ON THE NATIONAL CHARCOAL STRATEGY

In 2017, Malawi launched the National Charcoal Strategy(NCS) to deal with the worsening problem of deforestation. This strategy is particularly important to Malawi, a country where the rate of forest loss is alarmingly ranked the highest in Southern Africa.

The NCS complements a number of existing national conservation policy documents, some of which include the National Forest Landscape Restoration (NFLR) strategy, the Forestry Policy (2016), the Forestry Act (1997), the Energy Policy (2003), the draft National Energy Policy (2016), the Energy Act (2004), and the Climate Change Policy (2016). As a nation, we surely have a rich policy and regulatory framework for the management of our natural resources.

The fact that predation on our natural resources, forests, in particular, has thrived under the watch of such a rich regulatory environment exposes serious shortcomings in the overall national conservation strategy. We witnessed the mowing down of the Chikangawa Plantation under a very explicit regulatory framework guiding procedure for sustainable harvesting of trees in the forest. By comparison, however, in some other sectors, Malawi has produced internationally recognized achievements by successfully implementing locally developed policies and regulatory guidelines. This signifies that there is great potential within us as a nation.

As we aspire to make gains with the NCS, some serious reforms are needed in its implementation approach. We have to derail from the path that made some of the previous and existing policies and regulations fail to prevent the current status of things. This strategy spells out an excellent vision that, if well executed, will lead to the neutralization of the threat that charcoal poses to the nation. If we fail to decisively deal with the charcoal problem now as has been the case in the past decade, Malawi will be heading for an environmental catastrophe that will be even more difficult and expensive to reverse.

Involvement of the grass-root rural people is one aspect that needs to be seriously reflected upon. These are the people who matter most because they live side by side with the forests the NCS seeks to protect. This aspect has not been fully addressed by some of the policy and regulatory documents in the past. It is very common for some of these documents to reach the point of expiry without the majority of Malawians knowing their contents. This creates a gap that limits public participation during the implementation of the stipulates of such documents. For instance, how readily available are these conservation regulatory documents at local or district level? Even if they can be available, are they in a form that can be easily digested by the local user who we expect to participate fully in the documents’ implementation? If the answer is NO, then there is some issue we need to resolve. The public cannot participate voluntarily if they are not well-informed. The militarized forest conservation approach we have resorted to is a clear sign of national underperformance on the conservation front. Besides being unsustainable, the effectiveness of this approach has been doubted by many on the grounds that it does not guarantee full respect for human rights. Successful conservation hinges upon both long-term interventions as well as voluntary community participation.

With this in mind, the authorities need to find means of getting the vision stipulated in the NCS down to the grass-root populace. All critical stakeholders in the charcoal value chain such as charcoal makers, sellers, consumers, and transporters need to know and be reached with information. This could be achieved, for example, through reproductions of the NCS in form of translations, artistic visualizations, media commentaries, multilingual portable pocketbooks, digital representations, and indeed any form that could help the people who are far from the “offices” access government’s fresh commitments on dealing with the charcoal problem. The school system is also a vital avenue for information dissemination. This, as we can see, calls for wider participation of linguists, artists, publishers, media personnel, teachers, designers and many other stakeholders who, on the surface, may look peripheral and insignificant to national conservation programming.  But as has been seen, their significance in localizing the original copy of the NCS for it to reach the wider society cannot be overemphasized.

SKILL DEVELOPMENT IN MALAWI: TAKING STOCK OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM

The relevance of education in combating unemployment cannot be overemphasized.  Education is a source of skills that youths need in various settings of all sorts of employment. In line with this thinking, government of Malawi has made a number of reforms in the education sector to make it responsive to the employment needs of Malawi youths. For example, the school curriculum currently being implemented in Malawian schools is by design science-based. The idea is that in this world of technology, Malawi needs to produce graduates who are going to use technology to deal with various problems haunting the country thereby creating employment. The promotion of science has been accompanied by a reduction in tertiary education intakes for the humanities. Nalikule College of Education is a case in point. Opened in 2017, the college offers predominantly science programmes. The introduction of Entrepreneurship as one of the courses in education studies at Domasi College of Education also attests to the significance of framing an education that promotes job creation skills among the trainee teachers most of whom are youthful.

Despite making this headway, there still exist some areas that need strengthening. Job creation goes hand in hand with economic development. A booming economy supports job creation. Talking of the economy here in Malawi, we have for long relied on agriculture, tobacco in particular. Examining our education system, it does not take an effort for one to see how tobacco, our ‘gold,’ has been under-incorporated into our education. I cannot confidently cite a University of Malawi programme that specializes in tobacco studies. In primary and secondary school, students merely learn it as the main cash crop of our land. Nowhere in the syllabus will you find comprehensive content directly detailing how tobacco production, marketing, and processing are done yet until recently, learners have been exposed to such details but relating to wheat in Canada, rice in the Ganges Valley and cattle ranching in Argentina. Our education has lost a huge opportunity because our youths lack skills to initiative anything relating to the tobacco value chain. We end up exporting raw tobacco. In doing so, we are essentially exporting thousands of jobs for our youths.

Related to tobacco is our lake, which is estimated to be one third the size of Malawi. I cannot recall any constituent college of the University of Malawi that has a specialized programme offering marine-related studies. Such courses could help the country utilize the lake more creatively. It is not strange to find, in the curriculum, offering details content of geographical resources of other countries. For example, during my time, we could learn about The great lakes of America and Israeli irrigation schemes. Specialized courses and subjects focusing on Lake Malawi would sharpen the minds of the youths into rolling out creative initiatives on and along this lake. Unfortunately, by learning less about what we are blessed with, we end up failing to use them fully to change our country’s misfortunes including youth unemployment. 

CAREER DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT FOR YOUTHS: THE MALAWI SITUATION

In the early days of school life, children are often asked this familiar question: ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ Among the most common answers one expects to hear include ‘I want to be… a doctor, a teacher, a soldier or a lawyer.’ To most children, these are some of the most familiar careers.  This reflects the prevailing practice and mentality in our society that when one grows up, he or she should be employed. Career sayings such as the ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ seem to cement such attitude. It is, perhaps high time we de-emphasized this narrow sense of ‘employment’ in our early career mentorship of our children. That way, our children will purposely begin to accumulate skills that they will use in ‘work for others’ or ‘work for self’ future scenarios.

Developing a career is a long process and it has to begin when children are at a small age. As defined by the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary (3^rd edition), a career is ‘the job or series of jobs that you do during your working life….’ Defined this way, you do not expect choice of a career to be made when one is already at working age. It means that career development service (CDS) has to be part and parcel of the overall national youth development framework with government playing a central role through strategizing, planning, and resourcing. Malawi’s Gross Domestic Product depends largely on agriculture. It, therefore, makes more sense for the government to help promote skills among its citizens that are going to directly or indirectly make an impact in this important sector of the economy. A robust CDS is, therefore, very crucial if most of our youths are going to be part and parcel of the building of a strong economy in the future.  

On the ground, however, national career development service is in a state of disorganization. A recent survey by the Skills and Technical Education Programme (STEP) found that among others, identified the following gaps: lack of national CDS policy or strategy, lack of national CDS programme, rare, ad-hoc and uncoordinated CDS initiatives by some organizations, and lack of CDS materials. Lack of national CDS coordination means that there is no regulation a thing likely to compromise standards of delivery, monitoring, and evaluation. The cost of this is very high. Many youths don’t have sufficient knowledge about various careers let alone paths to follow towards professions that appropriately align with their soft as well as technical skills. In the end, the majority find themselves in particular careers out of convenience and without a thorough preparatory development process a thing that creates a mismatch between one’s skills and the chosen career. We cannot expect maximum productivity from such a combination. That is why the government has to take a lead in nationalizing CDS and supporting it with an appropriate policy framework.

ON THE POLITICS OF JOB CREATION IN MALAWI

As the clock ticks towards the 2019 elections, job creation has featured more prominently in recent political rhetoric. With national unemployment rates being highest among the youth, political leaders undoubtedly see this as an opportunity to win the youth vote since, demographically, youths form a majority in the country's population.

Promises and counter-promises have been made by politicians. The United Transformation Movement (UTM) for example is known for the ‘one million jobs creation in one year’ promise coupling it with the argument that their youthful presidential candidate, Dr. Saulos Chilima, represents the genuine change of fortunes for youths. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), on the other hand, has unveiled sumptuous programmes aimed at creating jobs for the youths in the 2018/19 financial year. These include a 5-billion-kwacha allocation to youth afforestation programme and a youth internship programme targeting hundreds of graduate youths. Speaking at the sidelines on a youth policy conference recently held in Lilongwe, the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) revealed that it is going to form a youth-centered government once voted into power.

These promises share a number of commonalities. One of them is the recognition that youth unemployment is a vice that must be faced head-on. Another aspect, perhaps owing to the political nature of the promises, is the emphasis on short-term interventions to the problem. The last and most important common issue is that these political promises clearly state that it is the so-called government that will bring solutions to the youth unemployment problem, in essence creating a provider-beneficiary dichotomy.

Missing conspicuously is a sustainable long-term framework for dealing with the problem. When we create one million jobs in one year, what next? When we spend the 5 billion kwacha employing the youths to plant trees in the rainy season and successfully absorb thousands of graduate interns, what next? When a youth-centered government is put in place, what next? If long-term plans are not put in place at the very start, most interventions end up stumbling midway. What Malawian youths need most is some intervention that is going to serve them for long. The current youthful demographics of the population are likely to swell further in the next couple of years making long-term interventions a necessity.

It is, therefore, demanded that those promising to create employment opportunities must unveil clear plans for sustaining what they are saying. Most importantly, in the spirit of participatory democracy, the tendency of creating solutions up there and imposing them down on the youths must be minimized. Youths deserve to take part in the conception process of programmes aimed at dealing with unemployment and other youth problems. Youth must not be pushed to the receiving end of the dichotomy. If this requirement continues to be ignored, Malawi shall forever have an unproductive youth. Allowing youths to lead the way will be a great milestone in dealing with the problem of youth unemployment once and for all. 

RENEWING THE PAST

Nokia 3310. Mighty in those seasons
Is roaring back so they say
Nokia has its own reasons
It will be back among us to stay.

Don’t forget the once forgotten fashions
Dressing, haircuts and all
In those days, they defined people’s passions
Today, once more, they take the fore.

I am not quite certain. Perhaps you are
That one day. Yes one day
Our forests and our woodlands that we once cherished
Will come back as a perimeter around us.

SUGGESTIONS ON CHIKANGAWA PLANTATION

The destruction on Chikangawa Forests has been a story amply mourned both in and out of the media. But scarcely have we seen practical suggestions on what needs to be done coming out clearly so that the story that is very sad can be changed into joy. Otherwise, large areas of the forest have continued to plod towards inexistence. Government ministries and departments that could have managed to safeguard the plantation from this sort of scathe have been overpowered by powers that proved far much superior. But not all is lost. And this is the time we as a nation need to do something to re-snaffle something out of this national treasure that we cheaply let slip off our hands.

One thing that is very clear is that this restoration process needs investment in terms of both resource and time. The trees that we have managed to harvest in the past decade were planted as early as 1950s. This teaches us one major lesson: having long term vision. I am sure that those who laid the plantation’s foundation were at no point deterred by the likelihood of them not being in physical contact with the economic benefits that were to come out of the forest. But one thing they surely never envisaged is the invasion by sharp and hungry saws that we have seen in the past decade or so.

The government at that time was also very generous in terms of committing financial resources towards the planting of trees. You don’t expect the dressing of 50000 hectares of land with seedlings to be a lowly costing adventure. Now that we have brought Chikangawa back to its initial state, what can fail us to do what our friends and government did five or so decades ago? We just need progressive mentality.

First of all, as a nation, we need to come out in the open and admit the ‘sin’ we have committed in Chikangawa. Recognising it as a national disaster is key to its restoration. Now after recognising it as a disaster, long term and short term plans should be put in place to work on the restoration programme. A special working committee of some sort to spearhead the drive would add spark to the initiative.

A study by expert forestry consultants should be constituted to among others quantify the extent of deforestation, the amount of money required to reforest the whole terrain, the number of years this could take, the best tested afforestation approaches that can work, and the best way of combating fires, which has proved to be the greatest enemy to the restitution of the forest.  This would form the nation’s working base for planning.

Another thing we need to do is to make sure that the programme generates as much funds as possible for running daily affairs. This would be the duty of the working committee. Many are the time government has attributed its lack of initiative on a number of fronts to lack of funds. We don’t expect such a large-scale initiative to be an exception. These funds would be invested in annual seedling production, their planting and community mobilisation. The working committee, or whatever, government decides to call it, would also work towards coordinating different groups that show keen interest in the affairs of the forest.  Otherwise, what we see is a disjointed group of people with concern on the deplorable state of Chikangawa forest. The impact of whatever action such groups put in place, very often leave hard to see marks. But if such action is well coordinated,   we would have been talking of success by this time.

Besides this, it would be wonderful to see government use the National Tree Planting Season to champion the reforestation of Chikangawa forest.  This would help government see a clear picture of the impact the season makes on the ground. Otherwise, what hear from the nationally spread tree planting exercise are reports that a very large percentage of seedlings planted every year rarely develop into trees which, in short, defeats the whole purpose of the initiative. If we could target such efforts to a specific area per like Chikangawa, the cost benefit scale would skew towards the positive side. 

If we try these steps as a nation, without attaching any politics, and without considering the distance gulfing the present from the time the next round of economic returns will trickle in, I believe that it cannot take us more than a decade for Chikangawa to wear back the green it used to enjoy until middle 2000s.

IN DEFENCE OF LICENSING CHARCOAL PRODUCERS IN MALAWI

Rapid urban population growth and acute insufficiency of reliable and affordable forms of energy in Malawi have greatly increased the domestic demand and use of charcoal for energy. The resultant devegatation and other impacts on the environment have been wide and damaging. On its part, government, reiterating its growing concern, is contemplating legalising charcoal production by licensing all producers. The idea, though still in its infancy, has already been massively criticised. Many fear that the step amounts to authorisation of deforestation in the country. But considering that Malawi’s deforestation rates rank first in southern Africa and second in African and that currently there are thousands of, mostly underground, charcoal producers, the need for the country to revisit its current ineffective policies on charcoal cannot be overemphasised. This work is basically crafted in support of government’s current proposal. 

In the first place, the introduction of a licence system will greatly minimise the challenge of monitoring and control. Being a banned practice, the thousands currently involved in it do their business behind the scene by among others engaging in night time production and transporting the product through carefully negotiated routes. This makes the industry slippery in the hands of the enforcing agents thereby precluding any attempts to impose control over it. As a result, collection and management of valuable data becomes challenging. Currently, the industry is characterised by destructive harvesting and carbonation methods, which have prominently contributed to the current environmental devastation. Licensing is, thus, a timely intervention. It would make all producers accessible hence easy to conform them to standards and expectations stipulated in the reformed policy.

In addition, since licensing will make charcoal traders accessible, reaching them with support and innovative technologies will be easy. There’s a general outcry that the traditional carbonation system, currently in wide use, is very wasteful. Innovative interventions to minimise biomass loss are needed. For instance, there is need to expand the utilisation of modern carbonising kilns as well as researching extensively on the possibility of value addition to the produced charcoal and charcoal-efficient burning stoves. The huge volumes of by-products at the carbonation stage also need to be properly recycled. All these require a steady interaction between the stakeholders in the industry, which is currently so minimal given its banned status.  Turning the charcoal industry into a fully regulated system by licensing will, therefore, connect stakeholders making it possible for them to exchange vital information for the industry’s sustainability.

Although charcoal production and selling is a source of livelihood for thousands of people, it unfortunately, remains a largely disregarded sector. Its banned status only emphasises the wide perception that charcoal is ‘forester’s enemy’. This overlooks the industry’s current economic weight and its contributive potential towards national development. The proposed licencing system will unlock this economic value turning charcoal production into a sector useful in alleviating some of the country’s major economic woes. It has the potential to create jobs, and if charcoal can attain the official status of a ‘business commodity’, it can really help lift many families out of dire poverty.  The revenue generated from licenses will help beef up the country’s enforcement capabilities which are presently feeble owing largely to under-resourcing. Once formalised, government would be looking at ways of addressing the industry’s infrastructural challenges such as roads to link production sites and markets. Government and other stakeholders would also be able to intervene in spheres such as pricing mechanisms and equipping of producers and retailers with business loans and marketing skills such as cooperative trading system.  With such business support, it would be possible for charcoal traders to diversify their businesses beyond charcoal, which would be a significant milestone. So, as can be seen, formalising the charcoal industry has benefits far much beyond environmental conservation.

Finally, as a country, we are in a situation where we have already lost large volumes of vegetation. As such, we need to couple conservation with restorative efforts. One of the approaches that can be considered is the ‘individual reforestation approach’ of destroyed lands. Currently in wide use in with many success stories in Madagascar, licensed charcoal traders in Malawi can also fit in this schema. It really makes sense to target those involved in deforestation, such as charcoalers, in forest restoration initiatives. With the proposed intervention, each of the licensees would be expected to develop a personal plantation on which charcoal will be entirely produced. This would thin dependence on natural and protected forest lands. This is not possible in the current set up where charcoal producers are not formally known. If this is achieved, the charcoal-deforestation link will be shattered since most charcoal will be produced from special energy plantations owned by charcoal licence holders. That is why this work puts its weight behind the idea of licensing charcoal producers.  

However, if we are going to avoid the repeat of the chaos caused by license holding harvesters in the ‘then’ Chikangawa forest, significant amount of care needs to be taken by those superintending discussions on the proposal. Sticking to the current business-as-usual model robs future generations of their ability to supply their own energy needs. That is why we all need to support the proposed reforms.