Malawi

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to support economic and social development in Malawi.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

My Lords, Malawi is a nation of about 15 million people. It is a peaceful, democratic nation and a proud member of the Commonwealth. It is a landlocked country, but Lake Malawi is one of the most stunning lakes, and the ninth largest, in the world, with more species than any other. On 6 July this year, Malawi celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence, on 6 July 1964. I thank those responsible for my opportunity to secure this Question for Short Debate. I am also delighted that observing the debate this evening are His Excellency the High Commissioner Bernard Sande and colleagues, who have joined us for our deliberations.

Since 1964, Malawi has seen many ups and downs. In 1994 it celebrated the introduction of multiparty democracy and in that time it has seen development in many ways. Malawians are a proud and good people, and good friends to the UK, and to Scotland and Scots in particular. Scotland’s relationship with Malawi goes back 150 years to the time of Dr David Livingstone, that pioneer who was described by Kenneth Kaunda as Africa’s first freedom fighter. Livingstone’s successors, such as Dr Robert Laws, who ran the Livingstonia Mission for decades, and Mamie Martin, who pioneered girls’ education in that part of Africa, were all committed to helping Africans develop Africa themselves. This was not the traditional colonial relationship but one that was much more about mutual respect.

In the 1950s it was the Scots who stood strongest with the Malawians, first to oppose their movement into the Central African Federation, which was a disastrous step by the then British Government that pulled together southern and northern Rhodesia with Nyasaland, as Malawi was then called. Secondly, the Scots supported the Malawians during the state of emergency that followed; in 1959 this included the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland leading the international voice that said that it was time for a daring and creative transfer of power to the people of Malawi. The transfer happened just five years later.

In the first independence Cabinet in 1964, a Scottish lawyer, Colin Cameron, one of the few non-Africans to serve in a Cabinet in post-independence Africa, served as Minister for Works and Transport. Forty years later, in 2004, he was to become one of the inspirations behind the Scotland Malawi Partnership, when Strathclyde University, which had been home to Dr Livingstone almost two centuries before, established with the two Lord Provosts of Glasgow and Edinburgh the partnership. This was reinforced and strengthened in November 2005 by a co-operation agreement between myself as First Minister of Scotland and the then President Bingu wa Mutharika.

The co-operation agreement was based, as all the work over those 150 years had been, on mutual respect, development and working together. Today, the Scotland Malawi Partnership has hundreds of members. It is a non-governmental organisation that has in its membership all of Scotland’s universities, half of Scotland’s local authorities and hundreds of schools. There are health projects and active health partnerships operating in everything from epilepsy to midwifery and from prosthetics to rural GP advice.

A recent survey showed that 94,000 Scots and almost 200,000 Malawians are now actively engaged in these links, and that 200,000 Scots and more than 1 million Malawians benefit from this activity, which contributes mostly in kind about £40 million to Malawian development every year. It also showed that there is widespread support: that 46% of Scots personally know somebody who is involved in people-to-people links with Malawi, and that 74% of Scots have been in favour of those links overall. It is a unique and special model. My first question to the Government is: will they encourage others around the world to look at similar opportunities to link either parts of nation states or small nation states with smaller areas in the developing world in a way that develops mutual respect and mutual benefit but, ultimately, development as well?

The second matter that I wish to address damages that respect and good will, and it is the issue of UK visas. The good will and respect that have been developed are regularly threatened by the shambles surrounding the UK visa system for those in Malawi and other poor countries trying to get to this country. The system is dysfunctional, it is certainly disproportionate and it is, in my view, deeply damaging. From the 15-page application form that people have to fill in to the posting of passports to countries far away, which then have to be returned on time but regularly are not, to the proof of wealth that is required as evidence to secure a visa to come to this country, to the cashless system that encourages sharks to charge a fee to use their credit cards, as people pay them cash—all these measures have led to a whole series of people month after month being denied the opportunity to come to this country from poor communities in Malawi, and indeed elsewhere, in order to contribute to debates and discussions here, even when their host is a highly reputable UK or Scottish organisation or even a government body.

This is an issue that the Government need to take more seriously than they have done in the past. What steps will they take to clear up this chaos and improve the system in the short term? In the longer term, will they initiate a proper investigation to see how the system can be made more likely to contribute to the good relations between this great friend of Scotland and the UK, rather than damaging the relations that are being developed today?

As the 50th anniversary celebrations got under way this year, Professor Peter Mutharika, the new President of Malawi, said very clearly that,

“we need to transform our country from being a predominantly importing and consuming country to a predominantly producing and exporting country … we must strive for economic and development independence”.

I am sure that all of us wholeheartedly endorse and support that vision. However, today in Malawi 60% of the population still live on less than £1 a day. For every 1,000 children born, 68 will die before the age of five, and one in 200 women will die in childbirth. Although 24% of children will have had diarrhoea in the last two weeks, only 16% will have gone to secondary school. Malawi today is still only 170th out of 187 in the Human Development Index.

While there has been progress towards the MDGs on HIV and child mortality, Malawi is unlikely to meet the MDG targets on poverty, primary education and maternal health. Growth and development has been damaged in recent years by political instability, by economic ups and downs and by some more serious problems, as well as by the recent “cashgate” scandal that the new Government are trying so hard to deal with. As a result, UK aid has been partly suspended and direct support to the Government has been suspended indefinitely.

My final questions to the Government are about that UK aid, which is so critical, along with that of other donors, in the short term at least, to securing Malawian development towards the vision of economic independence. First, can the Minister outline for us what plans the Government have in the medium term to move back to a system of general budget support and sectoral budget support that would reinforce the capacity of the central Government of Malawi to deliver for its citizens?

Secondly, what support is the UK providing to build the capacity of central government and national institutions in Malawi to help ensure that scandals such as “cashgate” do not happen again? Thirdly, I have to tell the Minister that I found it very difficult to secure these figures from the DfID website, which I found to be a little bit out of date in places, including referring to the future elections in 2014 rather than the ones that had just happened.

I ask the Minister, if she can tonight, to outline exactly where UK aid is going at the moment. What is the expenditure targeted towards and what is the impact of that expenditure this year? I think that is important information that reinforces the friendship between our two countries and also allows us to hold the Government accountable for that expenditure.

In conclusion, Malawi is for very good reasons regarded as the warm heart of Africa. The friendship between our two nations, not just Scotland but the whole United Kingdom and Malawi, will be there for a very long time. I hope that, in addressing these questions this afternoon, we will be able to contribute to that friendship and move forward together to development and proper independence in the future.