “Playing with Children’s Lives: Big Tobacco in Malawi"by Alain Berthoud, ECLT Foundation Acting DirectorMarch 10th, 2008
Letter to the Editor of CorpWatch in response to CorpWatch article posted on their website on 25 February 2008 Dear Editor, On 25 February Corporate Watch published an article called “Playing with Children’s Lives: BigTobacco in Malawi", signed by Pilirani Semu-Banda Working with the ECLT Foundation as acting Director, and on behalf of the Foundation Board, I would like to make the few following comments which we would like you to add to your article and post on your website.
I remain at your disposal to further discuss ECLT’s mission and activities at your convenience ECLT is cited in the article, but was not contacted for comment. Therefore, as key donor to the mentioned project, we would like to describe in more detail who we are and the project activities. We hope this gives your readers a better perspective. ECLT is a sectorwide alliance grouping the major manufacturing and tobacco processing multinationals together with the growers associations, the global trade union federation dealing with agriculture and tobacco (IUF), and the program for the elimination of child labour, IPEC, of the ILO.
These members have agreed to work together to address the child labour issue in different regions of the world, acknowledging that none of them could individually solve such a complex problem. It is therefore a collective effort against child labour that goes beyond the very specific interests of each single actor. The collaborative efforts, commitment and community engagement of the ECLT are not shown in the article and are an important component in trying to make an impact on the serious issue of child labour. Concerning the ICLEP –Integrated Child Labour Eliminating- project that we support in Malawi, your article does not really explain our approach in addressing the issue of child labour in a global and integrated manner; nor does it discuss the concrete results and achievements, which are quite significant at local level.. Let us provide you with the following data; at the end of the present 4-year project (by mid 2010), with 4 million dollars invested, we will have reached about half of the children population in the concerned areas (15’000 children) or over 2/3 of the child population considered to be potentially involved in child labour. Although needs are immense, we do believe this is more than a drop in the ocean and that it certainly constitutes an example of what can practically be done to fight child labour when interested parties come together in a collaborative fashion. Anyone who has been in this region understands the need for adequate infrastructure, specifically schools. Although it is not exactly the tobacco companies’ core competency to set up schools, via our project tobacco companies together with the other ECLT partners have taken this on. 28 schools blocks have been built or renovated; teachers’ houses have been built to attract and keep the teachers motivated; local authorities and teachers are being trained in order to improve the quality of education. Child labour committees are in place in each community to fight child labour and to monitor children attendance at school; As a result enrolment rates increased by 20% during the first phase of the project, and continued to increase by 12% in the last year during which 500 children, strictly non-school going child labourers, and another 1’100 at risk children, have entered school. Sensitisation is done at all levels; at parents and community level to change attitudes regarding child labour as well as with district officials (including labour inspectors). This also means ECLT and its local partners are taking on the role of facilitating the implementation of the international conventions that, as you rightly say, Malawi has ratified. Poverty is an important cause, as well as the result, of child labour. Beyond the usual approach consisting in withdrawing children from work situation and reintegrating them in school, the ECLT funded project considers the living conditions of the parents so that they can afford to let their children go to school.
The following activities are undertaken:
Access to safe water and sanitation; 22’000 people have now access to a safe water source (topped shallow well or borehole) within a 500m range from their homes. Unfortunately, the burden of fetching water often falls to the child, and mostly girls. The project reduces this burden as well as prevents them from catching waterborne diseases.
Food security; A small scale irrigation scheme has been developed (600 treadle pumps supplied) together with crop diversification to ensure food security at the community level. It goes along with soil conservation and reforestation (300 nurseries, over 2 million trees planted). The burden of fetching wood also falls to the children, something the project attempts to alleviate by making a sustainable supply of firewood available.
Health; Malaria, and above all HIV/AIDS are widespread and certainly play a role in child labour. The project has set up outreach clinics tending to the community needs and training community agents for health prevention. A clinic was built in the project area –in Kasese- and works in collaboration with the existing government infrastructure. In only a few months, the public at large has been provided with tens of thousands of medical consultations. The holistic approach of the project is implemented together with the community leaders, the districts officials in charge of education, health, agriculture, etc… 500 of them have been associated with the project and trained on child labour issues in order to build capacity and to ensure the dynamic of the project will be sustained. At management level, oversight of the project as well as the sharing of good project practices and lessons learned is secured through a project steering committee on which key actors are serving (unions, growers, companies, ministry representatives) or acting as advisors (IPEC/ILO, Unicef, NGOs); it is chaired by the Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Labour. We are proud of the ECLT supported project in Malawi and believe it is an example of what can be done to fight child labour when cooperation of all interested parties is realized. Whether it is too little is a legitimate question, but the ECLT strives to establish demonstrably effective projects that can be 'scaled up' and adopted by other public and private organisations, to reach a much larger number of children and families. The ECLT believes the best approach to make progress on this serious issue is the one of focus and collaboration, and we welcome discussions with others that share that concern. Alain Berthoud ECLT Foundation acting Director, Geneva 4 March, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Seeking Africa's Green Revolution.
The article below from the BBC gives a good overview of the agricultural situation in Malawi over the last few years and the impact of the most important policy decision the Malawian government has maken recently. We are currently working on tracking the successes of the described subsidy programme so that the weaknesses can be acted upon in order to make it a more effective and efficient programme. The president of Malawi has won two awards in the last few months in relation to the subsidy programme despite resisitence from organizations such as the World Bank initially. Whether it is sustainably long term is yet to be seen but it is an interesting experiment that seems to have resulted in more food for Malawians.
Seeking Africa's green revolution
From the begging bowl to the bread basket: in just two years, Malawi has gone from famine to food surplus - a minor agricultural miracle.
By applying a mixture of crop breeding, soil management, irrigation and diversification, agro-science experts are helping subsistence farmers to cope with climate change and buck the trend in neighbouring African countries.
BBC science and environment reporter James Morgan has gone into the field to meet the families who are sowing the seeds of a uniquely African green revolution - one which is as kind to the environment as it is to the economy.
SUNDAY 05 OCTOBER - SIZING UP MALAWI'S MIRACLE
"If [environmentalists] lived for just one month among the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertiliser and irrigation canals."
So said Norman Borlaug, one of the founding fathers of the original Green Revolution - credited with wiping out starvation in Asia.
But can technology really be the saviour of Africa's struggling farmers? It has become a terribly unfashionable opinion in the UK, where "green" campaigners are no longer content to denounce GM crop trials. They simply rip them up.
"Responsible biotechnology is not the enemy," said Borlaug. "Starvation is."
I have decided to take Norm up on his wager, by coming to Malawi to see for myself.
Because no matter how many UN reports I've ploughed through, grasping the root cause of the current "food crisis" in Africa is anything but straightforward.
And neither is my journey to Malawi - a sweaty overnight haul which takes me via Kenya, Zambia, and several re-runs of Indiana Jones films. But for heroic inspiration, I look instead to a speech by Kofi Annan, the new chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) - a $200m, pan-African programme, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller foundations.
"Let us generate a uniquely African Green revolution," says Annan, cutting a heroic pose on my crumpled transcript. "There is nothing more important than this."
It is difficult to argue. Over the last 50 years, African farmers have laboured in the heat, while countries like Mexico, India and the Philippines have undergone a green revolution - applying novel fertilisers and pesticides to churn out bumper harvests of new high-yield varieties of wheat and rice.
Empowering farmers
Meanwhile, Africa has been cultivating greater and greater poverty statistics.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where per capita food production has steadily declined.
The harvests have been great, but still the food prices in Malawi are still rocketing
Malcolm Fleming
One third of Africans are malnourished. Soils are among the most depleted on Earth. Farmers do not have access to productive seed varieties and those that do have neither the knowledge nor the tools to reap the harvest. Slash and burn still reigns.
Climate change is forecasting ever more variable rainfalls, and more frequent droughts. Add in soaring fuel prices and the scourge of HIV/Aids, and the average African finds himself surrounded in the kind of perilous predicament which from which even Harrison Ford would struggle to escape.
But it is this very challenge that has drawn the world's crop scientists and agro-economists to Malawi. They hope to pioneer novel farming systems that propel Africa towards a new era of food security.
It has already been dubbed by members of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as "a greener revolution".
"Greener" because it works with ecosystems, not against them. A revolution that is "pro-poor and pro-environment", in the words of Mr Annan.
The talk around the conference tables is of "empowering" subsistence farmers to find their own, local solutions - farming techniques which are sustainable, affordable and tailored to local soils, markets and eating preferences.
Over the next week, I'll be taking a look at these projects first hand - catching fish in the desert, planting strange trees in the middle of maize crops.
I'm wondering how women and men, who have been sowing the same maize seeds for generations, really feel about the new hybrid varieties of seeds which are more nutritious, but also more hungry for expensive pesticide and fertiliser.
'Against the grain'
Most of all, I'm curious to find out whether the "miracle" we have read about here in Malawi is bona fide or illusory. Is the revolution underway, or a simple matter of better rainfall?
The facts are these. During the last decade, Malawi suffered six successive years of food shortage, culminating in 2005. One third of the population - 4.5million people - went hungry.
Step forward two years, and Malawi is exporting more than one million metric tonnes of maize, its staple crop.
The government, against the advice of the IMF and the World Bank, has handed out vouchers to 1.5m of the country's poorest farmers, enabling them to buy "inputs" - seeds, fertiliser and pesticides. Meanwhile, yields have mushroomed. Malawians are selling maize to Kenya and giving food aid to Zimbabwe.
The success was hailed last year with Oxfam's Malcolm Fleming describing to the BBC how Malawi was going against the grain of African agriculture.
So when I bump into Malcolm, a well-kent face in my native Scotland, on the flight to Lilongwe, I don't hesitate to offer a warm handshake of congratulations.
"I'm afraid that things have moved on since then," he sighs. "The harvests have been great, but still the food prices in Malawi are still rocketing."
Why? "That's the question," he continues. "The closer I look, the more complicated it becomes. But from what I gather, the maize is being sold abroad at greater prices, and that keeps the prices up in Malawi."
Malcolm is here doing research in the lead up to World Food Day on 16 October. Helping him to raise awareness is another familiar Scottish face, but I'm afraid I am sworn to secrecy. All will be revealed in due course.
"Rising food prices might not be much of a problem for me or you," says Mr Fleming, "but if you spend 80% of your household income on food, and then the price doubles..."
It is a welcome serving of realism pie to chew on as I step out of Lilongwe airport.
The pavements are covered in a blanket of purple blossom - it looks like a fairytale. And the boys cartwheeling down the red dirt roads seem full of beans. But the lumps in their bellies tell a different story.
MONDAY 06 OCTOBER - MAIZE EVERYWHERE
Piled 19 bags high; when I say bags, I'm talking about the kind of sacks you can dam rivers with.
I tried lifting one. At 50kg, that was a big mistake. I left that to the army of youngsters with Popeye biceps, who were loading Malawi's mammoth maize harvest onto lorries, bound for government sales depots around the country.
"If you came here just a few years ago, you would find this storage depot totally empty," says Feckson Kantonga, operations manager for the government-sponsored Agriculture Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc).
Feckson is standing at the foot of a pile of maize as tall a house. He has put his best suit on to welcome a Kenyan film crew, who had come from Nairobi to find out the secret of Malawi's success.
How exactly can it be, they are wondering, that their prosperous nation has come to depend on little old Malawi (the 13th poorest nation in the world) to supply its staple food crop?
"Malawi?" asks Peter, a business journalist. "We Kenyans know nothing of Malawi. I had to look the place up on Google to find out what the heck was going on here."
The answer is hidden inside the sacks. They are fat-packed with new hybrid corn varieties - strains that were unheard of in Malawi a decade ago.
Bred by multinationals in Malawi, or crop centres in Zimbabwe and Sudan, the plants are high-yielding and fast-growing - plants with bigger cobs and shorter maturation periods.
With global warming, it is essential the plants make the most of any rains while they last - "a crop for every drop", to quote the motto of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra).
But the most popular hybrid varieties are those that remain "poundable". That is, the grains can still be beaten into flour in the traditional way.
"Are you telling me you have you never pounded maize, James?" smiles Cathy, a Kenyan journalist, with a cheeky wink.
"You know in Kenya, a woman is not considered fit enough to be a bride until she can pound a bag of maize. And a boy is not a man until he can build a house."
Where does that leave me? Still out of breath from lifting the maize sack.
And it is not only maize. There are hybrids for every local crop - cassava, sweet potato, soya, ground nuts and legumes.
But the most remarkable thing about these "miracle seeds" is that many are not new at all.
"They have been with us for decades, but they never made it to the fields," says Agra's Fred Muhhuku, an expert on agronomics in East Africa.
"Traditionally, farmers have either been too poor or too afraid to take a chance on these new varieties, even though they can triple their yields," he explained.
"If they plant their hardy traditional strains, they know that come drought or flood, some crop will survive to harvest. The harvest will be tiny - maybe 800kg per hectare - but it is guaranteed, so they take no chances."
The result was six successive years of food shortage in Malawi - beginning in 2000.
"And there was no lack of rains, I can tell you," says Dr Jeffrey Luhanga, technical co-ordinator at the Ministry for Agriculture.
"I experienced the famine in 2005; there were lines of people queuing for food aid.
"The thing you have to remember is that these were the ones who were still strong enough to walk to the depots. The hungriest - the ones who really needed the food - they were stuck at home, starving.
"Now look around Malawi, you see only healthy faces. Yes, this is a green revolution. And it is being driven by science."
He reels off a list of programmes - irrigation, agronomy, planting patterns, science-based economic practices.
"These technologies have been in our research institutes for years, but they went nowhere. Now, for the first time, the technology is in the farmers' hands."
Seeds of hope?
It begins with the seeds. The hybrid maize varieties are high yielding - around 2,500kg/hectare or more.
"I grew 80 bags this year, in the land just around my house. Eighty bags!" says Mitengo Gamr, one of Admarc's regional managers.
"My family no longer queues to buy food."
But they come with a catch - they are addicted to costly nitrogen fertiliser.
"But it is worth the investment," explains Muhhuku, "because the extra maize you grow, you can sell to pay for the fertiliser, buy an animal for your farm and diversify. You can build security."
And what if the rains fail? "Then you have enough left over from your big harvest last year," he smiles.
"It's true, it's a different way of farming and it takes some convincing."
The other drawback is what is known as post-harvest management. The hybrids yield more flour, but the grains are less resistant to worms and weevils.
"In some places, you lose 40% of your storage," says Muhhuku.
The answer, inevitably, is pesticides, another expensive input. The margins are still favourable, but what if you can't afford to invest in the first place?
This is where the Malawian government has stepped in. A month or two from now, 1.5m of the poorest subsistence farmers will begin arriving at Admarc's depots, clutching four coupons: one for seeds, two for fertilisers and another for legumes. This year, for the first time, pesticides will be subsidised too.
It's an enormous cost burden for a developing economy to bear - which is why the past, African governments have preferred to rely on private investment and foreign aid.
Malawi has gambled - and last year, the reward was millions of dollars of maize export revenues.
"I am just back from New York, from a UN conference, where they had an entire session dedicated to Malawi," beams Dr Luhanga.
"Other African countries - they want to know if they can follow our example. Kenya, Tanzania, Swaziland - they are thinking of introducing subsidies. This green revolution - it is truly for the whole of Africa."
Where is the catch? Certainly, the revolution has not stopped the market price of maize from doubling in a year - from 30 kwachas (£0.12) per kilogram to 60 kwachas.
The government, controversially, has passed a law capping the price at 52 kwachas - an emergency measure.
But utter the words "technological dependency" to Muhhuku, and he simply shakes his head.
"We hear this accusation from western development workers. We are told 'why make farmers buy seeds every year? Why let the companies trap you?' But this is based on a misunderstanding. Storing the hybrid seeds - it takes a lot of technical knowledge.
"The farmers can stick to their traditional ways. But the yields are not worth their sweat."
Tomorrow, I will meet the farmers and ask them myself.
TUESDAY 07 OCTOBER - RISING FROM THE ASHES
The women of Mnduka village are pounding their drums.
Under the shade of a mango tree, a crowd is gathering around a masked man, who is twisting, thrashing, throwing himself at the dust, over and over again.
He appears possessed - demonic, even. But everyone is cheering him. This isn't an exorcism, it's a celebration.
"Gule Wamkulu" - literally the "Big Dance" - traditionally marks the end of a successful harvest.
The masked figure is either a spirit, an animal, or a ghost - everyone I ask spins me a different spooky yarn. But what they all agree on, is that he has risen from the graveyard, "and he is very, very happy".
Happy as everyone here in Mnduka village has been at harvest time, since agro-technology arrived.
If you're looking for a model village, to test whether Malawi's much trumpeted "green revolution" is science fact or romantic fiction, Mnduka is well worth the trek.
Having had my fill of analysing national maize export statistics, I came here to ask the farmers themselves.
Thanks to the government subsidy coupons for fertiliser and seeds, the technology is now in their hands.
Despite the bail out, a national newspaper today carries a front page story warning of impending food shortages in six regions, affecting 1.5m Malawians - about one tenth of the population.
Three years ago, Mnduka too was a dustbowl. The drought of 2005 was as harsh here as anywhere in Malawi.
Among the farmers, a quick show of hands reveals the vast majority were already growing hybrid maize but without access to affordable fertiliser, their family stockpiles ran out in three months.
"Every day, we had to look for work just to eat that night, says Esther Chirwa, 28, who supports a household of five.
"We were living from hand to mouth."
"I travelled far and wide just to find food," says Nixon, 58, who harvested only 10 bags, which had to feed a family of six for a year.
"When you are away for so long, your family suffers."
Today, as we are led between the maize fields, the place has the feel of an African fairytale.
Down by the murky brown stream, the local farmers take turns to sweat it out on the irrigation pedal foot pump - mercifully shaded by bushes.
The field alongside - once scrubland - is now blossoming into a small oasis of peppers and maize - "the garden" they call it.
The idea is simple - one village garden will train a hundred farmers how to irrigate.
The foot pump and simple water piping were funded by an NGO, but across Malawi, it is the government which has taken the lead irrigation, with an ambitious program to create a "green belt" stretching along the shores of Lake Malawi.
"Remember - with irrigation, you can harvest three maize crops a year," says Phyness Thembulembu from US-based NGO Citizens Network for Foreign Affair (CNFA).
Meanwhile, over on the hillside, the farmers are teaching each other how to plant cassava - a drought resistant alternative to maize.
"The crop is common in other areas of the country, but back in 2005, very few here were growing it," says Phyness. "After the drought, they had to think again".
But the centrepiece of the village model is the agrodealer. A local shopkeeper has been given grants and technical training to advise farmers on fertilisers and hybrid seeds.
The shop is one of several thousand in a national a program funded by AGRA, and implemented here in Mnduka by CNFA.
"In the past, the farmers had to travel 18km to access the high yielding varieties (CNFA has a target of 5km) - an expensive and time consuming trip, when you are struggling to support a household of six or seven," says Matthews Matale, an agrodealer from a neighbouring town.
Now the seeds are on their doorstep. With support from CNFA, the agrodealer holds annual crop demonstrations and the farmers choose the seed variety they favour.
"The most popular in my shop," says Dinah Kapizan, "are the maize seeds that come in animal varieties - monkeys, elephants and lions.
"Monkeys are the quickest to maturity, the elephants next, and then the longest, but with the greatest yields, are the lions."
A clever marketing ploy, but it's simpler than remembering the difference between MH18 and DK8A31. I for one, am grateful.
Esther, too is grateful for the seeds, the shorter travelling distance to the agrodealer, and most importantly, the subsidies.
"It's clear we are having bigger harvests now, with the fertiliser. I am able to sell some. The only thing I fear for is what happens if they take the subsidy away."
The dependency cannot be underestimated. The biggest round of applause under the mango tree was not for the wild ghost-man dancing, but for the local headman - when he called for fertiliser to be stocked here in the village, like the seeds.
"My worry though, is can this really be sustainable in the long term?", says France Gondwe, of Malawi's International Centre for Agroforestry research.
"The Nitrogen fertiliser is a quick fix - but without it, the harvest is low, because the soils are suffering from years of [monoculture]. Even with the fertiliser, they are not performing to their full potential.
"There are alternatives to fertiliser - crop rotation, manure, agroforestry. But with the food shortages, the government is trapped. And so the people are trapped too."
Back under the mango tree, the mysterious masked man takes a bow and races off through the crowd, and over the hill in the direction of the graveyard.
Mnduka too has risen from the graveyard - but the dancing goes on, for now at least.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7651977.stm
Published: 2008/10/08 16:01:51 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
Seeking Africa's green revolution
From the begging bowl to the bread basket: in just two years, Malawi has gone from famine to food surplus - a minor agricultural miracle.
By applying a mixture of crop breeding, soil management, irrigation and diversification, agro-science experts are helping subsistence farmers to cope with climate change and buck the trend in neighbouring African countries.
BBC science and environment reporter James Morgan has gone into the field to meet the families who are sowing the seeds of a uniquely African green revolution - one which is as kind to the environment as it is to the economy.
SUNDAY 05 OCTOBER - SIZING UP MALAWI'S MIRACLE
"If [environmentalists] lived for just one month among the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertiliser and irrigation canals."
So said Norman Borlaug, one of the founding fathers of the original Green Revolution - credited with wiping out starvation in Asia.
But can technology really be the saviour of Africa's struggling farmers? It has become a terribly unfashionable opinion in the UK, where "green" campaigners are no longer content to denounce GM crop trials. They simply rip them up.
"Responsible biotechnology is not the enemy," said Borlaug. "Starvation is."
I have decided to take Norm up on his wager, by coming to Malawi to see for myself.
Because no matter how many UN reports I've ploughed through, grasping the root cause of the current "food crisis" in Africa is anything but straightforward.
And neither is my journey to Malawi - a sweaty overnight haul which takes me via Kenya, Zambia, and several re-runs of Indiana Jones films. But for heroic inspiration, I look instead to a speech by Kofi Annan, the new chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) - a $200m, pan-African programme, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller foundations.
"Let us generate a uniquely African Green revolution," says Annan, cutting a heroic pose on my crumpled transcript. "There is nothing more important than this."
It is difficult to argue. Over the last 50 years, African farmers have laboured in the heat, while countries like Mexico, India and the Philippines have undergone a green revolution - applying novel fertilisers and pesticides to churn out bumper harvests of new high-yield varieties of wheat and rice.
Empowering farmers
Meanwhile, Africa has been cultivating greater and greater poverty statistics.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where per capita food production has steadily declined.
The harvests have been great, but still the food prices in Malawi are still rocketing
Malcolm Fleming
One third of Africans are malnourished. Soils are among the most depleted on Earth. Farmers do not have access to productive seed varieties and those that do have neither the knowledge nor the tools to reap the harvest. Slash and burn still reigns.
Climate change is forecasting ever more variable rainfalls, and more frequent droughts. Add in soaring fuel prices and the scourge of HIV/Aids, and the average African finds himself surrounded in the kind of perilous predicament which from which even Harrison Ford would struggle to escape.
But it is this very challenge that has drawn the world's crop scientists and agro-economists to Malawi. They hope to pioneer novel farming systems that propel Africa towards a new era of food security.
It has already been dubbed by members of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as "a greener revolution".
"Greener" because it works with ecosystems, not against them. A revolution that is "pro-poor and pro-environment", in the words of Mr Annan.
The talk around the conference tables is of "empowering" subsistence farmers to find their own, local solutions - farming techniques which are sustainable, affordable and tailored to local soils, markets and eating preferences.
Over the next week, I'll be taking a look at these projects first hand - catching fish in the desert, planting strange trees in the middle of maize crops.
I'm wondering how women and men, who have been sowing the same maize seeds for generations, really feel about the new hybrid varieties of seeds which are more nutritious, but also more hungry for expensive pesticide and fertiliser.
'Against the grain'
Most of all, I'm curious to find out whether the "miracle" we have read about here in Malawi is bona fide or illusory. Is the revolution underway, or a simple matter of better rainfall?
The facts are these. During the last decade, Malawi suffered six successive years of food shortage, culminating in 2005. One third of the population - 4.5million people - went hungry.
Step forward two years, and Malawi is exporting more than one million metric tonnes of maize, its staple crop.
The government, against the advice of the IMF and the World Bank, has handed out vouchers to 1.5m of the country's poorest farmers, enabling them to buy "inputs" - seeds, fertiliser and pesticides. Meanwhile, yields have mushroomed. Malawians are selling maize to Kenya and giving food aid to Zimbabwe.
The success was hailed last year with Oxfam's Malcolm Fleming describing to the BBC how Malawi was going against the grain of African agriculture.
So when I bump into Malcolm, a well-kent face in my native Scotland, on the flight to Lilongwe, I don't hesitate to offer a warm handshake of congratulations.
"I'm afraid that things have moved on since then," he sighs. "The harvests have been great, but still the food prices in Malawi are still rocketing."
Why? "That's the question," he continues. "The closer I look, the more complicated it becomes. But from what I gather, the maize is being sold abroad at greater prices, and that keeps the prices up in Malawi."
Malcolm is here doing research in the lead up to World Food Day on 16 October. Helping him to raise awareness is another familiar Scottish face, but I'm afraid I am sworn to secrecy. All will be revealed in due course.
"Rising food prices might not be much of a problem for me or you," says Mr Fleming, "but if you spend 80% of your household income on food, and then the price doubles..."
It is a welcome serving of realism pie to chew on as I step out of Lilongwe airport.
The pavements are covered in a blanket of purple blossom - it looks like a fairytale. And the boys cartwheeling down the red dirt roads seem full of beans. But the lumps in their bellies tell a different story.
MONDAY 06 OCTOBER - MAIZE EVERYWHERE
Piled 19 bags high; when I say bags, I'm talking about the kind of sacks you can dam rivers with.
I tried lifting one. At 50kg, that was a big mistake. I left that to the army of youngsters with Popeye biceps, who were loading Malawi's mammoth maize harvest onto lorries, bound for government sales depots around the country.
"If you came here just a few years ago, you would find this storage depot totally empty," says Feckson Kantonga, operations manager for the government-sponsored Agriculture Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc).
Feckson is standing at the foot of a pile of maize as tall a house. He has put his best suit on to welcome a Kenyan film crew, who had come from Nairobi to find out the secret of Malawi's success.
How exactly can it be, they are wondering, that their prosperous nation has come to depend on little old Malawi (the 13th poorest nation in the world) to supply its staple food crop?
"Malawi?" asks Peter, a business journalist. "We Kenyans know nothing of Malawi. I had to look the place up on Google to find out what the heck was going on here."
The answer is hidden inside the sacks. They are fat-packed with new hybrid corn varieties - strains that were unheard of in Malawi a decade ago.
Bred by multinationals in Malawi, or crop centres in Zimbabwe and Sudan, the plants are high-yielding and fast-growing - plants with bigger cobs and shorter maturation periods.
With global warming, it is essential the plants make the most of any rains while they last - "a crop for every drop", to quote the motto of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra).
But the most popular hybrid varieties are those that remain "poundable". That is, the grains can still be beaten into flour in the traditional way.
"Are you telling me you have you never pounded maize, James?" smiles Cathy, a Kenyan journalist, with a cheeky wink.
"You know in Kenya, a woman is not considered fit enough to be a bride until she can pound a bag of maize. And a boy is not a man until he can build a house."
Where does that leave me? Still out of breath from lifting the maize sack.
And it is not only maize. There are hybrids for every local crop - cassava, sweet potato, soya, ground nuts and legumes.
But the most remarkable thing about these "miracle seeds" is that many are not new at all.
"They have been with us for decades, but they never made it to the fields," says Agra's Fred Muhhuku, an expert on agronomics in East Africa.
"Traditionally, farmers have either been too poor or too afraid to take a chance on these new varieties, even though they can triple their yields," he explained.
"If they plant their hardy traditional strains, they know that come drought or flood, some crop will survive to harvest. The harvest will be tiny - maybe 800kg per hectare - but it is guaranteed, so they take no chances."
The result was six successive years of food shortage in Malawi - beginning in 2000.
"And there was no lack of rains, I can tell you," says Dr Jeffrey Luhanga, technical co-ordinator at the Ministry for Agriculture.
"I experienced the famine in 2005; there were lines of people queuing for food aid.
"The thing you have to remember is that these were the ones who were still strong enough to walk to the depots. The hungriest - the ones who really needed the food - they were stuck at home, starving.
"Now look around Malawi, you see only healthy faces. Yes, this is a green revolution. And it is being driven by science."
He reels off a list of programmes - irrigation, agronomy, planting patterns, science-based economic practices.
"These technologies have been in our research institutes for years, but they went nowhere. Now, for the first time, the technology is in the farmers' hands."
Seeds of hope?
It begins with the seeds. The hybrid maize varieties are high yielding - around 2,500kg/hectare or more.
"I grew 80 bags this year, in the land just around my house. Eighty bags!" says Mitengo Gamr, one of Admarc's regional managers.
"My family no longer queues to buy food."
But they come with a catch - they are addicted to costly nitrogen fertiliser.
"But it is worth the investment," explains Muhhuku, "because the extra maize you grow, you can sell to pay for the fertiliser, buy an animal for your farm and diversify. You can build security."
And what if the rains fail? "Then you have enough left over from your big harvest last year," he smiles.
"It's true, it's a different way of farming and it takes some convincing."
The other drawback is what is known as post-harvest management. The hybrids yield more flour, but the grains are less resistant to worms and weevils.
"In some places, you lose 40% of your storage," says Muhhuku.
The answer, inevitably, is pesticides, another expensive input. The margins are still favourable, but what if you can't afford to invest in the first place?
This is where the Malawian government has stepped in. A month or two from now, 1.5m of the poorest subsistence farmers will begin arriving at Admarc's depots, clutching four coupons: one for seeds, two for fertilisers and another for legumes. This year, for the first time, pesticides will be subsidised too.
It's an enormous cost burden for a developing economy to bear - which is why the past, African governments have preferred to rely on private investment and foreign aid.
Malawi has gambled - and last year, the reward was millions of dollars of maize export revenues.
"I am just back from New York, from a UN conference, where they had an entire session dedicated to Malawi," beams Dr Luhanga.
"Other African countries - they want to know if they can follow our example. Kenya, Tanzania, Swaziland - they are thinking of introducing subsidies. This green revolution - it is truly for the whole of Africa."
Where is the catch? Certainly, the revolution has not stopped the market price of maize from doubling in a year - from 30 kwachas (£0.12) per kilogram to 60 kwachas.
The government, controversially, has passed a law capping the price at 52 kwachas - an emergency measure.
But utter the words "technological dependency" to Muhhuku, and he simply shakes his head.
"We hear this accusation from western development workers. We are told 'why make farmers buy seeds every year? Why let the companies trap you?' But this is based on a misunderstanding. Storing the hybrid seeds - it takes a lot of technical knowledge.
"The farmers can stick to their traditional ways. But the yields are not worth their sweat."
Tomorrow, I will meet the farmers and ask them myself.
TUESDAY 07 OCTOBER - RISING FROM THE ASHES
The women of Mnduka village are pounding their drums.
Under the shade of a mango tree, a crowd is gathering around a masked man, who is twisting, thrashing, throwing himself at the dust, over and over again.
He appears possessed - demonic, even. But everyone is cheering him. This isn't an exorcism, it's a celebration.
"Gule Wamkulu" - literally the "Big Dance" - traditionally marks the end of a successful harvest.
The masked figure is either a spirit, an animal, or a ghost - everyone I ask spins me a different spooky yarn. But what they all agree on, is that he has risen from the graveyard, "and he is very, very happy".
Happy as everyone here in Mnduka village has been at harvest time, since agro-technology arrived.
If you're looking for a model village, to test whether Malawi's much trumpeted "green revolution" is science fact or romantic fiction, Mnduka is well worth the trek.
Having had my fill of analysing national maize export statistics, I came here to ask the farmers themselves.
Thanks to the government subsidy coupons for fertiliser and seeds, the technology is now in their hands.
Despite the bail out, a national newspaper today carries a front page story warning of impending food shortages in six regions, affecting 1.5m Malawians - about one tenth of the population.
Three years ago, Mnduka too was a dustbowl. The drought of 2005 was as harsh here as anywhere in Malawi.
Among the farmers, a quick show of hands reveals the vast majority were already growing hybrid maize but without access to affordable fertiliser, their family stockpiles ran out in three months.
"Every day, we had to look for work just to eat that night, says Esther Chirwa, 28, who supports a household of five.
"We were living from hand to mouth."
"I travelled far and wide just to find food," says Nixon, 58, who harvested only 10 bags, which had to feed a family of six for a year.
"When you are away for so long, your family suffers."
Today, as we are led between the maize fields, the place has the feel of an African fairytale.
Down by the murky brown stream, the local farmers take turns to sweat it out on the irrigation pedal foot pump - mercifully shaded by bushes.
The field alongside - once scrubland - is now blossoming into a small oasis of peppers and maize - "the garden" they call it.
The idea is simple - one village garden will train a hundred farmers how to irrigate.
The foot pump and simple water piping were funded by an NGO, but across Malawi, it is the government which has taken the lead irrigation, with an ambitious program to create a "green belt" stretching along the shores of Lake Malawi.
"Remember - with irrigation, you can harvest three maize crops a year," says Phyness Thembulembu from US-based NGO Citizens Network for Foreign Affair (CNFA).
Meanwhile, over on the hillside, the farmers are teaching each other how to plant cassava - a drought resistant alternative to maize.
"The crop is common in other areas of the country, but back in 2005, very few here were growing it," says Phyness. "After the drought, they had to think again".
But the centrepiece of the village model is the agrodealer. A local shopkeeper has been given grants and technical training to advise farmers on fertilisers and hybrid seeds.
The shop is one of several thousand in a national a program funded by AGRA, and implemented here in Mnduka by CNFA.
"In the past, the farmers had to travel 18km to access the high yielding varieties (CNFA has a target of 5km) - an expensive and time consuming trip, when you are struggling to support a household of six or seven," says Matthews Matale, an agrodealer from a neighbouring town.
Now the seeds are on their doorstep. With support from CNFA, the agrodealer holds annual crop demonstrations and the farmers choose the seed variety they favour.
"The most popular in my shop," says Dinah Kapizan, "are the maize seeds that come in animal varieties - monkeys, elephants and lions.
"Monkeys are the quickest to maturity, the elephants next, and then the longest, but with the greatest yields, are the lions."
A clever marketing ploy, but it's simpler than remembering the difference between MH18 and DK8A31. I for one, am grateful.
Esther, too is grateful for the seeds, the shorter travelling distance to the agrodealer, and most importantly, the subsidies.
"It's clear we are having bigger harvests now, with the fertiliser. I am able to sell some. The only thing I fear for is what happens if they take the subsidy away."
The dependency cannot be underestimated. The biggest round of applause under the mango tree was not for the wild ghost-man dancing, but for the local headman - when he called for fertiliser to be stocked here in the village, like the seeds.
"My worry though, is can this really be sustainable in the long term?", says France Gondwe, of Malawi's International Centre for Agroforestry research.
"The Nitrogen fertiliser is a quick fix - but without it, the harvest is low, because the soils are suffering from years of [monoculture]. Even with the fertiliser, they are not performing to their full potential.
"There are alternatives to fertiliser - crop rotation, manure, agroforestry. But with the food shortages, the government is trapped. And so the people are trapped too."
Back under the mango tree, the mysterious masked man takes a bow and races off through the crowd, and over the hill in the direction of the graveyard.
Mnduka too has risen from the graveyard - but the dancing goes on, for now at least.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7651977.stm
Published: 2008/10/08 16:01:51 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
Monday, October 20, 2008
Mutharika Talks Tough
"Mutharika Talks Tough" was a recent headline talking about the president of Malawi, His Excellency Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika. When asked about when parliament was going to be opened as it had been closed by Bingu and not reopened despite an agreement reached between the government and the opposition that had set the date of reopening to the day before the article Bingu replied that "he would only call for Parliament if the opposition guaranteed that they would behave responsibly." He then went on to say that opposition MPs are "wasting taxpayers money on parliamentary sittings, which do not yield anything."
Then on a complete different tack the President went on about witchcraft without any prompting from the interviewer. In a unique defense of the right to an education for children, he "took a swipe at people who teach children witchcraft, saying children should be allowed to go to school and then afterwards make their own individual choices if they want to join witchcraft or not."
The persistent belief in witchcraft is quite interesting. Our day staff has been having to take his wife to the doctor repeatedly and so far they have not been able to determine why she is ill. Our day staff member has told me that since the doctor is unable to come up with a clear cause for her illness then it is obvious that her illness is the result of a spell put on her. When I asked what happens next he told me that it is in God's hands now. Thankfully, she has now recovered from this mystery illness.
We are going to Cape Town, South Africa between Oct. 12 and 20, 2008 and we are really looking forward to the trip. Will give an update when we are back.
Source: The Daily Times, September 30, 2008.
Then on a complete different tack the President went on about witchcraft without any prompting from the interviewer. In a unique defense of the right to an education for children, he "took a swipe at people who teach children witchcraft, saying children should be allowed to go to school and then afterwards make their own individual choices if they want to join witchcraft or not."
The persistent belief in witchcraft is quite interesting. Our day staff has been having to take his wife to the doctor repeatedly and so far they have not been able to determine why she is ill. Our day staff member has told me that since the doctor is unable to come up with a clear cause for her illness then it is obvious that her illness is the result of a spell put on her. When I asked what happens next he told me that it is in God's hands now. Thankfully, she has now recovered from this mystery illness.
We are going to Cape Town, South Africa between Oct. 12 and 20, 2008 and we are really looking forward to the trip. Will give an update when we are back.
Source: The Daily Times, September 30, 2008.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The Press Release I wrote for FUM
Below is the press release I wrote after a lot of research for the Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM). It has garnered a lot of attention and the government has partially backed off on its decision to be the only one allowed to buy and sell corn in Malawi. They are now going to allow small traders to buy and sell, which will be better for Malawians, especially in remote areas as it will allow them to actually have access to the corn rather than having to travel great distances to get to a government deopt. As well the government has now stated that this directive is only for a short time, while at the time of announcement is was completely open ended.
Farmers Union of Malawi Expresses Reservations Over the ADMARC Directive
September 2008
The Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM), which is an apex body for farmer organization in Malawi commends Government for its efforts to achieve food security in Malawi. This has been demonstrated in a number of ways during the past three years, including the increased budgetary allocation towards agriculture (14-16%) which is significantly above the Maputo Declaration which called for a minimum 10% budgetary allocation towards agriculture. Additionally the Government is to be commended for the steps taken to ensure food security including the Targeted Input Subsidy Programme (TIP) which has turned Malawi from a net food importer to a net exporter. For a long time farmers have suffered exploitation at the hands of unscrupulous buyers who were reaping the benefits from where they did not sow and there was little or nothing done to rescue them. In response, Government introduced minimum market prices so that farmers could be protected from exploitation and then went even further by raising the minimum prices for maize, tobacco and cotton this year, which FUM applauded. In support of agricultural processing, in line with the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS), the Government has implemented incentives in the livestock sector with regard to lowering levies on the importation of equipment leading Malawi to enhanced economic growth.
That said, the Farmers Union of Malawi has grave reservations regarding the recently announced plan by the government that ADMARC will be the sole buyer of all the maize produced in Malawi. Concerns have been raised both about ADMARC’s operational inefficiency and the extent to which ADMARC actually provides useful marketing services to smallholder farmers and poor consumers.1 ADMARC last year failed to access many rural areas first blaming it on a lack of funds then on impassable roads due to the rain. Being the sole buyer is not a direction the government is supposed to be going. This directive is not well timed and is in contravention with our current era of market liberalization.
FUM feels that there is a role for both ADMARC and the private sector in maize purchasing and selling, especially in remote areas of considerable distance from ADMARC depots and that the directive enforcing ADMARC as the sole buyer/seller of maize, if necessary, may have been better implemented in partnership with the private sector. Competition is good for creating both effective markets as well as leading to a better livelihood for Malawian farmers, better livelihood leads to increased food security.
FUM recognizes a role for properly licensed and reputable buyers. Properly monitored, the private sector can play a role in alleviating food security problems by enhancing competition and providing effective purchasing and distribution networks. Therefore what is required is for the private sector, with monitoring from Government, to ensure that buyers are credible, honest and reputable. The licensing regime should be strict and punish those who do not meet these criteria. This will provide for a viable private sector marketing structure allowing the Government to ensure food security while continuing to allow the pursuit of a liberalized economy.
While FUM understands the step taken by Government is an attempt to ensure food security, the Farmers Union of Malawi, whose mandate is to safeguard and promote the interests of farmers in Malawi, is interested to see that farmers get a good return on their farming investments in the face of high production costs due to soaring global input prices. It is therefore important not to discourage investment in agriculture leading to lower future production and preventing Malawi from taking advantage of the opportunities available due to rising food prices.
FUM believes that a more appropriate approach is temporary export restriction which was implemented in April of this year. This keeps the produced maize in the country but still allows the private sector and market forces to play their expected role in a liberalized economy. Food security also flows out of farmers, who are the majority of Malawians, receiving an appropriate selling price for their produce including maize. With the increasing cost of inputs especially fertilizer farmers need to ensure that they can adequately plan to buy inputs for the next growing season by pursuing the best price. A 2002 study by OXFAM found that “produce fetches higher prices when sold to private traders and at local markets than at ADMARC.”2
FUM feels that the Government needs a medium to long term strategy to build the capacity of ADMARC to effectively compete in an open and liberalized market. This would allow ADMARC ample time to prepare by enhancing its human, financial and physical capacity. Additionally ADMARC needs to ensure that distribution points are within reasonable distances of Malawians, thereby truly contributing to the stated goal of food security for all Malawians. Traveling great distances to ADMARC depots can be a significant cost to farmers, reducing even further their income. This problem is compounded if ADMARC begins rationing the amount of maize that can be purchased requiring farmers to return multiple times. Currently this rationing has already been seen to occur in ADMARC depots in the Southern Region.
If farmers cannot easily sell their maize to ADMARC then "gray markets", where the product trades at prices below the set price will crop up. If the set price is too low compared to neighbouring countries than there is the possibility of maize crop flowing out of Malawi given the porous nature of our borders. In this case, this may be good for Malawian producers as they will have secured a better price but it could undermine the good intentions aimed at food security the government is trying to protect. Farmers naturally wish to sell to the buyer who offers the best price, if the setting of a maximum price of MK 45/kg forces farmers to sell at that price and no better than this would be detrimental to their interests if the private traders would be offering a better price. The set price of MK 45/kg is on the low side of what farmers were actually receiving this season. This may encourage the growth of black market sales as farmers attempt to recoup the cost of inputs.
ADMARC as sole buyer may be harmful to both traders who are pushed out of the market by the ever changing decisions of government on what ADMARC’s role is, and also to producers whose incomes are negatively affected by ADMARC’s presence.3 Support for private sector structures is more sustainable in the long term as it allows for government to get out of the business of buyer thereby freeing up precious budgetary resources. A World Bank study found that ADMARC has been plagued by a history of failure to guarantee food security with the failure attributed to the extremely high cost of the programs compounded by the large inefficiency in ADMARC’s operation.4 Other problems found with ADMARC in the study were that it consistently bought too late in the year and that it often ran out of money in the middle of the season.5 These were serious concerns and provide a genuine justification for the continued move to a more liberalized market. By implementing this directive indefinitely the Government risks losing credibility both with Malawians and with the international community.
For ADMARC to be able compete favourably in a liberalized market economy FUM recommends the following if:
- ADMARC must ensure that it does not ration the maize distributed, causing families to have to return to distribution points multiple times, often at great distances from their homes.
- ADMARC must ensure that it has depots that are at a reasonable distance from all Malawians.
- ADMARC needs to strive to make the maize available so that it is equitably and efficiently distributed to all people and all areas.
- For traders to turn over the maize they may have in storage, ADMARC may need to offer a higher amount to them to cover both the purchase and storage costs that have already been incurred. Some farmers have received higher prices from buyers and it is fair to assume that the traders need to recoup their costs.
- Additionally it is essential that ADMARC has sufficient cash reserves to pay at the time and point of sale and that appropriate stocking of maize occurs early enough in the season.
- ADMARC must ensure that it reaches areas that may become impassable in the rainy season while the roads can still be travelled and that it tackles operational inefficiencies that it has struggled with in the past.
- Preferential treatment in the selling of commodities at the ADMARC depots must stop immediately.
- Private sector contracts to provide maize to large institutions such as hospitals, schools, the military etc. must be honoured and fulfilled by ADMARC
It is imperative that when setting minimum prices the Government should negotiate these prices with the relevant stakeholders including FUM as representative of the farmers of Malawi. The setting of the minimum price was a communication tool to farmers, allowing them to know the price below which they should not sell. Whether there was effective enforcement or not the producers had a minimum price that they could us as a guideline to attempt to enforce fair prices themselves. With rising fertilizer, fuel and other input costs it is imperative, in light of the goal of making Malawi an exporting rather than an importing nation that farmers receive adequate returns on their investments.
The Union would also like to appeal to farmers, who are the key to food security in this country, on the following:
- To desist from selling their produce to unlicensed buyers
- To not sell their produce while it is still in the vegetative state and the actual yield is unknown
- Bartering is discouraged as there are many instances where farmers are taken advantage of in this medium of exchange
- Not to sell all their maize but to stock enough reserves for household consumption to take you through the year
- To start careful planning for next growing season in terms of sourcing inputs. Farmers must remember that farming is a business; they must not spend/consume the capital for their business
- Farmers must remember that the HIV/AIDS pandemic is real and that prevention is better than mitigation. The good income realized from crop and livestock sales should not make farmers forget that the pandemic is having a devastating impact on agriculture and the economy as a whole.
With the announcement of ADMARC being the sole buyer of all maize the government has turned its back on market liberalisation and has refused to allow farmers to take the best price offered to them.
Farmers Union of Malawi Expresses Reservations Over the ADMARC Directive
September 2008
The Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM), which is an apex body for farmer organization in Malawi commends Government for its efforts to achieve food security in Malawi. This has been demonstrated in a number of ways during the past three years, including the increased budgetary allocation towards agriculture (14-16%) which is significantly above the Maputo Declaration which called for a minimum 10% budgetary allocation towards agriculture. Additionally the Government is to be commended for the steps taken to ensure food security including the Targeted Input Subsidy Programme (TIP) which has turned Malawi from a net food importer to a net exporter. For a long time farmers have suffered exploitation at the hands of unscrupulous buyers who were reaping the benefits from where they did not sow and there was little or nothing done to rescue them. In response, Government introduced minimum market prices so that farmers could be protected from exploitation and then went even further by raising the minimum prices for maize, tobacco and cotton this year, which FUM applauded. In support of agricultural processing, in line with the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS), the Government has implemented incentives in the livestock sector with regard to lowering levies on the importation of equipment leading Malawi to enhanced economic growth.
That said, the Farmers Union of Malawi has grave reservations regarding the recently announced plan by the government that ADMARC will be the sole buyer of all the maize produced in Malawi. Concerns have been raised both about ADMARC’s operational inefficiency and the extent to which ADMARC actually provides useful marketing services to smallholder farmers and poor consumers.1 ADMARC last year failed to access many rural areas first blaming it on a lack of funds then on impassable roads due to the rain. Being the sole buyer is not a direction the government is supposed to be going. This directive is not well timed and is in contravention with our current era of market liberalization.
FUM feels that there is a role for both ADMARC and the private sector in maize purchasing and selling, especially in remote areas of considerable distance from ADMARC depots and that the directive enforcing ADMARC as the sole buyer/seller of maize, if necessary, may have been better implemented in partnership with the private sector. Competition is good for creating both effective markets as well as leading to a better livelihood for Malawian farmers, better livelihood leads to increased food security.
FUM recognizes a role for properly licensed and reputable buyers. Properly monitored, the private sector can play a role in alleviating food security problems by enhancing competition and providing effective purchasing and distribution networks. Therefore what is required is for the private sector, with monitoring from Government, to ensure that buyers are credible, honest and reputable. The licensing regime should be strict and punish those who do not meet these criteria. This will provide for a viable private sector marketing structure allowing the Government to ensure food security while continuing to allow the pursuit of a liberalized economy.
While FUM understands the step taken by Government is an attempt to ensure food security, the Farmers Union of Malawi, whose mandate is to safeguard and promote the interests of farmers in Malawi, is interested to see that farmers get a good return on their farming investments in the face of high production costs due to soaring global input prices. It is therefore important not to discourage investment in agriculture leading to lower future production and preventing Malawi from taking advantage of the opportunities available due to rising food prices.
FUM believes that a more appropriate approach is temporary export restriction which was implemented in April of this year. This keeps the produced maize in the country but still allows the private sector and market forces to play their expected role in a liberalized economy. Food security also flows out of farmers, who are the majority of Malawians, receiving an appropriate selling price for their produce including maize. With the increasing cost of inputs especially fertilizer farmers need to ensure that they can adequately plan to buy inputs for the next growing season by pursuing the best price. A 2002 study by OXFAM found that “produce fetches higher prices when sold to private traders and at local markets than at ADMARC.”2
FUM feels that the Government needs a medium to long term strategy to build the capacity of ADMARC to effectively compete in an open and liberalized market. This would allow ADMARC ample time to prepare by enhancing its human, financial and physical capacity. Additionally ADMARC needs to ensure that distribution points are within reasonable distances of Malawians, thereby truly contributing to the stated goal of food security for all Malawians. Traveling great distances to ADMARC depots can be a significant cost to farmers, reducing even further their income. This problem is compounded if ADMARC begins rationing the amount of maize that can be purchased requiring farmers to return multiple times. Currently this rationing has already been seen to occur in ADMARC depots in the Southern Region.
If farmers cannot easily sell their maize to ADMARC then "gray markets", where the product trades at prices below the set price will crop up. If the set price is too low compared to neighbouring countries than there is the possibility of maize crop flowing out of Malawi given the porous nature of our borders. In this case, this may be good for Malawian producers as they will have secured a better price but it could undermine the good intentions aimed at food security the government is trying to protect. Farmers naturally wish to sell to the buyer who offers the best price, if the setting of a maximum price of MK 45/kg forces farmers to sell at that price and no better than this would be detrimental to their interests if the private traders would be offering a better price. The set price of MK 45/kg is on the low side of what farmers were actually receiving this season. This may encourage the growth of black market sales as farmers attempt to recoup the cost of inputs.
ADMARC as sole buyer may be harmful to both traders who are pushed out of the market by the ever changing decisions of government on what ADMARC’s role is, and also to producers whose incomes are negatively affected by ADMARC’s presence.3 Support for private sector structures is more sustainable in the long term as it allows for government to get out of the business of buyer thereby freeing up precious budgetary resources. A World Bank study found that ADMARC has been plagued by a history of failure to guarantee food security with the failure attributed to the extremely high cost of the programs compounded by the large inefficiency in ADMARC’s operation.4 Other problems found with ADMARC in the study were that it consistently bought too late in the year and that it often ran out of money in the middle of the season.5 These were serious concerns and provide a genuine justification for the continued move to a more liberalized market. By implementing this directive indefinitely the Government risks losing credibility both with Malawians and with the international community.
For ADMARC to be able compete favourably in a liberalized market economy FUM recommends the following if:
- ADMARC must ensure that it does not ration the maize distributed, causing families to have to return to distribution points multiple times, often at great distances from their homes.
- ADMARC must ensure that it has depots that are at a reasonable distance from all Malawians.
- ADMARC needs to strive to make the maize available so that it is equitably and efficiently distributed to all people and all areas.
- For traders to turn over the maize they may have in storage, ADMARC may need to offer a higher amount to them to cover both the purchase and storage costs that have already been incurred. Some farmers have received higher prices from buyers and it is fair to assume that the traders need to recoup their costs.
- Additionally it is essential that ADMARC has sufficient cash reserves to pay at the time and point of sale and that appropriate stocking of maize occurs early enough in the season.
- ADMARC must ensure that it reaches areas that may become impassable in the rainy season while the roads can still be travelled and that it tackles operational inefficiencies that it has struggled with in the past.
- Preferential treatment in the selling of commodities at the ADMARC depots must stop immediately.
- Private sector contracts to provide maize to large institutions such as hospitals, schools, the military etc. must be honoured and fulfilled by ADMARC
It is imperative that when setting minimum prices the Government should negotiate these prices with the relevant stakeholders including FUM as representative of the farmers of Malawi. The setting of the minimum price was a communication tool to farmers, allowing them to know the price below which they should not sell. Whether there was effective enforcement or not the producers had a minimum price that they could us as a guideline to attempt to enforce fair prices themselves. With rising fertilizer, fuel and other input costs it is imperative, in light of the goal of making Malawi an exporting rather than an importing nation that farmers receive adequate returns on their investments.
The Union would also like to appeal to farmers, who are the key to food security in this country, on the following:
- To desist from selling their produce to unlicensed buyers
- To not sell their produce while it is still in the vegetative state and the actual yield is unknown
- Bartering is discouraged as there are many instances where farmers are taken advantage of in this medium of exchange
- Not to sell all their maize but to stock enough reserves for household consumption to take you through the year
- To start careful planning for next growing season in terms of sourcing inputs. Farmers must remember that farming is a business; they must not spend/consume the capital for their business
- Farmers must remember that the HIV/AIDS pandemic is real and that prevention is better than mitigation. The good income realized from crop and livestock sales should not make farmers forget that the pandemic is having a devastating impact on agriculture and the economy as a whole.
With the announcement of ADMARC being the sole buyer of all maize the government has turned its back on market liberalisation and has refused to allow farmers to take the best price offered to them.
Friday, September 19, 2008
A few weeks of research and writing
The last few weeks have been very busy for me at the Farmers Union but also very rewarding. Last week I had a full page press release that I wrote published in The Daily Times newspaper of Malawi. Not to get into too much detail, but it was about a recent government decision to outlaw the buying and selling of corn (the staple food crop here) by everyone but the government. The government is getting concerned that there may be a food shortage and that middle men who buy maize from the farmers are hoarding it in warehouses, causing an artificial shortage in order to create a supply crisis so that they can charge higher prices. Then they will continue to sell at a high or even higher price in what in Malawi is called the "hungry season" when people are out of their own food. While it is admirable that the government is concerned about food security the issue is that the government body given the task to buy and sell all the corn in the country is most likely not up to the task. It was never up to the task for 30 years of existence in this era of a liberalized economy the government buyer, ADMARC has become a small player. While the government has the right to do what it thinks is best for the country the Farmers Union had some reservations about this move, its impact on farmers and its impact on food security. I did a lot of research and had a press release published. The government has since backed down on its position allowing some private buying and selling. Many sections of Malawian society have praised the Farmers Union for its stance and its quick response. We have had favourable reviews about the press release from other NGOs as well as the British government and the World Bank. Two news stories about our position have come out after we had it published last Thursday. It is great to see a lot of research and work on writing a position paper have a real impact on government policy, plus get accolades from other important stakeholders. This week I just finished an 11 page overview on the rising cost of fertilizers which have almost tripled in price since last year. I went over the various possible causes and some mitigating measures that can be taken to soften the impact of the extremely high prices.
My parents sent us a wonderful care package which we received this week. It was full of goodies from home and was such a wonderful gesture.
Thanks Mom and Dad
My parents sent us a wonderful care package which we received this week. It was full of goodies from home and was such a wonderful gesture.
Thanks Mom and Dad
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Things You See in Malawi Can Be Different Then Home
Women carrying huge loads of wood on their head
Bicycles loaded with wood or charcoal used as transport trucks
A man wearing nothing but a plastic bag loincloth
A fully naked man strolling near our house
Monkeys running through the trees
Crocodiles 10 minutes walk from Regan's school (Janna saw this not me)
Herds of cattle walking through our neighbourhood
Sex workers waving down cars
Goats hanging from hooks, pick your piece and it is hacked off while you wait
Live goats strapped to bicycles
Multiple live chickens hanging from bicycle handlebars
Tire repairs taking place under trees
Plumbers and electricians for hire on the side of the road
Everything imaginable for sale by roving salespeople
Drivers pulling over so that they can purchase more alcohol while they are driving
The friendliest, happiest people I have ever seen.
Bicycles loaded with wood or charcoal used as transport trucks
A man wearing nothing but a plastic bag loincloth
A fully naked man strolling near our house
Monkeys running through the trees
Crocodiles 10 minutes walk from Regan's school (Janna saw this not me)
Herds of cattle walking through our neighbourhood
Sex workers waving down cars
Goats hanging from hooks, pick your piece and it is hacked off while you wait
Live goats strapped to bicycles
Multiple live chickens hanging from bicycle handlebars
Tire repairs taking place under trees
Plumbers and electricians for hire on the side of the road
Everything imaginable for sale by roving salespeople
Drivers pulling over so that they can purchase more alcohol while they are driving
The friendliest, happiest people I have ever seen.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Come, Come and Mend
It is often in small little surprise meetings that you have amazing stories shared with you. Read the following poem written by a Malawian that I met over lunch a few weeks ago.
The poem is as follows.
Come, Come and Mend
Let me tell you a story concerning a Hockey Ground.
Chancellor College had a Hockey Ground
Near the heart of the campus it was situated.
Evergreen and beautiful it was.
But alas, it has now grown bushes, briers and thorns.
And the students plead,
Come, come and mend.
The administration did us a favour.
“We want to make your ground more beautiful”, It said.
Tractors came and ploughed the ground,
Toyota lorries came delivering the rich black soil,
Old grass was removed and new grass planted,
And yet the students broke into tears:
Come, come and mend.
As if the rehabilitation was not enough,
Taps were installed to bring water to the ground,
Splash, splash, splash, sounded the sprinklers.
“Not enough, not enough”, sounded the Administration.
A hedge of exotic trees was planted surrounding the whole ground.
“Not enough, not enough”, sounded the Administration.
A hedge of exotic trees was planted surrounding the whole ground.
“Not enough, not enough”, sounded the Administration.
A strong wooden fence was constructed outside the hedge surrounding the ground.
And the students cried,
Come, come and mend.
The Ground was now ready and ripe.
Never before had we seen a ground so beautiful.
“Administration”, the students inquired, “how much did you invest in our ground?”.
“K8,000”, it replied.
And that was before a new vocabulary came to us – devaluation.
And the students wept,
Come, come and mend.
Visitors can be entertaining, visitors can be damaging,
Like children of the ‘operational stage’ they came.
Came with sand, sawdust, mafuwa, firewood etc, etc,
With all these they wanted to play.
Of all the places we offered them, “Nay”, they cried.
Our Hockey Ground was turned into a playground.
And the students wept bitterly,
Come, come and mend.
With their firewood, they burned our grass,
With their mafuwa, they compressed our grass,
With their sawdust and sand, they choked our grass.
Jesus! Even the hedge and the fence were no more.
The well tended Hockey Ground went back to the Medieval Ages.
Never before had the students been so sad,
Crying, weeping and sobbing they were,
Come, come and mend.
Asked I the students who shall come and mend.
Looking at one another they said, “Eh! mm! iii!”
It was sad, for they couldn’t talk anymore,
And please, until you come back and mend,
Crying and crying will they be.
Crying for their dead Hockey Ground.
Until we see our Ground resurrect,
We shall never cease to say:
Come, come and mend.
This Malawian man now works in the field of justice and peace with the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace trying to ensure that Malawians live under a fair and just government. His name is Peter Ngulube Chinoko. We began talking about how hockey is popular in both Malawi and my home country of Canada, the difference being that as a Canadian, hockey to me is played on ice not on a field. This led my newfound colleague to discuss how a poem about a hockey field led to his exile from his country. The Republic of Malawi from independence in 1966 to 1994 was under single party rule led by Dr. Kamuzu Banda, the “life president” until discontent in the country finally brought about the change to democracy.
Chancellor College which is part of the University of Malawi was where Mr. Chinoko was a fourth year Bachelor of Education student (in 1988) when he wrote the above poem. It was in response to the destruction of their new, beautiful hockey ground. The cause of the destruction was a visit by the “life president” (read dictator), Dr. Kamuzu Banda. Whenever he would travel there would be a group of women (Mbumba) who would travel with him singing his praises, performing dances and generally being a sort of travelling pep squad. The stage for their performance was set up on the hockey ground and when they left it was completely destroyed. Such destruction was not considered the responsibility of the Office of the President or the Mbumba. At that time everyone was supposed to be so honoured to have a visit from Dr. Banda that complaints about destruction would not be tolerated.
When Mr. Chinoko wrote his poem it came to the attention of the government authorities, most likely through a group called the Young Pioneers which was an organization of young people who effectively spied on all Malawians and acted as a paramilitary force that could intimidate those who refused to tow the party line. There are even instances where Young Pioneers turned their own parents into the police for negative comments said inside the home against Banda. The university administration was instructed to punish him over his poem which was seen as an attack on Banda and his regime and as a result the students held a rally in support of him which was the first public demonstration against Dr. Banda and his regime in Malawian history.
Soon after this demonstration the university administration told Mr. Chinoko that his family had requested that he return home immediately. As he got on the bus he was handed an envelope that he was instructed to open at home. Once on the bus he opened the letter and it told Peter that he had been permanently expelled from Chancellor College and his Bachelor of Education studies were terminated. Arriving in Lilongwe to stay with his sister for the night enroute to his home village he found out that there was more punishment planned for him. His sister’s husband was a police officer who told Peter that just at the end of the day the station received instructions to arrest him but that since it was outside business hours no action would be taken until the next day so he needed to get out of sight. Peter escaped to his village to see his family and then not knowing what to do sought asylum with the Catholic bishop in his village’s diocese. The bishop sequestered Peter in a room from which he didn’t emerge for four months while the police continued to look for his whereabouts. Realizing that he couldn’t continue to stay hidden forever, the bishop arranged for fake government documents for Peter and he was able to leave the country.
The church put him up in Rome where he was able to continue his studies at the Vatican. Peter told me that he became fluent in Italian and considered never returning to Malawi but the bishop that was his patron told Peter that he had an obligation to return to Malawi as soon as it was safe in order to fight against the kind of situations he had found himself in from ever occurring again. Peter stayed in exile for four years, only finally returning when Dr. Kamuzu Banda lost power. As I mentioned above Peter remained true to the wishes of his patron and he is now the Executive Director of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP). The CCJP will be one of the major observers during next years election in Malawi to ensure that it remains a fair and equitable event. In a recent poll of organizations working in the field of election monitoring the CCJP was voted the most trustworthy and accurate of all working in this area. It is important for this work to continue so that there will never be a repeat of expulsion and attempted arrest over writing a simple poem about a destroyed hockey field.
The poem is as follows.
Come, Come and Mend
Let me tell you a story concerning a Hockey Ground.
Chancellor College had a Hockey Ground
Near the heart of the campus it was situated.
Evergreen and beautiful it was.
But alas, it has now grown bushes, briers and thorns.
And the students plead,
Come, come and mend.
The administration did us a favour.
“We want to make your ground more beautiful”, It said.
Tractors came and ploughed the ground,
Toyota lorries came delivering the rich black soil,
Old grass was removed and new grass planted,
And yet the students broke into tears:
Come, come and mend.
As if the rehabilitation was not enough,
Taps were installed to bring water to the ground,
Splash, splash, splash, sounded the sprinklers.
“Not enough, not enough”, sounded the Administration.
A hedge of exotic trees was planted surrounding the whole ground.
“Not enough, not enough”, sounded the Administration.
A hedge of exotic trees was planted surrounding the whole ground.
“Not enough, not enough”, sounded the Administration.
A strong wooden fence was constructed outside the hedge surrounding the ground.
And the students cried,
Come, come and mend.
The Ground was now ready and ripe.
Never before had we seen a ground so beautiful.
“Administration”, the students inquired, “how much did you invest in our ground?”.
“K8,000”, it replied.
And that was before a new vocabulary came to us – devaluation.
And the students wept,
Come, come and mend.
Visitors can be entertaining, visitors can be damaging,
Like children of the ‘operational stage’ they came.
Came with sand, sawdust, mafuwa, firewood etc, etc,
With all these they wanted to play.
Of all the places we offered them, “Nay”, they cried.
Our Hockey Ground was turned into a playground.
And the students wept bitterly,
Come, come and mend.
With their firewood, they burned our grass,
With their mafuwa, they compressed our grass,
With their sawdust and sand, they choked our grass.
Jesus! Even the hedge and the fence were no more.
The well tended Hockey Ground went back to the Medieval Ages.
Never before had the students been so sad,
Crying, weeping and sobbing they were,
Come, come and mend.
Asked I the students who shall come and mend.
Looking at one another they said, “Eh! mm! iii!”
It was sad, for they couldn’t talk anymore,
And please, until you come back and mend,
Crying and crying will they be.
Crying for their dead Hockey Ground.
Until we see our Ground resurrect,
We shall never cease to say:
Come, come and mend.
This Malawian man now works in the field of justice and peace with the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace trying to ensure that Malawians live under a fair and just government. His name is Peter Ngulube Chinoko. We began talking about how hockey is popular in both Malawi and my home country of Canada, the difference being that as a Canadian, hockey to me is played on ice not on a field. This led my newfound colleague to discuss how a poem about a hockey field led to his exile from his country. The Republic of Malawi from independence in 1966 to 1994 was under single party rule led by Dr. Kamuzu Banda, the “life president” until discontent in the country finally brought about the change to democracy.
Chancellor College which is part of the University of Malawi was where Mr. Chinoko was a fourth year Bachelor of Education student (in 1988) when he wrote the above poem. It was in response to the destruction of their new, beautiful hockey ground. The cause of the destruction was a visit by the “life president” (read dictator), Dr. Kamuzu Banda. Whenever he would travel there would be a group of women (Mbumba) who would travel with him singing his praises, performing dances and generally being a sort of travelling pep squad. The stage for their performance was set up on the hockey ground and when they left it was completely destroyed. Such destruction was not considered the responsibility of the Office of the President or the Mbumba. At that time everyone was supposed to be so honoured to have a visit from Dr. Banda that complaints about destruction would not be tolerated.
When Mr. Chinoko wrote his poem it came to the attention of the government authorities, most likely through a group called the Young Pioneers which was an organization of young people who effectively spied on all Malawians and acted as a paramilitary force that could intimidate those who refused to tow the party line. There are even instances where Young Pioneers turned their own parents into the police for negative comments said inside the home against Banda. The university administration was instructed to punish him over his poem which was seen as an attack on Banda and his regime and as a result the students held a rally in support of him which was the first public demonstration against Dr. Banda and his regime in Malawian history.
Soon after this demonstration the university administration told Mr. Chinoko that his family had requested that he return home immediately. As he got on the bus he was handed an envelope that he was instructed to open at home. Once on the bus he opened the letter and it told Peter that he had been permanently expelled from Chancellor College and his Bachelor of Education studies were terminated. Arriving in Lilongwe to stay with his sister for the night enroute to his home village he found out that there was more punishment planned for him. His sister’s husband was a police officer who told Peter that just at the end of the day the station received instructions to arrest him but that since it was outside business hours no action would be taken until the next day so he needed to get out of sight. Peter escaped to his village to see his family and then not knowing what to do sought asylum with the Catholic bishop in his village’s diocese. The bishop sequestered Peter in a room from which he didn’t emerge for four months while the police continued to look for his whereabouts. Realizing that he couldn’t continue to stay hidden forever, the bishop arranged for fake government documents for Peter and he was able to leave the country.
The church put him up in Rome where he was able to continue his studies at the Vatican. Peter told me that he became fluent in Italian and considered never returning to Malawi but the bishop that was his patron told Peter that he had an obligation to return to Malawi as soon as it was safe in order to fight against the kind of situations he had found himself in from ever occurring again. Peter stayed in exile for four years, only finally returning when Dr. Kamuzu Banda lost power. As I mentioned above Peter remained true to the wishes of his patron and he is now the Executive Director of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP). The CCJP will be one of the major observers during next years election in Malawi to ensure that it remains a fair and equitable event. In a recent poll of organizations working in the field of election monitoring the CCJP was voted the most trustworthy and accurate of all working in this area. It is important for this work to continue so that there will never be a repeat of expulsion and attempted arrest over writing a simple poem about a destroyed hockey field.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
From Dictatorship to Democracy
Dr. Kamuza Banda, member of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) who was prime minister at independence in 1964 became the first president after Malawi became a republic in 1966. In 1971 he was declared president for life (dictator) and he remained in that post until a referendum was held in 1993 calling for multiparty democracy. In 1994 elections were held and Banda’s party, the MCP lost. What is fascinating is the role the Catholic Church played in that transition from “life presidency”. Due to roving party faithfuls called the “young pioneers” everyone was afraid of speaking against the government. One could never know who was a member of the pioneers and sometimes friends and even family members were turned in for speaking against Banda. This changed in 1992 when the Catholic bishops in Malawi simultaneously had a letter read that detailed the complaints that until that point had been felt but had been unspoken. The Catholic bishops of Malawi had met in secret to draft the letter. In order to have it distributed to every parish in the country they employed ambulances staffed by nuns. Usually in Malawi, even to this day one cannot travel through regions without being stopped by police roadblocks. The nuns in the ambulance had to drive with the sirens on so that they would not be searched at the roadblocks and the letters would be discovered. Those I have spoken to told me that the letter came as a complete shock and how to react to it was mixed. On the one hand what was in the mind of the majority was finally being spoken allowing for a tremendous release, yet there was fear of reprisal and of who might report you if you reacted positively to the letter. At that time the parliament was nothing more than a rubber stamp body for the decisions made by Banda and all the real decisions were hashed out at the MCP headquarters which was beside the United States embassy. The decision was made to assassinate all the bishops in retaliation for their public attack on the government and on Banda. What was unknown to the MCP was that the American embassy was using eavesdropping equipment to listen in on this decision. What the Americans then did was to transmit this to the BBC, which broadcast it live. So all of Malawi got to hear the plan to kill all the bishops and the MCP knew nothing about it until they left their meeting room. Once it was out in the open the MCP knew that they couldn’t kill the bishops so all they could do was to kick the foreign bishops out of the country. This was the beginning of the end of one party rule and within 2 years there was multi-party democracy with a different party holding the seat of president.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Second Field Trip
I am back from my second visit to the field on behalf of the Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM). I visited Mzuzu with the country director for World University Services Canada (WUSC), the organization that is the coordinator of our volunteering here. WUSC is working with FUM to link a Canadian Fair Trade coffee company with the Mzuzu Coffee Planters Union (MCPU). We arrived on Thursday afternoon in Mzuzu which is a very beautiful area of Malawi. It is in the north of the country and is an area of rolling highlands that has the perfect conditions for growing good quality coffee. About 10 years ago the town of Mzuzu got its first traffic light which for reasons I have never been able to discover are called “robots” in Malawi. It was really confusing at first when people were giving us directions telling us to go past the robot and then turn left at the second robot. Adding to the confusion Malawians when speaking English find the letter R and the letter L indistinguishable so often they call Regan Legan and they call the “robots” lobots. When the “robots” were first installed almost the whole town showed up to watch them for hours as no one could believe that cars would actually stop and go just for lights that changed colour. The television news cameras came to see the installation as well.
Our meeting wasn’t until Friday morning so on Thursday afternoon I visited the processing plant where they prepare the coffee beans for sale. It was a very tidy, efficient operation that has been funded by the European Union and is a real success story for smallholder farmers in Malawi.
On Friday morning we met with the management of Mzuzu Coffee and the president / chairman of the Mzuzu Coffee Planters Union which represents the five cooperatives that produce the coffee beans. I presented my concept paper on a history of fair trade, its objectives and it possible benefits for MCPU. The meeting went well especially because Mzuzu Coffee has already started down the road to exploring Fair Trade so it wasn’t an issue of pushing something on them but rather we will be working in partnership with them to help them get through the certification. For dinner in Mzuzu we met the only other male WUSC volunteer. Out of approximately 25 WUSC volunteers in Malawi there are only two males. From everyone who has experience in international work they tell me that that kind of ratio is normal, for some reason there are not as many men at least in the volunteer sector.
Our meeting wasn’t until Friday morning so on Thursday afternoon I visited the processing plant where they prepare the coffee beans for sale. It was a very tidy, efficient operation that has been funded by the European Union and is a real success story for smallholder farmers in Malawi.
On Friday morning we met with the management of Mzuzu Coffee and the president / chairman of the Mzuzu Coffee Planters Union which represents the five cooperatives that produce the coffee beans. I presented my concept paper on a history of fair trade, its objectives and it possible benefits for MCPU. The meeting went well especially because Mzuzu Coffee has already started down the road to exploring Fair Trade so it wasn’t an issue of pushing something on them but rather we will be working in partnership with them to help them get through the certification. For dinner in Mzuzu we met the only other male WUSC volunteer. Out of approximately 25 WUSC volunteers in Malawi there are only two males. From everyone who has experience in international work they tell me that that kind of ratio is normal, for some reason there are not as many men at least in the volunteer sector.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Always Busy
Not much to report this week. Work at the Farmers Union continues to be busy and I can already see that my workload is going to extend past the time that I have available. Issues in policy continue to crop up, it is amazing the breadth of issues that touch agriculture. In the last few days we have had to discuss climate change, the world bank and international monetary fund policies, government of Malawi policies, genetic modification, farmer rights, fair trade, the world trade organization, gender roles, HIV infection and the role of global multinational corporations to name just a few. I am trying to finish up a concept note on the opportunities for fair trade marketing for Malawian coffee so that I can focus on pumping out some policy positions on climate change, the food crisis and biofuels.
I talked to my parents yesterday and was excited to hear that my Dad has picked a retirement date. I think that it is great that they are going to retire at such a young age after putting in so many years at Canada Post. They will be hosting a belated Easter dinner this weekend so I will wish a belated Easter to everyone that will be attending.
I talked to my parents yesterday and was excited to hear that my Dad has picked a retirement date. I think that it is great that they are going to retire at such a young age after putting in so many years at Canada Post. They will be hosting a belated Easter dinner this weekend so I will wish a belated Easter to everyone that will be attending.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The Chewa Creation Myth
The Beginnings of Life
In the beginning there was Chiuta-God and the earth.
Chiuta lived above in the sky
and below him was the earth, waterless and without life.
One day, clouds began to cover the sky;
lightning flared and peals of thunder were heard.
Then the sky opened and from it Chiuta-God,
the first human pair and all the animals
descended in a shower of rain.
They alighted on a flat-topped hill by the name of Kaphiri-Ntiwa,
in the mountains of Dzala-Nyama.
After their descent the soft surface hardened and turned into rock.
On this rock the imprints of their feet
as well as the spoors of many animals can still be seen.
There can be seen two pairs of human feet;
the man’s larger than the woman’s.
There are also imprints of a hoe, a winnowing basket, and a mortar.
Plants and trees grew up, yielding abundant food.God, men and animals lived together in happiness and peace.
The Cataclysm
One day, man accidentally invented fire
by playing with two twirling sticks, one soft, the other hard. They warned him to stop, but he did not want to listen.
In the end the grass was set alight, and there was great confusion.
Among the animals, the dog and goat fled to man for safety;
but the elephant, the lion and their companions ran away,
full of rage against man.
The chameleon escaped by climbing a tree.
He called out to God to follow him,
but Chiuta-God replied that he was too old to climb.
In the end the spider spun a thread lifting him up on high.
Thus God was driven from the earth by the wickedness of man.
As he ascended, he pronounced that
Henceforth man must die and join him in the sky.
Tied to and flowing from this story is the belief in traditional Chewa religion that with the rains come spirits and in the dry season, with the inevitable grass fires that occur the spirits return to the sky. Many of the roles of the chiefs are far more than being a local administrative leader but rather they have a clear religious role. Most of the spirits are actually ancestor spirits and the chief is tasked with performing rituals in the dry season that call for the return of the beneficial ancestor spirits who will bring the rain down with them upon their return. The chief is in the same family line as these ancestor spirits so it is left to him (and sometimes her) to interact with their ‘relatives’. These rituals partly occur in sacred groves that have been protected for centuries and where fire is forbidden and also where the chief’s ancestors are buried. Often these groves are managed by a priestess called the Banda who possibly traces back millennia and may be an institution taken over from the former people of Malawi I have mentioned before that are related to the Kalahari bushmen and the pygmies.
Some of the ideas surrounding chiefs sound truly like the Arthurian legends such as wearing pouches of earth around their neck from their area of control. There would also be a tooth from the recently deceased chief in the pouch to show the continuation of leadership because just as a tooth doesn’t decay neither does the continued leadership of the chiefly line. If the chief did something against the spirits he could fall ill and if the chief is ill then his land is ill. Droughts, pests, fire, infertility of the soil, all could result until the proper balance was returned.
Contrast this with Arthurian stories that state the King is the land and the land is the King. What befalls the king befalls the land and in the some of the King Arthur stories the land experiences drought and ruin after the King is maimed. These Arthurian legends came out of Celtic beliefs so it is interesting to see the connections.
In the beginning there was Chiuta-God and the earth.
Chiuta lived above in the sky
and below him was the earth, waterless and without life.
One day, clouds began to cover the sky;
lightning flared and peals of thunder were heard.
Then the sky opened and from it Chiuta-God,
the first human pair and all the animals
descended in a shower of rain.
They alighted on a flat-topped hill by the name of Kaphiri-Ntiwa,
in the mountains of Dzala-Nyama.
After their descent the soft surface hardened and turned into rock.
On this rock the imprints of their feet
as well as the spoors of many animals can still be seen.
There can be seen two pairs of human feet;
the man’s larger than the woman’s.
There are also imprints of a hoe, a winnowing basket, and a mortar.
Plants and trees grew up, yielding abundant food.God, men and animals lived together in happiness and peace.
The Cataclysm
One day, man accidentally invented fire
by playing with two twirling sticks, one soft, the other hard. They warned him to stop, but he did not want to listen.
In the end the grass was set alight, and there was great confusion.
Among the animals, the dog and goat fled to man for safety;
but the elephant, the lion and their companions ran away,
full of rage against man.
The chameleon escaped by climbing a tree.
He called out to God to follow him,
but Chiuta-God replied that he was too old to climb.
In the end the spider spun a thread lifting him up on high.
Thus God was driven from the earth by the wickedness of man.
As he ascended, he pronounced that
Henceforth man must die and join him in the sky.
Tied to and flowing from this story is the belief in traditional Chewa religion that with the rains come spirits and in the dry season, with the inevitable grass fires that occur the spirits return to the sky. Many of the roles of the chiefs are far more than being a local administrative leader but rather they have a clear religious role. Most of the spirits are actually ancestor spirits and the chief is tasked with performing rituals in the dry season that call for the return of the beneficial ancestor spirits who will bring the rain down with them upon their return. The chief is in the same family line as these ancestor spirits so it is left to him (and sometimes her) to interact with their ‘relatives’. These rituals partly occur in sacred groves that have been protected for centuries and where fire is forbidden and also where the chief’s ancestors are buried. Often these groves are managed by a priestess called the Banda who possibly traces back millennia and may be an institution taken over from the former people of Malawi I have mentioned before that are related to the Kalahari bushmen and the pygmies.
Some of the ideas surrounding chiefs sound truly like the Arthurian legends such as wearing pouches of earth around their neck from their area of control. There would also be a tooth from the recently deceased chief in the pouch to show the continuation of leadership because just as a tooth doesn’t decay neither does the continued leadership of the chiefly line. If the chief did something against the spirits he could fall ill and if the chief is ill then his land is ill. Droughts, pests, fire, infertility of the soil, all could result until the proper balance was returned.
Contrast this with Arthurian stories that state the King is the land and the land is the King. What befalls the king befalls the land and in the some of the King Arthur stories the land experiences drought and ruin after the King is maimed. These Arthurian legends came out of Celtic beliefs so it is interesting to see the connections.
Desk Unchained continued
The group we met with today stated that condoms are for use by vagabonds and then followed that up with the statement that most men are in informal polygamous relationships with 2 to 3 women. The farmers we met with today follow different traditions than what the majority of Malawi follows with regard to what happens in marriage. The majority of Malawians follow a matriarchal society structure where the husband must move to the village of the wife to work and live on her land. So what happens is that all the men in a village are actually from somewhere else. Despite what sounds like a position of power for women in reality they are not treated with equality despite the fact that it is “their” land. This system is called uxorilocal, in contrast where we were today they are virilocal. That means that the wife goes to live in the village of the husband and it is his land. As well in this area a dowry must be paid by the daughter’s family to that of her husband. The men told us that kuchotsa fumbi does not occur in their area but the women told us that it still occurs but is highly secretive. This contrasts with what the men stated about how a woman used to be checked before marriage to make sure that she wasn’t spoiled goods (no longer a virgin) and that if she wasn’t the man could cancel the marriage or negotiate a higher dowry. The men stated that this practice no longer occurs though.
In this area if a man dies the widow will be married to one of the man’s younger brothers. If the widow was the wife of the younger brother she does not marry the older brother as he is seen almost like a father in law to her. Instead he will hire someone to come and have sex with her to get her pregnant with the man staying no longer than 3 days. The men stated that fisi is declining due to the impact of HIV/AIDS. The women described that fisi continues to occur and that it fisi means jackal and like a jackal a man they don’t know will be sent to them in the middle of the night and he will have sex with her and she does not have any say in the matter and never knows who the man was.
Some of the women farmers from today’s session were curious about the origin of AIDS and were discussing ideas that they have heard such as the American government creating HIV, injecting it in Africans who are in American prisons on the agreement that they would release them if they allowed themselves to be injected. Then the prisoners were set free, given some money and deported back to Africa where HIV then was spread to everyone. Another theory was that HIV may not even exist and that when you tell someone they are HIV positive they may die from frustration and despair. Despite these ideas they all could describe the difference between HIV and AIDS, how it is transmitted and what practices encourage it’s spread. All these ideas came from a female farmer that is also a trained nurse and works in a medical clinic. The women in this area also stated that if they asked their husband to wear a condom he would assume they had been unfaithful but what is telling is that the women stated that they think the same. If their husband stated he would want to wear a condom they would assume he had been unfaithful and since they all stated they believe in abstaining and monogamy condoms aren’t needed.
Today definitely put an interesting spin on issues like George Bush’s administration being against condom use. He has been much vilified for the spread of condom use but from the samples we spoke too they wouldn’t want them anyways. Across the board we were told that they encourage unfaithfulness and promiscuity and aren’t needed except by those with low moral standings like sex workers and vagabonds. Religion and the role of the local pastor is extremely important in this as we were told the pastors inform them about the truth behind HIV including the fact that condoms given to Africans are full of holes to let the virus through and that this can be tested just by filling a condom with water and watching the water leak through little holes therefore there is no reason to use them.
In this area if a man dies the widow will be married to one of the man’s younger brothers. If the widow was the wife of the younger brother she does not marry the older brother as he is seen almost like a father in law to her. Instead he will hire someone to come and have sex with her to get her pregnant with the man staying no longer than 3 days. The men stated that fisi is declining due to the impact of HIV/AIDS. The women described that fisi continues to occur and that it fisi means jackal and like a jackal a man they don’t know will be sent to them in the middle of the night and he will have sex with her and she does not have any say in the matter and never knows who the man was.
Some of the women farmers from today’s session were curious about the origin of AIDS and were discussing ideas that they have heard such as the American government creating HIV, injecting it in Africans who are in American prisons on the agreement that they would release them if they allowed themselves to be injected. Then the prisoners were set free, given some money and deported back to Africa where HIV then was spread to everyone. Another theory was that HIV may not even exist and that when you tell someone they are HIV positive they may die from frustration and despair. Despite these ideas they all could describe the difference between HIV and AIDS, how it is transmitted and what practices encourage it’s spread. All these ideas came from a female farmer that is also a trained nurse and works in a medical clinic. The women in this area also stated that if they asked their husband to wear a condom he would assume they had been unfaithful but what is telling is that the women stated that they think the same. If their husband stated he would want to wear a condom they would assume he had been unfaithful and since they all stated they believe in abstaining and monogamy condoms aren’t needed.
Today definitely put an interesting spin on issues like George Bush’s administration being against condom use. He has been much vilified for the spread of condom use but from the samples we spoke too they wouldn’t want them anyways. Across the board we were told that they encourage unfaithfulness and promiscuity and aren’t needed except by those with low moral standings like sex workers and vagabonds. Religion and the role of the local pastor is extremely important in this as we were told the pastors inform them about the truth behind HIV including the fact that condoms given to Africans are full of holes to let the virus through and that this can be tested just by filling a condom with water and watching the water leak through little holes therefore there is no reason to use them.
Desk Unchained
I am on my way home from my first trip to the field on behalf of Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM). Janna has been in the field quite regularily but due to the nature of my position of building a lobbying and advocacy department it has not been necessary for me to be in the field up to this point in my mandate.
I am accompanying Elizabeth our new WUSC - World University Service of Canada volunteer who is here for four months to work on gender and HIV/AIDS issues for FUM as she does some field work on those topics. Yesterday we went to visit some farmers. It was a really interesting day and I was impressed with the knowledge about HIV and about AIDS and the differences and connection between the two. The discussions were done with males and females separately and even simple questions like what do you do each day and who makes the decisions on different matters had different conflicting answers between the two groups. Practices that I had been told no longer occur are still going on according to these rural farmers who I would assume would be best placed to know. One of these practices is called fisi and it is when another man is brought in to impregnate a woman who isn’t getting pregnant with her husband. As well we were told that kuchotsa fumbi is still a common cultural practice. This is where a man is brought in when a girl begins to menstruate in order to initiate her into sex. Both of these practices were described to us when Elizabeth asked about what kind of cultural activities may spread the transmission of HIV. It was also clearly stated to us that men often have multiple female partners in a kind of informal polygamy but that it is not possible for a women to ask her husband to wear a condom as it will imply that they (the woman) have been unfaithful. The men stated to us that if the woman asked them to wear a condom they would see it as a challenge to whether they (the men) have been unfaithful. So despite the fact that everyone stated that formal polygamy is very rare (it once was widely practiced) informal still occurs yet people won’t wear condoms because that implies unfaithfulness! The majority of Malawians are intensely Christian with many of them following evangelical and born again denominations and therefore they all state that polygamy is wrong and that condoms are not needed as all that is required is abstaining until marriage and then faithfulness within marriage.
To be continued...
I am accompanying Elizabeth our new WUSC - World University Service of Canada volunteer who is here for four months to work on gender and HIV/AIDS issues for FUM as she does some field work on those topics. Yesterday we went to visit some farmers. It was a really interesting day and I was impressed with the knowledge about HIV and about AIDS and the differences and connection between the two. The discussions were done with males and females separately and even simple questions like what do you do each day and who makes the decisions on different matters had different conflicting answers between the two groups. Practices that I had been told no longer occur are still going on according to these rural farmers who I would assume would be best placed to know. One of these practices is called fisi and it is when another man is brought in to impregnate a woman who isn’t getting pregnant with her husband. As well we were told that kuchotsa fumbi is still a common cultural practice. This is where a man is brought in when a girl begins to menstruate in order to initiate her into sex. Both of these practices were described to us when Elizabeth asked about what kind of cultural activities may spread the transmission of HIV. It was also clearly stated to us that men often have multiple female partners in a kind of informal polygamy but that it is not possible for a women to ask her husband to wear a condom as it will imply that they (the woman) have been unfaithful. The men stated to us that if the woman asked them to wear a condom they would see it as a challenge to whether they (the men) have been unfaithful. So despite the fact that everyone stated that formal polygamy is very rare (it once was widely practiced) informal still occurs yet people won’t wear condoms because that implies unfaithfulness! The majority of Malawians are intensely Christian with many of them following evangelical and born again denominations and therefore they all state that polygamy is wrong and that condoms are not needed as all that is required is abstaining until marriage and then faithfulness within marriage.
To be continued...
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Different Work for the Ministry of Labour in Malawi than in Ontario
Thought I would paste in this news story. It is about a Ministry of Labour officer having to investigate a worker being fired from the government for being a witch. Quite a bit different than our Ontario Ministry of Labour reactive calls. When you see the word Traditional Authority (T/A) it means a tribal chief who still wield some power here in Malawi and are semi-officially part of the government apparatus which is a British parliamentary style system like Canada.
Sanjika driver fired, asked to relocate over witchcraft allegations
By OLIVIA KUMWENDA(5/21/2008)
A Sigerege family in Blantyre’s Chilomoni Township is in a tight corner after the husband, who until recently was working as a truck driver at Sanjika Palace, was "verbally" fired following allegations that his wife was teaching State Residence children some witchcraft, a development that has been questioned by labour and human rights authorities.The family, of Duncan and Christina Chilembwe, also faces another predicament—that they move out of Sigerege following Traditional Authority (T/A) Kuntaja’s decision acting on advice from a witch-doctor’s report that allegedly implicated the household.Kuntaja has given the Chilembwes up to October-end to relocate, but the family maintains its innocence.According to a Blantyre-based labour officer, there are no regulations in the Laws of Malawi that govern the issue of witchcraft at work-places.Human rights activists have also described the development as "a common challenge" that the nation needs to address, arguing that witchcraft allegations are difficult to prove.The Chilembwes’ saga started last November when the family was stationed at Sanjika Palace.Chilembwe last week told The Nation the family was ordered out of the palace premises after some staff members alleged his wife was teaching children witchcraft.The family moved to Sigerege, just behind Sanjika Hill, where they own a house. But according to Chilembwe, some Sanjika officials later reported the matter to village headwoman Anderson of Sigerege."This time it was alleged that both me and my wife were teaching children witchcraft. Village headwoman Anderson then reported the matter to group village headman Pensulo."[Pensulo] referred the matter to T/A Kuntaja. The T/A told us, including the complainants, to go to a witch-doctor to find out if there was indeed witchcraft among us," said Chilembwe from his home in Sigerege.He said the families of both the accused and the accusers went to a witch-doctor in Mdeka, rural Blantyre, where they spent a night."The witch-doctor gave everyone medicine to drink saying those who do not practise witchcraft will vomit after taking it. After taking the herbs, everyone vomited meaning there was no one who was practising witchcraft."We left the place without being officially told the outcome but we knew that we were innocent as we had vomited just like everybody else. However, we were surprised that when the T/A summoned us early this month, we were told that the witch-doctor has found us guilty of witchcraft," said Chilembwe.He said the T/A then ordered that family to pay chickens to the complainants and relocate.However, Anderson, who said she cannot entertain witchcraft practices in her village, contradicted Chilembwe on the witch-doctor’s outcome."I have heard about Chilembwe’s version that the witch-doctor said those who do not practise witchcraft will vomit but according to an independent observer sent by the T/A, the doctor did not say that," said Anderson.She said, according to the observer, the witch-doctor only said the herbs had several side effects including vomiting. She said she does not know how the witch-doctor came to a conclusion that the Chilembwes are guilty of witchcraft.But Kuntaja defended his decision to evict the family from Sigerege, saying it was made for security reasons."I am not forcing the family to move but normally after such incidents, the suspects are advised to move to another area for fear of being persecuted by the community," said Kuntaja.But at the time of the interviews, the Chilembwes claimed they were not facing any hostility in the community.State House press officer Chikumbutso Mtumodzi refused to comment on the matter, saying under the Laws of Malawi, witchcraft, sorcery and anything related to magic does not exist. But Chilembwe insisted he was verbally fired after the accusations.
Blantyre District labour officer George Chilonga said the country does not have laws on witchcraft practices at the workplace."But for security reasons and when there is public interest, a person suspected to be practising witchcraft can be transferred to another place or have his or her contract terminated. But when he or she is fired, one has to get all the benefits," said Chilonga.
Chilembwe said he is still waiting to hear from State House on his benefits.Meanwhile, Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) executive director Dorothy Nyasulu said the Chilembwes scenario represents many other Malawians who are being harassed following witchcraft accusations."This is a big issue because sometimes people take the law into their own hands to deal with witchcraft suspects. As a country, we need to come up with a way forward as people’s rights are being violated," said Nyasulu.She said village leaders are not supposed to tell the suspects to relocate but should protect them as their subjects.Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) executive director Undule Mwakasungula concurred with Nyasulu that it is very difficult to pin down people over witchcraft allegations."This is a challenge. As a country we need to be very careful with the way we handle such cases. Innocent people are being victimised and having their rights violated," said Mwakasungula, who is also Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC) chairperson.The Chilembwes have since said they will appeal against Kuntaja’s decision in a court of law.
Sanjika driver fired, asked to relocate over witchcraft allegations
By OLIVIA KUMWENDA(5/21/2008)
A Sigerege family in Blantyre’s Chilomoni Township is in a tight corner after the husband, who until recently was working as a truck driver at Sanjika Palace, was "verbally" fired following allegations that his wife was teaching State Residence children some witchcraft, a development that has been questioned by labour and human rights authorities.The family, of Duncan and Christina Chilembwe, also faces another predicament—that they move out of Sigerege following Traditional Authority (T/A) Kuntaja’s decision acting on advice from a witch-doctor’s report that allegedly implicated the household.Kuntaja has given the Chilembwes up to October-end to relocate, but the family maintains its innocence.According to a Blantyre-based labour officer, there are no regulations in the Laws of Malawi that govern the issue of witchcraft at work-places.Human rights activists have also described the development as "a common challenge" that the nation needs to address, arguing that witchcraft allegations are difficult to prove.The Chilembwes’ saga started last November when the family was stationed at Sanjika Palace.Chilembwe last week told The Nation the family was ordered out of the palace premises after some staff members alleged his wife was teaching children witchcraft.The family moved to Sigerege, just behind Sanjika Hill, where they own a house. But according to Chilembwe, some Sanjika officials later reported the matter to village headwoman Anderson of Sigerege."This time it was alleged that both me and my wife were teaching children witchcraft. Village headwoman Anderson then reported the matter to group village headman Pensulo."[Pensulo] referred the matter to T/A Kuntaja. The T/A told us, including the complainants, to go to a witch-doctor to find out if there was indeed witchcraft among us," said Chilembwe from his home in Sigerege.He said the families of both the accused and the accusers went to a witch-doctor in Mdeka, rural Blantyre, where they spent a night."The witch-doctor gave everyone medicine to drink saying those who do not practise witchcraft will vomit after taking it. After taking the herbs, everyone vomited meaning there was no one who was practising witchcraft."We left the place without being officially told the outcome but we knew that we were innocent as we had vomited just like everybody else. However, we were surprised that when the T/A summoned us early this month, we were told that the witch-doctor has found us guilty of witchcraft," said Chilembwe.He said the T/A then ordered that family to pay chickens to the complainants and relocate.However, Anderson, who said she cannot entertain witchcraft practices in her village, contradicted Chilembwe on the witch-doctor’s outcome."I have heard about Chilembwe’s version that the witch-doctor said those who do not practise witchcraft will vomit but according to an independent observer sent by the T/A, the doctor did not say that," said Anderson.She said, according to the observer, the witch-doctor only said the herbs had several side effects including vomiting. She said she does not know how the witch-doctor came to a conclusion that the Chilembwes are guilty of witchcraft.But Kuntaja defended his decision to evict the family from Sigerege, saying it was made for security reasons."I am not forcing the family to move but normally after such incidents, the suspects are advised to move to another area for fear of being persecuted by the community," said Kuntaja.But at the time of the interviews, the Chilembwes claimed they were not facing any hostility in the community.State House press officer Chikumbutso Mtumodzi refused to comment on the matter, saying under the Laws of Malawi, witchcraft, sorcery and anything related to magic does not exist. But Chilembwe insisted he was verbally fired after the accusations.
Blantyre District labour officer George Chilonga said the country does not have laws on witchcraft practices at the workplace."But for security reasons and when there is public interest, a person suspected to be practising witchcraft can be transferred to another place or have his or her contract terminated. But when he or she is fired, one has to get all the benefits," said Chilonga.
Chilembwe said he is still waiting to hear from State House on his benefits.Meanwhile, Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) executive director Dorothy Nyasulu said the Chilembwes scenario represents many other Malawians who are being harassed following witchcraft accusations."This is a big issue because sometimes people take the law into their own hands to deal with witchcraft suspects. As a country, we need to come up with a way forward as people’s rights are being violated," said Nyasulu.She said village leaders are not supposed to tell the suspects to relocate but should protect them as their subjects.Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) executive director Undule Mwakasungula concurred with Nyasulu that it is very difficult to pin down people over witchcraft allegations."This is a challenge. As a country we need to be very careful with the way we handle such cases. Innocent people are being victimised and having their rights violated," said Mwakasungula, who is also Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC) chairperson.The Chilembwes have since said they will appeal against Kuntaja’s decision in a court of law.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Tracking Tolkien
We have had an amazing climb up Mount Mulanje, the tallest mountain in central Africa. We climbed up it two weeks ago taking advantage of a statutory holiday to give us the time to do it. The mountain is an amazing site as you approach it due to the fact that it rises out of a completely flat plain. There are no foothill or gradual slopes that lead to the mountain and it is not part of a mountain chain. This type of geologic feature is called an inselberg which is German for island mountain which is a very apt description. The mountain was quite a stiff hike but it didn’t take any mountain climbing skills. The peak of Mulanje is at 3002 m above sea level which puts it quite a bit below Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania which is 5895 m above sea level but it is impressive nonetheless. One of the huts we stayed in has a view outside of it of Chambe peak which has a 1.7 km vertical rock face, the highest cliff in Africa. Mulanje is significantly higher than our previously highest climbed peak, Mt. Washington in New Hampshire which is 1917 m above sea level.
The views are unbelievable and the scenery continually takes on a different look as you round a peak or enter into another valley. As you rise from a plain you travel through various stages of vegetation until you are above the tree level where only lichen is precariously clinging to the rock. Clouds continually move in shrouding everything in an eerie mist and dropping visibility quite low but then the wind will blow the mist away and you will be treated to what one traveler early in the twentieth century called the best view in the British Empire. J.R.R. Tolkein climbed Mt. Mulanje shortly before he wrote The Hobbit and local legend has it that Mulanje inspired him. The rivers that flow off of the mountain travel through the surrounding plain until they join the largest river in Malawi, the Shire.
The hiking was tiring but well worth it. The first night we stayed at a hut at the base of Sapitwa peak which in ChiChewa means “don’t go there”. Before we left our day guard at our house pulled me aside and told me that it was ok to go to Mulanje but that we must not go to Sapitwa. Sapitwa, and Mulanje as a whole is considered by some Malawians as the basis of all bad magic and witchcraft in the country. It is considered a realm of evil spirits and a place dangerous to visit. Our guard, Grant warned me that the influence and power of evil spirits is strong still on Sapitwa and that people who climb it have been known to disappear. So after staying the night in a hut at the base of Sapitwa the first thing we did was attempt to commune with the spirits (no , I don’t mean we had a séance, just that we attempted to climb the peak). After 3 hours of climbing though we had to regroup, analyse the situation and we realized that we weren’t equipped to climb the peak. While all the earlier travel on Mulanje was just hiking despite its difficulty Sapitwa entered the realm of climbing with a large proportion of smearing involved. One group that we met stated that they were only able to make to the peak using the climbing rope that they had brought so our decision to turn around was a good one despite Regan’s disappointment. She was climbing without any problems and had be been properly equipped she would have had no problem claiming the peak. After that we hiked to another hut, which was at the base of the earlier mentioned cliff and spent another night. The next day we hiked down and returned home.
The whole experience was magical despite the lack of spirits. As well I kept my eyes pealed for the elusive Abatwa, light skinned people of extremely short stature who are whispered to still be on the mountain. In actuality there is some truth behind this legend as when the Bantu people first migrated into Malawi over a 1000 years ago the land was already occupied by the Abatwa people. There are still remnants of these people in Africa but not in Malawi. The pygmies of the Congo and the Kalahari bushmen of Botswana are the remnants of this once widespread people. Their features are very different from the larger, darker skinned Bantu tribes who now cover the majority of sub-Saharan Africa.For anyone who is visiting Malawi I highly recommend Mt. Mulanje, even if it is just to drive to see it as it is spectacular.
The views are unbelievable and the scenery continually takes on a different look as you round a peak or enter into another valley. As you rise from a plain you travel through various stages of vegetation until you are above the tree level where only lichen is precariously clinging to the rock. Clouds continually move in shrouding everything in an eerie mist and dropping visibility quite low but then the wind will blow the mist away and you will be treated to what one traveler early in the twentieth century called the best view in the British Empire. J.R.R. Tolkein climbed Mt. Mulanje shortly before he wrote The Hobbit and local legend has it that Mulanje inspired him. The rivers that flow off of the mountain travel through the surrounding plain until they join the largest river in Malawi, the Shire.
The hiking was tiring but well worth it. The first night we stayed at a hut at the base of Sapitwa peak which in ChiChewa means “don’t go there”. Before we left our day guard at our house pulled me aside and told me that it was ok to go to Mulanje but that we must not go to Sapitwa. Sapitwa, and Mulanje as a whole is considered by some Malawians as the basis of all bad magic and witchcraft in the country. It is considered a realm of evil spirits and a place dangerous to visit. Our guard, Grant warned me that the influence and power of evil spirits is strong still on Sapitwa and that people who climb it have been known to disappear. So after staying the night in a hut at the base of Sapitwa the first thing we did was attempt to commune with the spirits (no , I don’t mean we had a séance, just that we attempted to climb the peak). After 3 hours of climbing though we had to regroup, analyse the situation and we realized that we weren’t equipped to climb the peak. While all the earlier travel on Mulanje was just hiking despite its difficulty Sapitwa entered the realm of climbing with a large proportion of smearing involved. One group that we met stated that they were only able to make to the peak using the climbing rope that they had brought so our decision to turn around was a good one despite Regan’s disappointment. She was climbing without any problems and had be been properly equipped she would have had no problem claiming the peak. After that we hiked to another hut, which was at the base of the earlier mentioned cliff and spent another night. The next day we hiked down and returned home.
The whole experience was magical despite the lack of spirits. As well I kept my eyes pealed for the elusive Abatwa, light skinned people of extremely short stature who are whispered to still be on the mountain. In actuality there is some truth behind this legend as when the Bantu people first migrated into Malawi over a 1000 years ago the land was already occupied by the Abatwa people. There are still remnants of these people in Africa but not in Malawi. The pygmies of the Congo and the Kalahari bushmen of Botswana are the remnants of this once widespread people. Their features are very different from the larger, darker skinned Bantu tribes who now cover the majority of sub-Saharan Africa.For anyone who is visiting Malawi I highly recommend Mt. Mulanje, even if it is just to drive to see it as it is spectacular.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Keeping Busy
The workshop that I helped facilitate was a great success. We held it on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week and we received tonnes of input from the participants. The goal of the meeting was to create a strategic direction for the Lobbying and Advocacy department that I am helping to create for the Farmers Union of Malawi. We invited agricultural stakeholders from across Malawi covering a broad spectrum including farmer organisations, financial institutions, farming input suppliers, government ministries and civil society groups (nongovernmental organisations or NGOs). I was pleasantly amazed that there was no lack of knowledge on what the issues in agriculture are or what possible strategies and actions may help alleviate them. The next step though is the big one, implementation. Once we have collated all the issues we will turn to our members (the actual farmers dealing with these issues) to determine what are the priorities as the list of issues is huge.
Last Friday I spent the day at a workshop dedicated to the interaction between agriculture, biodiversity and trade with the focus on how to make all three workable while respecting biodiversity, farmers rights and food security (making sure people have enough to eat). One of the big issues is the population density. For perspective Canada is 83 times larger than Malawi with a population of about 32 million, while by contrast Malawi has a population of about 12 million. Another way to look at it is that Malawi is only about 1.5 times or 50% bigger than Lake Superior. The land parcels available for agriculture are getting smaller and smaller and the forests are being cut down at an increasing rate. In Malawi forests are one of the only sources of fuel for the rural population. As well, Lake Malawi, the third largest lake in Africa and eleventh largest in the world, is being rapidly overfished. The stories of the declining fish stocks sound much like our east coast fishery stories. I have to admit I came out of the workshop wondering how these problems can be solved. There are some ideas but it is hard to get action until it is too late, look how we handled the collapse of our cod fishery.
This week I will be meeting a Canadian regarding fair trade coffee markets for Malawian coffee in Canada. Fair trade is a concept where the buyer works out a fair price with the farmer rather than dictating the price to them regardless of their cost of production. That buyer can then sell their coffee at a higher price as they can market it as fair trade coffee, demanding a premium from those coffee purchasers who care about the farmers getting enough money to cover their costs.
As well I am starting to work with the International Labour Organization (ILO) on their "Harvest for the Future: Agriculture without Child Labour" program. This is exciting for me as I work for the Ministry of Labour back in Canada. I took part in an international conference with the ILO last year in Toronto so I am looking forward to working with them.
On a happy note, Regan has a clean bill of health. Her kidney is perfectly fine, there is no sign that there will be any reoccurence and it seems that it was just a bladder infection that spread due to the first two doctors we went to giving her an antibiotic that is now known (but I guess not known to the doctors) to be ineffective against bladder infections. Regan starts school again today after 2 weeks off of school. I can't remember if I stated it in another blog, but Regan did very well in school even though we arrived late in the term, receiving second place standing in her class. It is funny, they are really big on ranking here and actually announce your rank in front of the whole class. I really feel sorry for the ones at the bottom of the class as they have to stand as they are called out in front of everyone else. Janna is doing great, but continues to be busy with many trips for days at a time to all parts of Malawi as well as large amounts of office work on top of that. She has a lot of challenges with regard to resources that I don't have but thanks to WUSC (the ones who have sent us to Malawi) she has been given a laptop so that she can have a computer that works both in the office and for her multiple field trips.
Last Friday I spent the day at a workshop dedicated to the interaction between agriculture, biodiversity and trade with the focus on how to make all three workable while respecting biodiversity, farmers rights and food security (making sure people have enough to eat). One of the big issues is the population density. For perspective Canada is 83 times larger than Malawi with a population of about 32 million, while by contrast Malawi has a population of about 12 million. Another way to look at it is that Malawi is only about 1.5 times or 50% bigger than Lake Superior. The land parcels available for agriculture are getting smaller and smaller and the forests are being cut down at an increasing rate. In Malawi forests are one of the only sources of fuel for the rural population. As well, Lake Malawi, the third largest lake in Africa and eleventh largest in the world, is being rapidly overfished. The stories of the declining fish stocks sound much like our east coast fishery stories. I have to admit I came out of the workshop wondering how these problems can be solved. There are some ideas but it is hard to get action until it is too late, look how we handled the collapse of our cod fishery.
This week I will be meeting a Canadian regarding fair trade coffee markets for Malawian coffee in Canada. Fair trade is a concept where the buyer works out a fair price with the farmer rather than dictating the price to them regardless of their cost of production. That buyer can then sell their coffee at a higher price as they can market it as fair trade coffee, demanding a premium from those coffee purchasers who care about the farmers getting enough money to cover their costs.
As well I am starting to work with the International Labour Organization (ILO) on their "Harvest for the Future: Agriculture without Child Labour" program. This is exciting for me as I work for the Ministry of Labour back in Canada. I took part in an international conference with the ILO last year in Toronto so I am looking forward to working with them.
On a happy note, Regan has a clean bill of health. Her kidney is perfectly fine, there is no sign that there will be any reoccurence and it seems that it was just a bladder infection that spread due to the first two doctors we went to giving her an antibiotic that is now known (but I guess not known to the doctors) to be ineffective against bladder infections. Regan starts school again today after 2 weeks off of school. I can't remember if I stated it in another blog, but Regan did very well in school even though we arrived late in the term, receiving second place standing in her class. It is funny, they are really big on ranking here and actually announce your rank in front of the whole class. I really feel sorry for the ones at the bottom of the class as they have to stand as they are called out in front of everyone else. Janna is doing great, but continues to be busy with many trips for days at a time to all parts of Malawi as well as large amounts of office work on top of that. She has a lot of challenges with regard to resources that I don't have but thanks to WUSC (the ones who have sent us to Malawi) she has been given a laptop so that she can have a computer that works both in the office and for her multiple field trips.
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