Category Archives: Malawi
Malawi: Water and Sanitation
MDGs and sanitation
Water and sanitation in urban Malawi: Can they meet the Millennium Development Goals? A study of informal settlements in three cities by Mtafu A. Zeleza Manda.
This paper assesses the quality and extent of provision for water and sanitation in urban areas in Malawi – where over 60% of the population lives in informal settlements. It also considers whether the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for water and sanitation are likely to be met in Malawi, and examines the current and potential role of community-led sanitation improvements. It includes recommendations for interventions needed by governmental, international and civil-society organizations to improve living conditions of communities to contribute to the realization of the MDGs.
How to get a copy
Download the paper from here
Land-grabbing in Africa by foreign investors
I’m glad to see that land-grabbing in Africa has become a hot topic since I wrote the analysis below over 6 weeks ago.The BBC have now picked up the issue with a new post Africa investment sparks land grab fears, so I think it is timely to update this post.
There is an  article on land-grabbing from the Independent. This time it is Madagascar where there have been riots over the government selling off a 99 year lease of 1.3 million hectares of farmland (about 1/2 the size of Belgium) to Korea. Korea intends to farm the land – with maize and palm oil and send the produce back to Korea. Food prices in Madagascar are already high and people are struggling live. According to the Independent:
The phenomenon [of land-grabbing] is accelerating at an alarming rate, with an area half the size of Europe’s farmland targeted in just the past six months.
There is a thought-provoking article on IRIN about a massive amount of land-grabbing in Africa. You may also be interested in the analytical map in the article showing ‘land-grabbing in Africa by foreign investors‘. The process seems equivalent to the colonial farming process. Huge ‘farms’ which are really industrial complexes are made up of annexed territories of ‘leased’ land linked to far-off markets. Sounds familiar? Does it really matter? I think it does. It is the size and the manner of the annexation of lands which is definitely worrying both in its neo-colonial overtones and the impact on local people. The annexers argue that the land is idle and unused, but an overview of known situations show that mostly this is not the case. Wasn’t this a colonial argument too? – that local people did not know how to utilise their own land. The leasers involve Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, China and India. In the case of China there has often been an attempt to settle their own people in the leased land rather than using or training local farmers.
From the article here are just a few points:
- Kenya:Â proposal to lease a large chunk of the fertile Tanya River Delta land to Quatar which currently supports 150,000 farming families.
- Mozambique: leased land to China (and resisted the attempt to settle thousands of Chinese agricultural workers).
- Madagascar: Negotiating with South Korea on the lease of 1.5 million hectares led to the conflict that overthrew the government.
- Malawi: China leased land for cotton plant.
- Sudan: received huge foreign investments in agriculture. 75 deals made worth $3.8 billion in the last 8 years. 8 countries are involved.
- Rwanda: announced a new programme to identify “unexploited“ arable land for foreign investors.
- Republic of Congo: announced it would lease 10 million hectares of farmland to individual foreign farmers to boost its food security.
Read the full report from IRIN
Read some more posts on land-grabbing
Suggested Books
The Emergence of Land Markets in Africa: Impacts on Poverty, Equity, and EfficiencyReport of Baseline Study on Land and Property Grabbing(Botswana)
Socioeconomic Change and Land Use in Africa: The Transformation of Property Rights in Maasailand
Languages and Education in Africa, Book
Languages and Education in Africa a comparative and transdisciplinary analysis
Edited by BIRGIT BROCK-UTNE &Â INGSE SKATTUM 2009 paperback 356 pages US$64.00 ISBN 978-1-873927-17-5
Languages and Education in Africa: A Comparative and Transdisciplinary Analysis (Bristol Papers in Education)
The theme of this book cuts across disciplines. Contributors to this volume are specialized in education and especially classroom research as well as in linguistics, most being transdisciplinary themselves. Around 65 sub-Saharan languages figure in this volume as research objects: as means of instruction, in connection with teacher training, language policy, lexical development, harmonization efforts, information technology, oral literature and deaf communities.
The co-existence of these African languages with English, French and Arabic is examined as well. This wide range of languages and subjects builds on recent field work, giving new empirical evidence from 17 countries: Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, as well as to transnational matters like the harmonization of African transborder languages.
As the Editors – a Norwegian social scientist and a Norwegian linguist, both working in Africa – have wanted to give room for African voices, the majority of contributions to this volume come from Africa.
Contents
Foreword (Ayo Bamgbose), 11-12
Series Editor’s Preface (Michael Crossley), 13-14
Ingse Skattum & Birgit Brock-Utne. Introduction, 15-54
PART 1. General Considerations on Language and Education
Martha A.S. Qorro Parents’ and Policy Makers’ Insistence on Foreign Languages as Media of Education in Africa: restricting access to quality education – for whose benefit?, 57-82
Kwesi Kwaa Prah Mother-Tongue Education in Africa for Emancipation and Development: towards the intellectualisation of African languages, 83-104
Hassana Alidou Promoting Multilingual and Multicultural Education in Francophone Africa: challenges and perspectives, 105-131
Rajend Mesthrie Assumptions and Aspirations Regarding African Languages in South African Higher Education: a sociolinguistic appraisal, 133-151
PART 2. Language as a Means of Instruction and as a Subject in Formal Education
Mamadou Lamine Traoré L’utilisation des langues nationales dans le système éducatif malien: historique, défis et perspectives, 155-161
Tal Tamari The Role of National Languages in Mali’s Modernising Islamic Schools (Madrasa), 163-174
Irène Rabenoro National Language Teaching as a Tool for Malagasy Learners’ Integration into Globalisation, 175-188
Mekonnen Alemu Gebre Yohannes Implications of the Use of Mother Tongues versus English as Languages of Instruction for Academic Achievement in Ethiopia, 189-199
Silvester Ron Simango Weaning Africa from Europe: toward a mother-tongue education policy in Southern Africa, 201-212
Lazarus M. Miti & Kemmonye C. Monaka The Training of Teachers of African Languages in Southern Africa with Special Reference to Botswana and Zambia, 213-221
Halima Mohammed Mwinsheikhe Spare No Means: battling with the English/Kiswahili dilemma in Tanzanian secondary school classrooms, 223-234
PART 3. Language Standardisation and Harmonisation
Herbert Chimhundu Language, Dialect and Region: the handling of language variation in Shona dictionaries, 237-252
Nhira Edgar Mberi Harmonisation of the Shona Varieties: Doke revisited, 253-262
Nomalanga Mpofu Adjectives in Shona, 263-273
Samukele Hadebe From Standardisation to Harmonisation: a survey of the sociolinguistic and political conditions for the creation of Nguni in Southern Africa, 275-285
PART 4. Beyond Formal Education
Kristin Vold Lexander La communication médiatisée par les technologies de les technologies de l’information et de la communication: la porte d’accès au domaine de l’éscrit pour les langues africaines?, 289-299
Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye & Cécile Van Den Avenne Comment les langues se mélangent-elles à l’écrit? Pratiques actuelles de deux agriculteurs passés par une école bilingue (franco-bambara) au Mali, 301-312
Foluso O. Okebukola Towards an Enriched Beginning Reading Programme in Yoruba, 313-332
Philemon Akach, Eline Demey, Emily Matabane, Mieke Van Herreweghe & Myriam Vermeerbergen
What is South African Sign Language? What is the South African Deaf Community?, 333-347
Malawi green gold: Challenges and opportunities for SMFE in reducing poverty
Challenges for the governance of forests in Malawi
Malawi’s green gold: Challenges and opportunities for small and medium forest enterprises in reducing poverty
(IIED, December 2008)
This study surveys a thriving, albeit largely informal, SMFE sector in Malawi. It looks in detail at four promising subsectors: timber, cane furniture, tree fruit juices and woodcarving. It describes both the challenges and opportunities for the governance of forest services in regards to SMFE, and ways of organising SMFEs to better meet market demand while sustaining the resource.
http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=13545IIED
Edutainment : The SADC, Drama for Life Programme
Education through drama
The Drama for Life Programme was developed by SADC in partnership with GTZ. It aims to build capacity in the area of HIV/AIDS and education through drama and theatre. Launched in 2006, the three-year programme runs in all SADC member states which include Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The programme plans to stimulate a stronger use of Applied Drama and Theatre practices (Drama in education, Drama Therapy, Playback Theatre, Theatre in education, Theatre of the oppressed, Community Theatre and Theatre for Development) in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the region.
Malawi : Household access to microcredit and food security for children
Access to credit for female household members
Household access to microcredit and childrens food-security in rural malawi, a gender perspective by Hazarika,G. Guha-Khasnobis,B., Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn (2008)
Using data from the 1995 Malawi Financial Markets and Food Security Survey, this study seeks to discover if women’s relative control over household resources or intra-household bargaining power in rural Malawi, gauged by their access to microcredit, plays a role in children’s food security.
It is indicated that whereas the access to microcredit of adult female household members improves 0-6 year old girls’, though not boys’, long-term nutrition as measured by height-for-age, the access to microcredit of male members has no such salutary effect on either girls’ or boys’ nutritional status. This may be interpreted as evidence of a positive relation between women’s relative control over household resources and young girls’ food security. That women’s access to microcredit improves young girls’ long-term nutrition may be explained in part by the subsidiary finding that it raises household expenditure on food.
[Adapted from author]
How to get a copy
Download a pdf of Household access to microcredit
Suggested Books
- The End of Chidyerano: A History of Food and Everyday Life in Malawi, 1860-2004 (Social History of Africa)
- Anthropology of Food: The Social Dynamics of Food Security
- Food Security, Poverty and Nutrition Policy Analysis: Statistical Methods and Applications
Africa Malawi : A hospital horror story
Chiradzulu district hospital shame
I guess I have been around long enough that I am rarely really shocked. However, a story on IPS News from Malawi caught my eye, and yes – I admit it – I am shocked. Read the following:
LILONGWE, Jun 27 (IPS) – Gladys Mawera’s face is contorted with pain -– both she and her newborn baby survived a complicated birth three days ago — but she has not been able to take the painkillers and antibiotics prescribed to her by the medical personnel at the Chiradzulu District Hospital in southern Malawi. The hospital has been without water for five days.
“I am disgusted with my own smell and that of my baby,” says Mawera, who is still wrapped in bloodstained linens as she cradles her child. “There is literally not a drop of water around here,” worries Mawera.
That last line in the highlighted paragraph does it for me. As you read on in the article your mouth drops further and further.
This is not some rustic hospital in the back of beyond. This is a state of the art modern hospital built in 2005 at a cost of 25 million dollars European Union funding which is trying to exist with highly erratic water supplies. In this state of the art hospital, x-rays services are suspended, operations are suspended, patients do not even have water to drink, nurses and doctors do not have water to wash in, linen cannot be washed. How can the hospital function? Relatives of patients are sent out under cover of darkness to ‘pinch’ water from community boreholes. A dangerous practice because of snakes, dogs and community disquiet over the practice.
“The real beneficiaries pay for the maintenance of the boreholes and they’re not happy to see strangers drawing water from their facilities. The people from the hospital therefore have to wait until the owners of the boreholes are sleeping to collect water for the patients,”
Why?
The problem appears to be a local planning one. The hospital was built without its own reservoir and it is higher than the local reservoir.
“Ideally, we should have constructed a new reservoir to cater for the hospital,” says Bulukutu.
He said there is need to upgrade the whole water system in the district to improve the pumping of water from the reservoir. Bulukutu says there is a proposal to construct a new dam on a higher ground which will be used as the hospital’s new reservoir to satisfy the water demand. But as funds have not yet been set aside for this project, this is far from an immediate solution.
Meanwhile the EU has promised the construction of a borehole within the hospital premises as a short term solution to the water problems.
My question is, why on earth was that not done when the hospital was constructed? Or at least when the problem was recognised.