* Iceland is investing in the education and health sectors in the country, targeting Mangochi District
* The model is that Iceland concentrates on a particular area and see its impact
* In Mangochi, they noted that there was high girls’ dropout rate in school hence the investment in education
* Now, we have seen an improvement as the number of girls remaining in school has improved
By Patricia Kapulula & Sellah Singini, MANA
The government of Iceland has expressed optimism to assist Malawi in improving education and health sectors in order for the country to attain an educated and healthy society.
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Minister of Foreign Affairs Nancy Tembo told journalists at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe today after bilateral talks between Malawi and Iceland, whose relations date back to 35 years ago.
Tembo said Iceland is investing in the education and health sectors in the country, targeting Mangochi District. “The model is that Iceland concentrates on a particular area and see its impact.
“In Mangochi, they noted that there was high girls’ dropout rate in school hence the investment in education. Now, we have seen an improvement as the number of girls remaining in school has improved.”
Prime Minister of Iceland, Bjarni Benediktsson arrived in the country on Sunday through Kamuzu International Airport (KIA) for a five-day working visit and he is expected to visit Koche Demonstration School in Mangochi on Wednesday, among other engagements he is expected to undertake whilst in the country.
Early this year, President Lazarus Chakwera inaugurated construction of the state-of-the-art maternity wing at Makanjira in Mangochi as part of Iceland’s support to Malawi in the health sector.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister joined President Chakwera to preside over the 9th African Population Conference at Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC) being held under the theme ‘Road to 2030: Leveraging Africa’s Human Capital to Achieve Transformation in a World of Uncertainty’.
The Conference, which will run until Thursday, May 24th, aims at deliberating how the African continent can leverage its human capital to accelerate its sustainable development in a world of uncertainty.
In his opening speech, President Lazarus Chakwera said African countries need platforms for collaboration, where the continent’s population advantage is married to the human capital disadvantages of other continents to create a better world across the globe.
Chakwera added that Africa must put its population to work and animate it to the fact that it is in a long season of sacrificial nation-building and a lean season of disciplined sowing, not a short-sighted and election obsessed season of harvesting, plundering and eating like there is no tomorrow.
“I doubt that there is anyone in this room who does not know that other continents in the world are struggling to sustain their labour markets demands because they do not have enough young people to work in various industries that are critical to their economies, including agriculture and food security.
“If only we can remove our afro-pessimistic lenses and see that the youthful and enterprising population of Africa is a resource we must harness and equip to solve the sustainability problems that the ageing populations of other nations are grappling with.”
He said Africa needs to celebrate and leverage its demographic dividend by nurturing, empowering and deploying its people and further said the perspective by other continents that African poverty is exacerbated by its overpopulation is wrong — as this narrative is afro-pessimism as Africa has enough resources to sustain its people.
Chakwera, therefore, urged the participants to take the conference as a solution-oriented event, not a competition on who can complain about Africa the loudest, saying: “This is a new Malawi for a new Africa, and we are too busy focusing on finding solutions to waste any time on meetings that add no value to the creation of Africa we want.”
In his remarks, Minister of Finance & Economic Affairs, Simplex Chithyola Banda said the conference is set for African countries to share knowledge, experiences and best practices in population management, in pursuit of Africa’s sustainable development ambitions.
Chithyola Banda said for so long, Arica has been taken as a stunted and stagnant continent with little hope of lifting her people out of poverty and that Africa has received little attention to her quest for development and technical assistance.
“But the world now knows that Africa is on the move and that it has the largest size of arable land for agriculture production to feed the world; Africa has the largest deposit of mineral wealth and that it is enjoying a demographic dividend for economic productivity.
“This conference demonstrates that as Africans, we are collaborating more and strengthening partnerships in areas which will accelerate African economic growth, such as health and education, focusing on population development, especially on the youth,” he said.
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