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We don't know why Malawi is poor
- geneticfate 5mo ago[flagged]
- cjbgkagh 5mo ago[flagged]
- pavlov 5mo ago"Chat, can you show me an example of why correlation is not causation?" The article actually addresses this specific point: "Human capital is thin. Mean years of schooling sit around 5. Stunting rates have been at 35-40% for decades, with measurable downstream effects on adult cognition and earnings." "-- It is also, upon reflection, mostly a description of being poor rather than an explanation. 'Malawi is poor because its agricultural productivity is low' is closer to a tautology than an answer."
- squidbeak 5mo agoThis is a repugnant and fairly despicable slur. Shame on you.
- tptacek 5mo agoThere is in general no such thing as "national" or "national average" IQ, pretty much anywhere in the world, but that's doubly true in subsaharan Africa, where the numbers aren't just not representative but in many cases literally fabricated --- "interpolated" from neighbors and reconciled with economic statistics.
- weezing 5mo ago[flagged]
- carlosjobim 5mo ago[flagged]
- xandrius 5mo agoAre you imagining a drama before it actually happens?
- sieabahlpark 5mo ago[dead]
- addaon 5mo ago"70% of Malawians live on less than $2.15 a day. Under the World Bank’s revised $3-a-day poverty line, it’s 75%." This sounds like an extremely bimodal distribution -- a 40% increase in the cut-off line only captures 5% more of the population, so only a small number of people are in this "poor but survivable" zone, with most well under and some well over, I assume. Does this map to the usual rural/urban divide?
- RetroTechie 5mo agoOn the low end, the actual number doesn't say much. Having $2/day to buy food from, is very different from having $2/day and a small plot of land that grows the family's food subsistence-style. Also countries where a large % of the population works in agriculture / fishing, and/or have high rates of corruption, tend to have significant informal economies. From developed-country point of view that may appear as an almost non-existent economy, while in reality people are still growing / building / manufacturing stuff (be it low-tech / low-value mostly). And could be happy living so. Not saying that's the case for Malawi. Just be aware that "$2/day" paints only part of the picture of how 'rich' people are.
- erxam 5mo agoRegarding Rwanda, I think we're forgetting that a large part of their success comes from their plundering of the Congo's resources, mineral and otherwise. There have been two gigantic continent-wide wars over the Congo, for fuck's sake.
- nathan_compton 5mo ago[flagged]
- tines 5mo agoIt does: > Geography. Jeffrey Sachs and others have long argued that geography is destiny: landlocked, tropical, distant-from-markets countries face structural penalties through transport costs, disease burden, and weak agricultural conditions. Malawi has all three. Sure, but the empirical literature pegs the landlocked penalty at about 1% of annual growth. This is meaningful over decades, not enough to close a gap this large in per-capita income. Rwanda is more landlocked than Malawi and has grown faster. Uzbekistan is double-landlocked and has roughly tripled per-capita income since 2000. Did you even ctrl+f?
- nathan_compton 5mo agoYes, but for "land locked". I've been owned.
- antonvs 5mo agoI seriously don’t get the mentality you have. You didn’t read the article, but you did a half-hearted search for some reason, and posted a completely incorrect comment as a result. Why? What are you trying to achieve? When people claim that LLMs don’t have superhuman intelligence yet, this kind of behavior is a counterexample.
- nathan_compton 5mo agoNobody's perfect, friend. You're totally right.
- ascorbic 5mo agoIt does, repeatedly, and compares it to other landlocked countries.
- tomkaos 5mo ago
- rwyinuse 5mo agoPerhaps there are cultural reasons that explain this, such as attitudes towards work, entrepreneurship, private ownership etc? I have no idea if Rwanda and Malawi have difference there, but globally one can see clearly see the impact of culture. Just look at how well Japan did despite losing WW2 and having little natural resources, or how badly Russia has done despite its huge landmass and resources, because the political culture always seems to lead to really bad autocratic governance. In my country (Finland) areas where Swedish speaking people are the majority do consistently better than neighbouring areas with Finnish speaking majority - lower unemployment, less health and social issues and so on. Some of that may be due to historical accumulation of wealth, but I'm convinced that mostly it's because of differences in cultural values and attitudes. Some studies indicate that the Swedish speakers tend to have better social life, which improves life outcomes in many ways.
- RobotToaster 5mo agoMalawians have a reputation of being extremely kind people, maybe that makes them bad at capitalism?
- SoftTalker 5mo agoI mean, is it beyond belief that many of them are OK with living a simple agrarian life? Or have very little opportunity to learn that there is any other way to live?
- Henchman21 5mo agoIn this community it is well beyond belief. It’s up there with UFOs and lizard people. Not extracting every. Last. Penny. From EVERYTHING no matter the impact. Anathema to a hardcore capitalist forum like this.
- tmnvix 5mo agoMakes you wonder if less public debt and less focus on growing cash crops to service that debt might actually make for a more comfortable 'simple agrarian life' overall. Even if this meant lower GDP. I've often thought there's something wrong with the way we put a simple dollar figure on poverty. Less than $3 dollars a day with or without easy access to land, shelter, and fresh water?
- dirasieb 5mo ago[flagged]
- WhatsTheBigIdea 5mo agoCan you cite a reference for this assertion? I'd like to read about it if true.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> Can you cite a reference for this assertion? It's not. The current vogue in the American social sciences is projecting America's Black-White / colonist-colonised dualism onto the world regardless of the facts on the ground. Malawi was hunting and gathering until the 10th century [1] and colonised by Europeans in the late 19th century. That makes it simultaneously one of the last places in the contiguous old world to be settled and one of the last in Africa to have been European colonised. If the standard outliers to any macroeconomic theory are Japan and Argentina, then Malawi occupies a similar niche in theories of history and development. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_expansion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_expansion
- geneticf8 5mo agodidn't europeans colonize and destroy everything in the United States?
- tptacek 5mo agoThe article discusses this, and compares it to other labor-extractive colonial states in subsaharan Africa. If there were an easy explanation, it appears like it would be in the article, which is pretty expansive.
- ascorbic 5mo agoSo were lots of other countries that went on to grow a lot faster. That's what the article is about.
- mdasen 5mo agoThe point of the article isn't "Malawi is poor compared to Europe," but rather comparing Malawi to other countries that were similarly colonized and how other colonized countries have done a lot better than Malawi - despite often having more adversity in their post-colonial existence. Yes, being exploited will leave you in a bad state, but it's also important to learn why other similarly colonized countries have done a lot better over the past 30 years - what are the conditions and policies that improve things
- pavlov 5mo agoThe conclusion of the article is interesting: > 'The unit of analysis for "why is X poor" may be the political coalition, not the country.' So maybe the real question here is not about the absolute poverty, but the derivative: "Why hasn't Malawi seen meaningful growth for 30 years?" — And the answer could be surprisingly related to first-world countries like Finland that also have experienced decades of stunted growth. Like Malawi, Finland has functional and stable multiparty politics. Like Malawi, Finland's politicians have spent decades locally optimizing for minor benefits towards their preferred flavor of the median voter (right wing cuts taxes a bit, left wing improves benefits a bit, nobody offers anything transformative). Too much stability at the wrong time might be a slow curse.
- tdb7893 5mo agoIs Finland doing that badly? It seems like a good place to live
- yorwba 5mo agoFinnish GDP per capita is growing much, much faster than Malawi's: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=MW-FI https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...
- Geee 5mo agoThis is not accurate, because it's not adjusted for inflation. There hasn't been real GDP growth in Finland for 20 years. This is more accurate comparison: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?end=2024&locations=MW-FI&start=1990&view=chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?end=2...
- yorwba 5mo agoThanks, I got bit by the counterintuitive semantics of "current international $" meaning "current at each point in the graph" instead of "current at the time the graph was made."
- xandrius 5mo agoI think just you can get a glimpse by what they export (from Wikipedia): - Malawi: tobacco (55%), dried legumes (8.8%), sugar (6.7%), tea (5.7%), cotton (2%), peanuts, coffee, soy (2015 est.) - Rwanda: Gold, tin ores, coffee, malt extract, rare earth ores I can easily see why one has a higher GDP than the other. Very little mistery to me.
- exe34 5mo agoThe agricultural exporters probably have a lot less heavy metal in their blood.
- alephnerd 5mo agoAlso, foreign aid. Rwanda received massive amounts of foreign aid unlike Malawi [0] and de facto colonized the DRC's mine fields [1] [0] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locations=RW-MW https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locat... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/rwanda-exercises-command-control-over-m23-rebels-say-un-experts-2025-07-02/ https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/rwanda-exercises-comman...
- londons_explore 5mo agoForeign aid is rarely a gift - in almost all cases it is a business transaction. It is given as a loan, or in return for some mineral rights, or for an important UN vote, or for allegiance in a war. For the loan cases, the terms are often unaffordable, effectively handing effective control of the entire country to the entity who has the other end of the loan - it is the modern empire-by-debt.
- sofixa 5mo agoNo. A lot of foreign aid is direct things like food, medicine, doctors, AIDS prevention programmes, vaccines for specific things, maternal care, containment of an Ebola epidemic, etc. Do you really think that e.g. Kenya is voting alongside EU members because the EU paid for a part of a highway between two cities in Kenya? Then yes, there are loans and grants for infrastructure things. > For the loan cases, the terms are often unaffordable, effectively handing effective control of the entire country to the entity who has the other end of the loan - it is the modern empire-by-debt. That's not true. The rates are very public, and while sometimes they are on the higher end, unaffordable is a stretch, and that's how loan rates work. It is inherently risky to give loans to a developing country with high corruption rates. That's why there are also lots of direct grants or direct physical aid with stuff instead of money. The IMF also sometimes gives loans with strict requirements on market reforms, which can be controversial. Notably in the former Soviet/Warsaw pact bloc, economic shock therapy under instruction of the IMF had some devastating short term consequences, and in some countries led to mass dubious privtisations. In most though, it paid off and led to rapid and sustained economic and social growth.
- WillAdams 5mo agoIf one wants to vote with one's wallet: https://www.heifer.org/our-work/where-we-work/malawi https://www.heifer.org/our-work/where-we-work/malawi Currently being matched 5 to 1.
- csomar 5mo agoMalawi is poor because there is no reason for it to grow above the normal growth rate. Countries usually find themselves in a high growth situation if they are at the cross-road of major trade or geopolitics (ie: Singapore, UAE, korea, Taiwan, etc.) Of course the opportunity has to be cultivated but it has to be there in the first place. There isn't much in Africa especially in the part of Malawi. They are not even coastal (they are landlocked) which makes their situation even worse.
- nine_k 5mo agoBotswana is also landlocked, and not very fertile. They have diamond mines though.
- forinti 5mo agoThe Central African Republic, which has a low population density, lots of water and arable land is also very poor. As is South Sudan. It must be very hard to trade your way out of poverty if you are landlocked in a poor continent. All the countries in Europe are well off by world standards because there's an enormous market next-door.
- ascorbic 5mo agoThe question isn't "why is Malawi poor compared to European countries", it's "why is Malawi poor compared to other countries in a similar – or worse – situation"
- forinti 5mo agoLook at the map in the article. It's a lot lighter in the middle than around the coastline. Niger, Chad, Burundi, South Sudan, CAR. These are all very poor. Malawi is not really an exception.
- nine_k 5mo agoMerchant caravans are known from ancient times. If there was something valuable to sell, there likely would be a way to transport it to a nearest port (even if abroad) and still make a profit.
- RetroTechie 5mo agoAs the article explains: landlocked doesn't help, but it's not a big factor overall. It's the combination of factors that make up the environment to work in: geography, politics, education, healthcare, culture, etc. Seems like Malawi is stuck in a kind of "local minimum" where the direction to get unstuck is a political no-go area. A charismatic (and competent!) leader with a long-term vision might help. Maybe that is what's lacking?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- alephnerd 5mo agoThis is a dumb take that highlights the common lack of experience with Africa that arises with anyone who writes about it - Malawi was always much poorer than the rest of East Africa as can be seen by the 1990 HDI [0]. Starting from a lower base as well as weak institutions, weak capital markets, and political instability during the transition to democracy lead Malawi to underperform. Additionally, Rwanda received massive amounts of foreign aid to a degree that Malawi and other African nations never saw [1] Unsurprising that this is an OpenPhilanthropy blog. [0] - https://countryeconomy.com/hdi?year=1990 https://countryeconomy.com/hdi?year=1990 [1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locations=RW-MW https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locat...
- vondur 5mo agoMalawi needs to drop tobacco as their main export. Tobacco is hard on the soil and requires more fertilizer and acidifies the soil. Swapping out tobacco for something like a specialty coffee would be far better (and Rwanda has done that) Bringing some hard specie with Coffee would really help and the foreign aid could help them make the transition, which would take a few years to get going.
- Joker_vD 5mo ago> Malawi needs to drop tobacco as their main export That's the product they have most comparative advantage in producing. You're literally suggesting they should cut their income down, and try to get better at something else.
- AnimalMuppet 5mo agoWell, if the thing you're best at is something that doesn't make enough money, then maybe it is time to become better at something else. But as you say, at least in the interim, that means reducing income, which is a really hard thing to suggest.
- vondur 5mo agoTobacco is a crop that is experiencing declining demand. Neighboring Rwanda has built up their coffee export business, and Malawi could too. And as I mentioned it’s less harsh on the soil which is and added benefit.
- sb057 5mo agoRwanda has prospered for the past three decades while Malawi has floundered because Rwanda is run by an effective dictator engaging in developmentalist nation-building. Malawi has no equivalent power center, and certainly none with the beneficence to try and raise up their countrymen.
- alephnerd 5mo agoRwanda also got significantly more foreign aid than Malawi [0] and other peer countries in Southern and Eastern Africa. A lot of Rwanda's success is overstated as well as I've pointed out before [1]. A better model from an LDC perspective would probably be Uganda. [0] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locations=RW-MW https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locat... [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43375524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43375524
- rdtsc 5mo ago> It ranks 107th out of 180 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which is middling, but not especially bad, roughly comparable to Indonesia and Brazil. I would still guess corruption is a major reason. Sometimes the way it’s measured and how it’s reported is not accurate. People internalize corrupt practices as normal and stop viewing it as corruption. A bribe is a gift, a nepotistic appointment is “taking care of one’s family”. It also doesn’t always make sense to compare only corruption with other countries. Some may be more corrupt but they have enough positive factors that they develop better despite the corruption.
- nradov 5mo agoIt is notoriously difficult to gather accurate quantitative data on illegal or unethical activities. And the weightings in the index are rather arbitrary.
- dudeinjapan 5mo agoSo corrupt even the reporting of corruption is corrupt?
- rdtsc 5mo agoThat’s also a possibility. I was mainly thinking where it’s so embedded it’s not even perceived as corruption anymore. But yeah, what you’re saying is also done. Usually something like an anti-corruption ministry is created. Their job is to find and prosecute corruption. Guess what the most “lucrative “ and cushiest jobs are now - that’s right, the anti corruption ministry itself. Anyone doing business now has to bribe them too in addition to whoever they bribed before. And corruption goes “down” officially, and it looks good on international external metrics.
- bluGill 5mo agoCountries trying to become uncorrupt generally go way down because they can start reporting on found corruption. This means people care and so it is worth reporting.
- marcosdumay 5mo ago
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- yk 5mo ago> “Malawi is poor because its agricultural productivity is low” is closer to a tautology than an answer. I used to make the same error. Thing is in the natural sciences this looks like circular reasoning, but in the humanities quite commonly things just hang in thin air. Case in point, the banker looks at the poor farmer and denies credit because the guy doesn't have capital, and the farmer doesn't have capital because he can't get credit. Thing is, both sides understand that.
- nikanj 5mo agoThe agricultural output of Finland is dismal, with the low-quality soil, short summer and frequent cold snaps. Still doing pretty good on GDP
- asdff 5mo agoEven with this, a farm in Finland I'm guessing is probably far more productive with better equipment and increased investment in fertilizer, pesticide, and utilization of elite cultivars, which have increased western yields in many crops by several fold change over the past 70 or 80 years (corn shown in 1, yellow denotes "old agriculture", green denotes introduction of industrial fertilizer, blue denotes introduction of hybrid engineered cultivars). But Finland obviously has other economic sectors to rely upon than mainly farming. 1. https://scotthirwin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02212023_corn-trend-yield.png https://scotthirwin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02212023_...
- VLM 5mo agoFor those who don't "get it", it's output is not dismal, far from it LOL. About 5M people, a fifth the population of Malawi, none the less are one of the top producers in the entire world for oats and barley. Not per capita... total. Wow. Note that only about 10% of the population farms which makes the ratio even crazier. Finns as a whole somehow produce about 2x their entire countries body weight in barley per year which always freaks me out. The country is also one of the top 10, usually top 5, producers of oats in the entire world, and they're competing with giant countries like Canada and Russia. Giant Canada only produces about 3x as much oats as tiny Finland. Finland climate isn't what you'd think of for tomatoes but they produce about three dozen tomatoes per capita every year, which is also weird to think about. Not just how do they grow that many tomatoes, but why? They like pasta sauce and pizza sauce that much? However Finland is not massively wildly overpopulated with frequent famines like Malawi. Those conditions will annihilate a countries productivity, including ag productivity.
- theturtle 5mo ago[dead]
- strken 5mo agoI'm left wondering what people in Malawi think about this. I have no idea whether they'd be better than this outside perspective at analysing the factors behind slow growth, but the comparison might be interesting regardless.
- ultrablack 5mo ago[flagged]
- WhaleClub 5mo ago[flagged]
- tptacek 5mo agoThere is no such thing as "average IQ" for countries. An ultra-common low-IQ take, ironically. What is the average IQ of Malawi? Literally nobody knows. Anybody who claims one is lying to you. In "IQ & The Wealth Of Nations" (the Ur-source for these kinds of claims), they got a number for Malawi by averaging Congo, Zaire, and Tanzania. In turn, the Congo numbers were based in part on general cognitive test scores taken from 40 rural children being treated for parasitic infections, projected out to the whole population, and then modified down to "correct" for the Flynn Effect. Those are the kinds of numbers you're citing when you make these kinds of claims.
- black6 5mo ago> Malawi has also long been a darling of donors. Malawi’s aid per capita in 2023 was roughly 2.5x the global average. Maybe the population doesn't feel like it needs to be productive, if they're continuing to receive such generous largesses. Isn't that the goal of UBI for developed nations? People should be able to pursue their passions and not have to worry about the necessities of life?
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> The fertilizer subsidy program (FISP) consumes up to three-fourths the agriculture budget in some years to subsidize maize inputs for smallholders. It is politically untouchable because rural maize farmers are the median voter. Several administrations have made some attempt to reform it and backed down. Resources that could go to roads, irrigation, or diversification go to propping up the existing structure. Idk, this one doesn't seem super difficult to diagnose. The political system has been captured by a special interest with consolidated control.
- rafram 5mo agoThat describes plenty of very rich countries as well.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> describes plenty of very rich countries as well Special interests, yes. Consolidation–as in a unified interest group representing a commanding majority of the economy–no. At least none that aren’t similarly stagnating.
- dash2 5mo agoBut that is the opposite of what the article says. It blames the “median voter”, ie the majority, not special interests.
- snitzr 5mo ago[flagged]
- VLM 5mo agoIt's very strange what they don't discuss, especially when it seems to answer supposedly unanswerable questions. I rooted around in wikipedia and Malawi has FAR more people than the land can support. They have a top down demand they must grow maize although the land and climate are very unsuited for maize. Why? Unsurprisingly they have had severe recent famines unlike Rwanda. If they had capacity they could survive a minor shortfall in rain but they have more people than the land can support so the famines are very rough. They have about 3x the agricultural land as Rwanda but its not suited to maize but its demanded they grow maize. Maize will only grow with massive fertilizer imports which they cannot afford and occasionally politically/economically manage to totally screw up, alongside Maize is traditionally dependent on very reliable rainfall or post industrial era advanced irrigation which they don't have. I would estimate the geography of Rwanda will support about 20M people, luckily they have about 14M. They can coast thru some rough agricultural times and they've developed enough industry and trade that they can import their way thru short term minor local problems. On the other hand Malawi can only support maybe 15M people reliably, unfortunately they have about 22M. When the rains don't come or the politicians screw up the fertilizer imports, they die. Its very difficult for them to "advance" beyond subsistence ag without enough to feed everyone and ag policies seemingly intended to be self destructive. I don't know why they "have to" grow maize despite it resulting in starvation. Historically this type of thing is caused by someone making a huge profit or attempting to maintain control. Regardless of cause, until they can eat, they will not advance. After eating dinner tonight they can dig a mine or build a factory. Oh wait there is no dinner tonight. Well then. And so they remain very poor, permanently. The country, as a plot of land, is quite wealthy. $22B is a lot of money. If they had, say, 3M people as a population they'd be in position to become the next Taiwan. Taiwan's GDP per capita was about there in the mid 80s before they really took off. But they have over 20M people probably 30M soon, so they'll live in poverty, permanently. In Rwanda an unusually good harvest means a new mine can be opened and they will "permanently" be richer. In Malawi an unusually good harvest means the people who would have starved to death this year now won't starve to death until next year. There will be no permanent improvement of anything in Malawi.
- grimblee 5mo agoRwanda serves as the occident's proxy to extract minerals from the kivu soil, it has been occupying it since the end of the genocide on the pretence of pursuing the genocidal troops that fled there. There is absolutely no surprise here, it's rich becaus it plunders the richest soil on earth.
- hamid_wakili 5mo agoI honestly think the lack of education is a major issue. Malawi has a relatively low literacy rate compared with many other countries in Southern Africa.
- tmnvix 5mo agoWe don't know all the reasons, but I can guess one. Debt. And yes, debt can be 'good'. But just as for people, if you are poverty stricken, debt will almost invariably not be. Who actually benefited from taking on the debt?
- tim333 5mo agoI spent a while sitting in Malawi pondering that. A while ago but I don't think it's changed much. In many ways it's not a poor as you'd think from the GDP figures - most people have housing and enough food and the place is friendly and pleasant. I figured a lot is due to the exchange rate making things cheap because they don't have a good source of foreign income. The exports are mostly agricultural stuff that doesn't go for much money and the other obvious thing of tourism and holiday homes doesn't work well because the malaria is terrible there. In fact I see the article doesn't mention malaria but most places you go they say oh yeah there were some cases a year ago twenty miles ago but in Nkhata Bay when I was there it was like a thousand cases in the village and a backpacker went the the loos the previous night and was found dead beside them in the morning.
- zikani_03 5mo agoThis was an interesting thread to read as a Malawian living right here in Malawi and frustrated about our situation. As the article mentions, we have a lot of things going for us that should have us in a better situation - very few natural disasters, no wars/civil unrest, even though the rains are sketchy sometimes we generally have good rainfall and even though we have challenges with food sometimes, it's rare to hear someone actually died of hunger. However, there are a multitude of problems that have resulted in us being where we are. Now mind you, I am just a software engineer not a development expert (but for some credibility, I was the first engineer at Malawian owned Credit Reference Bureau and built most of the software there and I have worked with Social Cash Transfer program before as a consultant). * Infrastructure is a big problem, we have poor road infrastructure, almost no rail or airline industry though those are picking up as of recent years. Very few Malawians have access to electricity, I believe some reports indicated less than 10%. Most of our population lives in rural areas. Internet penetration is growing but even cell tower coverage is not yet there - our TELCOS have about 3-4 million subscribers max, we are a population of about 20 million people (maybe 40% under 19?) and yet our largest bank only has about 2 or 3 million customers. * We have low literacy rates and high dropout rates especially in rural areas. This is worrying for a population with almost half being youth/children. Our school infrastructure is also not that great, it is not strange to find a class of students learning under a tree in some rural and peri-urban areas. * Corruption and mismanagement of funds - this is a big problem here. A lot of the money in the government programs and NGO/Donor programs finds it's way into individuals' pockets. Some of the initiatives are well meaning but because of corruption and pilfering of funds the impact isn't always felt at the level that's expected. * Mismanagement of Natural resources - we have deposits of gold, rutile, uranium and other materials - we have companies from Australia/China and the likes setting up and possibly benefitting without giving much back to the country besides some veiled Corporate Social Responsibility activities, with parts of the funds going into people's pockets - we need to do better to control our resources but the low literacy rates and lack of awareness of some of these things affects how we as citizens react. * There's lots online about our agriculture, so I won't spend too much time there - only to say we need to do better to mechanize and not rely too much on the rain cycles. I'm saying this as someone who has gotten into farming recently and is frustrated by how... manual it all is :) There's a lot more I could say but I hope this give somewhat of a picture. I should just mention, Malawians are some of the brightest most hardworking people you will ever meet but also trustworthy and loyal. You will probably meet a Malawian doctor in any part of the world and our software engineers are getting there too, we just need the exposure and opportunity to prove ourselves. I help moderate a community of developers and I can tell you we have talent and we do come cheap (even as low as $25/hr ;) If you are ever in the market to try working with some Malawians, contact is on the profile :)
- dzonga 5mo agobecause a country has "functioning" democracy doesn't mean the democracy is good for the country. at times a strategic leadership is needed, with idealogical & succession planning. Malawi has had neither.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- joe_the_user 5mo agoThe chart they show is clearly ridiculous - it's a blob, not a line at all. Moreover, it's easy to imagine high income creates stability rather than the opposite. The thing is, most of Africa has been by default poor and dysfunctional for quite a while. A big factor is that a lot of Africans have been subsistence farmers for a long time [1]. A substance might actually be comfortable in some circumstances but they are outside the money since they produce the food and materials they need for survival (so they can live on "pennies a day"). However, the tendency in many third world nations has been that the arrival of Western medicine allowed substance farmers to have the ten-child families they imagine will make them rich and the result is acute poverty. Moreover, when most people are substance farmers, the elites/state/etc tend to gain their wealth through rent-seeking, squeezing the majority, rather than enterprise. Development, which is honestly capitalist development, requires workers willing to leave their family farms and work for wages on things the world market needs. Elites have to be willing and able to profit from people leaving traditional agriculture rather than profiting from traditional agriculture. By this, the Rwandan genocide (sadly) was a logical event setting the stage for development (especially since a minority of the educated elites came, exacted some revenge and set to work ruling the country). The Black Death and the Enclosures were both important development [1] Now, it should be note that so much Africa was subsistence farming by the 19th because the earlier slave/gun trade allowed the "Slave States" within Africa to wipe out many more organized/less cleptocratic societies.
- y0eswddl 5mo agoThe West steals $10-$12 Trillion/yr in embodied raw material equivalents, embodied land, embodied energy, and embodied labour: >The economic growth and so-called advanced economies (think Germany, The U.S, Japan, etc. What's been referred to as the “Global North”) relies by a large proportion on a significant net appropriation of resources and labor from the “Global South” (think Kenya, Peru, the Philippines, etc). This appropriation reaches astronomical levels. In 2015 alone, the north appropriated 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labor; worth [a total] $10.8 Trillion in northern prices. Enough to end extreme poverty 70x over. Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015 | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802...