Got this message from Stephanie Fields at Compass Records:
Congratulations! You’ve all made it onto the 2010 GRAMMY Awards nomination ballot, for which we submitted you earlier this year. Please see attached spreadsheet to see all info, including selection numbers, for the category that you’re potentially nominated in.
The nomination is in the Best Contemporary folk Album.
All the best,
Stephanie
Maybe a miracle!!
Grammy Award Nomination for Water for Life Album October 18, 2009
A Rant on World Food Day October 17, 2009
Africa has come a long way since independence 50 years ago but is not fully free, and cannot be fully free until there is an end the chronic hunger that afflicts 220 million daily. They must grow the food to free them from hunger and do away with unsustainable food aid and imports. So they need a policy revolution.
Peasants, who grow most of Africa’s food face challenges, now compounded by climate change — in the floods and the droughts that have put 20 million people at risk of famine in eastern Africa.
Africans cannot wait for solutions from the outside. Now is the time for Africa to have home-grown policies. Change must come from the halls of parliament from Lilongwe, Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Maputo and Dakar, all the way down to the small farms on the lush hills of Rhumpi to the sweltering lands of the Sahel.
Political leaders come from rural areas, including ministers and heads of State, yet the misery of the African farmer continues. It is time for leaders to show the way and they have begun. They have committed to achieving six per cent annual agricultural growth and to allocating 10 per cent of national budgets to agriculture. International partners are increasing their support for such efforts.
No nation can develop unless it takes full control of the policy space and maps its own development. To spark this effort, the Alliance for a Green Revolution (Agra) launched this week a major training policy.
They must train a new generation of policy analysts for Africa and must strengthen the capacity of parliaments to engage on evidence-based policy dialogues,and we must train farmers and implement concrete policies that will revitalise African agriculture.
It’s time to replace the “Washington Consensus” with a new “African Consensus” that puts the interest of African farmers and economies first.
For too long, Africa’s lack of internal capacity has kept it reliant on policy analysis generated outside the continent, and often imposed as conditions for aid. Well-intentioned outside advice often fails to respond to the realities of African farmers
Technology alone won’t bring about food self-sufficiency. A bumper crop is a good thing, but if there is no road to bring it to the market or the market is glutted and prices crash, then it will rot in the fields. Farmers need extension systems, cash and tools to mitigate the effects of climate change. Women need land and property rights.
Farmers cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Many don’t have boots to start with. Africa desperately needs to replace policies of abandonment of farmers with those of support.The goal is not to produce papers that collect dust. Farmers don’t eat policy papers. They need policies that change their lives and enable them to turn Africa into a breadbasket for the world.; Dr Adesina
Bill Gates spoke yesterday as follows on his Foundation’s efforts. I have selected a piece
Productivity or sustainability – they say you have to choose.
It’s a false choice, and it’s dangerous for the field. It blocks important advances. It breeds hostility among people who need to work together. And it makes it hard to launch a comprehensive program to help poor farmers.
The fact is, we need both productivity and sustainability – and there is no reason we can’t have both.
Many environmental voices have rightly highlighted the excesses of the original Green Revolution. They warn against the dangers of too much irrigation or fertilizer. They caution against a consolidation of farms that could crowd out small-holder farmers.
These are important points, and they underscore a crucial fact: the next Green Revolution has to be greener than the first. It must be guided by small-holder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment.
Let me repeat that. The next Green Revolution must be guided by small-holder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment.
The last thing anyone should do is create short-term gains for poor farmers that have long-term costs for their children.
That’s why our foundation works closely with local farmers’ groups. And that’s why we are one of the largest funders of sustainable approaches such as no-till farming, rainwater harvesting, drip irrigation, and biological nitrogen fixation.
The environment also benefits from higher productivity. When productivity is too low, people start farming on grazing land, cutting down forests, using any new acreage they can to grow food. When productivity is high, people can farm on less land.
Some voices are instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity. They act as if there is no emergency – even though in the poorest, hungriest places on earth, population is growing faster than productivity, and the climate is changing.Declining yields, at a time of rising population, in a region with millions of poor people, means starvation.
So what is the way forward for farming and feeding an ever increasing world population. It’s complex and needs serious consideration. On the one side you have the big multi national concerns promoting monoculture, hybrid seeds and even terminator seeds, combined with noxious pesticides and artificial fertilizer and on the extreme other side you have the super organic and as with everything the solution is somewhere in between, BUT there are some facts to be considered
How many times have we heard that large farms are more productive than small farms, and that we need to consolidate land holdings to take advantage of that greater productivity and efficiency? The actual data shows the opposite,small farms produce far more per acre or hectare than large farms.
One reason for the low levels of production on large farms is that they tend to be monocultures. The highest yield of a single crop is often obtained by planting it alone on a field. But while that may produce a lot of one crop, it generates nothing else of use to the farmer. In fact, the bare ground between crop rows invites weed infestation.
Large farmers tend to plant monocultures because they are the simplest to manage with heavy machinery. Small farmers, especially in the Third World, are much more likely to plant crop mixtures — intercropping — where the empty space between the rows is occupied by other crops. They usually combine or rotate crops and livestock, with manure serving to replenish soil fertility.
Such integrated farming systems produce far more per unit area than do monocultures. Though the yield per unit area of one crop — corn, for example — may be lower on a small farm than on a large monoculture farm, the total production per unit area, often composed of more than a dozen crops and various animal products, can be far higher.
If we need a lot of food in a short time hybrids and the industrial way may be the answer, but it’s hardly the future.
Local food production will be the key in times of increased oil prices and transport cost.
The benefits of small farms extend into the ecological sphere. where large, industrial-style farms impose a scorched-earth mentality on resource management no trees, no wildlife, endless monocultures,small farmers can be very effective stewards of natural resources and the soil. To begin with, small farmers utilize a broad array of resources and have a vested interest in their sustainability. Their farming systems are diverse, incorporating and preserving significant functional biodiversity within the farm. By preserving biodiversity, open space, and trees, and by reducing land degradation, small farms provide valuable ecosystem services to the larger society.
I can’t see Ireland going back to the small farm, we are promoting it in Malawi. Will it catch on, who knows, but I know I will hardly see it!
More money will not solve Africa’s famines! September 16, 2009
Africa: Money Will Not End Famine
James Shikwati
2 September 2009
________________________________________
OPINION
There was a time in Africa when elders would “talk” to the drought and negotiate their way into receiving rainfall. With their unique understanding of causation, elders would either sacrifice a black sheep or ask a virgin girl to bathe in a lake in order to draw the attention of the rain gods.
Would that they could do so now.
With an estimated 50 million Africans in dire need of food aid and an additional 120 million facing starvation if immediate measures to alleviate the situation are not taken, the general assumption has become that developing countries do not have what funds are necessary to increase food productivity.
Too little time has been invested in seeking to understand why Africa, with its vast farmlands and its brilliant and innovative sons and daughters, still goes hungry as the rest of the world battles with obesity.
Computer experts are aware of malware, the “malicious software” that is designed to infiltrate a computer without the owners’ informed consent.
The general computer user is familiar with viruses, Trojan horses, worms, and spyware among other programmes that cause harm to the operating system.
As we talk about famine in Africa, we should take a moment to evaluate the hostile and intrusive programmes operating in the background as food aid in particular and aid in general run in the foreground.
Ask yourself, for example, why a majority of Africans have changed their diets.
Kenyan nutritionists point out that we have ignored high value foods and replaced them with junk, sacrificing thousands of Africa’s domesticated and wild edible crops at the altar of modernity.
Malicious system
Crops whose production should be scaled up by virtue of their ability to adapt to Africa’s climate have instead been framed as crops of poverty.
Crops such as the tamarind, millet, sorghum, indigenous peanuts and potatoes have been kicked out of the menu in favour of wheat and beef.
Over 50 years of food aid targeted at Africa have been marked by a corresponding increase in episodes of famine, which points to the possible existence of a food “malware” – a malicious system that changes people’s dietary habits in favour of imported foods.
The same malware has penetrated agricultural schools, where it trains graduates to promote the new foods as opposed to upgrading local varieties.
Worst of all, it has penetrated political leadership, corrupting their minds with the quest for kickbacks to the extent that they do not invest in local solutions as foreign solutions can loaded with the possibility of a quick 10 per cent.
In the absence of an effective “anti-virus” this malware loads its intentions on the hapless operating systems of Africa’s nations, forcing them to become perpetual beggars.
It is my contention that, to reduce the incidence of famine on the continent, Africans must develop an effective system for detecting the “malicious background operating system” that has not only denied them the opportunity to promote their local cuisines but has also exposed their land to grabbing.
It is time we invested in our indigenous crops, turned our rural populations into celebrated food suppliers through incentives and invested in technology to free our continent from perennial famine.
Contrary to common belief, money is not the solution to Africa’s famine problem. Neither, for that matter, is food aid. What we need to do is get rid of the malware operating in our system.
James Shikwati is the director of Inter Region Economic Network
Copyright © 2009 Business Daily. All rights reserved.
Is aid, like Aids, killing Africa? September 9, 2009
I did this some months ago, I’m less angry now after 6 weeks in Mzuzu, but the question still stands.
Africa has had over forty years of empty talk and public gestures. But the impression that Africa is fatally troubled and can be saved only by outside help — not to mention celebrities— is destructive, very misleading and maybe all we can expect from the opinionated developed world.
I am not speaking of humanitarian aid, disaster relief, Aids education or affordable drugs. Nor am I speaking of small-scale, closely watched efforts. I am speaking of the “more money” platform: the notion that what Africa needs is more prestige projects, volunteer labour and debt relief. We should know better by now. The development of Africa is a story of many chapters. We forget that there are a myriad of answers. Things like Geldof’s live aid and Bono’s much publicised debt relief are just the first chapter or two.
I wouldn’t send any of my hard earned money to a charity or foreign aid to a government unless every euro was accounted for — and this never happens. Dumping more money in the same old way is not only wasteful but intellectually challenged and harmful; and proves that no one is paying attention
If Malawi is worse educated, more plagued by illness and bad services, poorer than it was in the early 1960s, it is not for lack of outside help or donor money. Malawi has been the beneficiary of many thousands of foreign teachers, doctors and nurses and ship loads of financial aid, and yet it has declined from being a country with promise.
In the early and mid-1960s JFK’s Peace Corps believed that Malawi would soon be self-sufficient in schoolteachers. And it would have been, except that rather than sending a limited wave of volunteers to train local instructors, for decades the US kept on sending Peace Corps teachers.
Malawians, who avoided teaching because the pay and status were low, came to depend on the American volunteers to teach in bush schools, while educated Malawians emigrated. When Malawi’s university was established, more foreign teachers were welcomed, but few of them were replaced by Malawians,
Medical educators also arrived from elsewhere. Malawi began graduating nurses, but the nurses were lured away to Britain, and Australia and the United States, which meant more foreign volunteer nurses were needed in Malawi.
When millions of dollars disappeared from Malawi’s education budget, and a Zambian politician was charged with stealing from the treasury, and Nigeria squandered its oil wealth, what happened? The simplifiers of Africa’s problems kept calling for debt relief and more aid.
Donors enable embezzlement by turning a blind eye to bad governance, rigged elections and the deeper reasons why these countries are failing.
Many Malawians, I meet, think they need a computer, to add to the mobile phones they already have: -for what, I ask. Sending computers to Malawi is an unproductive not to say maybe an insane idea, without first doing the basics, like electricity to rural schools with maybe solar panels (Oh school buildings and better trained teachers might come first) . I would offer pencils and paper, mops and brooms: as the schools I have been in Malawi need them badly.
By the way, I only note what I see and make nothing up.
I wouldn’t send more teachers either. I would expect Malawians themselves to stay and teach. There ought to be an insistence, in the form of a contract, for Malawians trained in medicine and education, at the state’s expense, to work in their own countries. If they do emigrate then at least the country they go to should pay for their training.
Malawi had two presidents in its first 40 years: the first, a megalomaniac who called himself the messiah, the second a man whose first official act was to put his face on the money. When first elected, the current President, Bingu wa Mutharika, inaugurated his regime by announcing that he was going to buy a fleet of Maybachs, one of the most expensive cars in the world. After an international outcry the order was cancelled.
Many of the schools of 40 years ago are now in ruins, covered with graffiti, with broken windows and standing in tall grass. Money will not fix this problem. Educated Malawians are to be found, of course, working in the United States and Britain. It does not occur to anyone to encourage Malawians themselves to volunteer in the same way that foreigners have done for decades. There are plenty of educated and capable young adults, who would make a much greater difference than outsiders could ever do.
Malawi is a lovely place — much lovelier, more peaceful and more resilient and, if not prosperous, innately more self-sufficient than it is usually portrayed. But because it seems unfinished and so different from the rest of the world, a landscape on which a person can sketch a new personality, it attracts mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their own worth.
Such people come in all forms and they loom large. White celebrities, busybodying in Africa loom especially large. You might see them, cuddling African children and lecturing the world on charity, some even reminiscent of Tarzan and Jane.
Ireland’s Bono, in a 10-gallon hat, not only believes that he has the solution to Africa’s ills but he is also shouting so loud that other people seem to believe him. In recent times Madonna has hit the Malawi scene as well. I am fully behind visitors as everyone makes a contribution, but could someone move us on to chapter 3.
The arrival of celebrities has some benefits, but few answers. People with money feel more and more money can solve all problems and don’t consider why this approach hasn’t worked in 40 years. The answers lie in Malawi. If Malawians can’t solve it, it won’t be solved. And until every Kwacha of donor money is fully accounted for, no progress will be made and the ordinary people of Malawi will continue to get poorer.
It is a sad thought that it is easier for many Malawians to travel to New York or London than to their own hinterlands. The exodus of skilled Malawians is having disastrous effects.
Ireland must be a leader in the imigration stakes, but it has been immigration with a difference. Our Irish emigrants often left, uneducated, educated themselves and returned to make great contributions, having sent money home to their families in the interim. Malawians who leave are well educated and seem to have little interest in returning to the land that spent valuable resources on their education, particularly since third level education is practically free. I’m not that sure that there is a culture of a cheque in the post, in Malawi, but that too was a great boost for Ireland in the bad old days.
Malawi has no real shortage of capable people — or even of money. The patronising attention of donors has done a disservice to Malawi’s belief in itself. Even in the absence of responsible leadership, Malawians themselves have proven how resilient they can be, something they rarely get credit for.
Again, Ireland may be the model for an answer. After centuries of descending on other countries, the Irish found that education, rational government, people staying put and simple diligence could turn Ireland from an economic basket case into a prosperous nation. — the Irish have proved that there is something to be said for staying home, working hard being a patriot.
Sadly the next few years may put that new found patriotism to the test, but, in Malawi, it may be worth a try
July 21, 2009
As we set out this morning on our 16th visit to Malawi, on a journey that will take up to 30 hours. We have all the same fears and worries about this seven week trip that we know will bring joy and pain, wonder and frustration and a host of emotions, varying sometimes from hour to hour.
Mary is a wonder in that she can always find a piece of writing which helps:
Last night it was this piece by the late Bishop Oscar Romero:
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Oscar A. Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, in El Salvador, was assassinated on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass in a small chapel in a cancer hospital where he lived. He had always been close to his people, preached a prophetic gospel, denouncing the injustice in his country and supporting the development of popular and mass organizations. He became the voice of the Salvadoran people when all other channels of expression had been crushed by the repression.
This gives us great hope and courage.
Tamala July 3, 2009
Liam Writes from Lusangazi:
Tamala
Daniel and I met the District Health Officers at Mzuzu Clinic today.
The purpose of the meeting was to arrange assistance, and primarily ambulance transport, for those who attend the Birthing Centre at Lusangazi. As it stands a woman who attends in labour is treated in the centre, and if complications arise she must somehow walk about 3km to the main road, wait for a car to come, and then get a lift to the clinic another 8km away. At the meeting was the Health Surveillance Assistant for the Lusangazi area, the Head of Community Nursing, the District Health Officer and his support staff.
The District Health Staff are delighted at the developments in Lusangazi. They would like to use the clinic as an outstation for their services.
We also came to a good compromise on the original issue. We will provide a telephone and extension lead for an existing telephone line so that calls can be received in the Maternity Department. Should an emergency arise the birth attendant can call the telephone number of the district health office, and at night this will be answered by the midwife on duty. She will then immediately dispatch the next available ambulance.
As it stands if somebody needs an ambulance in Mzuzu (the third largest city) they must get someone else to walk, cycle or hitch to the hospital or nearest health centre, notify a nurse to dispatch or request an ambulance by radio, and then escort it back to the patient.
This line means that not only will our birth attendant have access to an ambulance in an emergency, anybody can now ring the hospital to get one day or night 24/7.
Picture shows Tamala (left), the Health Surveillance Assistant for Lusangazi, consulting with a client outside the Health Centre. All medical services in Lusangazi had been suspended due to lack of facilities but Tamala was so excited with the development of the clinic that she started providing her services before it was even opened. Last week she vaccinated 30 children under 5, and dipped over 200 mosquito nets in insecticide. Malaria had been the cause of the death of a young girl opposite the clinic last year, so the community is very much aware of the need to dip nets.
Meeting at Luvuwu July 3, 2009
The man in the suit is the school principal and until recently, when we replaced the roofing material, he had a thatched roof which leaked!!
The man in the foreground contacted HIV 20 years ago from a blood transfusion his wife got. As a couple they are open about their condition which is a great help to others in the community as they are in very good health using ARV drugs.
The community support group idea is simple. The community support each other and we support the group.
Liam writes:
We had a meeting with the Women and the HIV Support group in Luvovo today. Over 50 women and about 10 men were in attendance.
The meeting was to discuss the possibility of starting a micro-credit scheme for small-scale business in the village. The village chief had met the idea with an enthusiastic reception when we approached him and called his people to attend today.
The people eagerly welcomed the idea of assistance with business, and immediately went to work discussing options among each other, facilitated by community leaders and the school teachers.
After the meeting a lady came forward with a bag of oranges. She was wanting to give a gift as she wanted to get involved with the HIV support group. Another man came up to inform me that his brother, Venji, had died. Venji had been one of the two people who were suffering heavily from HIV when we first visited, to the extent that it severely hampered his ability to leave the house and his mood. He died on 10th December, but since then his brother has become even more involved in the support group and is eager to get more men to come forward and join.
Mzuzu tobacco auction floors shut down June 30, 2009
Nyasa Times
Published: June 30, 2009
Tobacco farmers in the northern region forced the closure of the Mzuzu Auction Floor after protesting against low prices offered by buyers.
“The Auction Floor has been closed indefinitely,” said Paul Mwambaki head of the tobacco market.
He said the farmers made their distress at the low tobacco prices and they decided to close the market.
Mwambaki said the stakeholders will meet and the buyers to negotiate for better prices for the leaf
President Bingu wa Mutharika who announced fixed minimum prices for buyers has continued to fight for the plight of farmers and has threatened to send packing buyers if they don’t offer better prices on the auction floors.
He accused them of running a cartel and fixing prices.
Tobacco remains Malawi main foreign exchange earner.
An Update June 28, 2009
Lucan Newsletter: June 28, 2009
A woman said to me this morning: ye don’t seem to be doing anything in Malawi these days!!.
Having convinced her to the contrary, I decided to write a little note.
Our main focus is still on the provision of clean drinking water and to this end we are making pumps in our temporary factory since October at a rate of about 10 per week. They cost about 30 euro and can supply clean water, to a village of about 150 people. We hope to begin building the permanent factory next week, now that we have finally got planning permission. We have just begun a programme of replacing in excess of 200 failed and broken pumps installed by others over the years. New wells are dug at the end of the dry season in October.
Our programme of dam building and irrigation continues as the villagers teach each other to build the most rudimentary, but effective of structures, adding fish ponds as they go.
Our six acre model garden is booming (and blooming). The idea was to research appropriate, open pollinated, vegetable seeds from globally appropriate areas, to see when and how they would grow and encourage local farmers to adopt them. The type and variety varies, but last time I counted, we had 79 varieties of plant. These are all grown using green manure and compost and we control pests with brews of local plants including tobacco!! researching as we go. We don’t use any artificial fertilizer or chemical pesticides.
All work is carried out by 12 men and women employees, few of whom have any formal education. It’s not easy, but it’s the only way and what they have achieved in a year and a half is staggering.
Another part of the programme involves the production of improved variety fruit tree seedlings by budding and grafting, including pears and apples from Seed Savers in Scariff, Co Clare.
Now that we have something to show, we offer farmers an opportunity to come and stay in our new hostel, learn how we do things, cook and eat what’s available and bring seeds and seedlings home. We are excited that Malawians can teach their neighbours.
Our school programme is developing; we have finished our seventh primary classroom, done some teacher training and provided loads of books and equipment, donated by schools here.
Whereas our initial focus was narrow we now find ourselves involved in meeting the needs of the people we work with.
In February we opened a two classroom facility for orphan day care in the most deprived area of Mzuzu. We now have up to 250 little ones attending where we provide one meal daily which may be the only food most of them get. Our Malawian partners had agreed to run it, but without money we were left to fill the gap. Mary took on 8 employees in May, did three week’s training and Árus Kate is flying.
Our latest venture is a remote, rural birthing centre. In one of our areas we found a midwife with about 10 clients per month, bringing life into the world in a building which would be demolished by even the most moderate animal rights activist. A leaking thatched roof, a concrete bed, no light, no water, no painkillers, no gloves, no aprons…..
You couldn’t imagine how horrific this is; our cattle are treated better, and you thought hospital trolleys were bad!
These are amazing women, illiterate but intelligent, proud and hard working, capable but deprived. They don’t want our handouts, which have robbed them of their dignity but they do need our help.
We are in the process of constructing a new building, which will be approved by Mzuzu Central Hospital, who have agreed to send an ambulance for emergency cases.
Last year we hit up a relationship with DIT, when 10 students came out to volunteer at Easter for two weeks. They were real volunteers, paid their own way and worked hard and made a little financial contribution to the projects. What we ask all our volunteers is to work with the people, journey with them, but always try to Inspire, Educate and Challenge, something they certainly did. The seventeen who came this Easter followed the amazing example and we couldn’t be more proud of them. Our young people are so confident, competent, loving, generous and observant. As Business students, we asked them to be analytical and critical and we have learned so much from them. The real plus is that we have a third year Business and Accounting student, Liam Stewart, from Cavan, doing his 6 month placement, from DIT, out in Mzuzu at the moment and he is a revelation.
We have also been adopted by the Blackrock College Outreach programme for the second year. This year the number has gone to 76 and they come in two groups for two weeks each to work with the poorest rural villagers. Last year they were truly amazing, they were straight into action once they arrived and as young men were a true inspiration to the youths of their own age who had never seen white people doing manual work before. Young people who give up two weeks of holiday time after their LC results, when most of their counterparts are enjoying the pleasures on the med are to be loudly applauded.
Having spent 8 weeks in Malawi so far this year, we leave on July 21, for 8 more and will finish with another month in November.
So we haven’t given up yet!!
Our website, usually updated daily is: www.wellsforzoe.org
Mzuzu University students riot June 20, 2009
Mzuzu University students riot
By Nyasa Times
Published: June 19, 2009
Students at Mzuzu University protest over unpaid allowances
Malawi’s Mzuzu University students on Friday evening rioted and blocked roads to the institution’s campus demanding payment of their allowances.
Lectures had been blocked from leaving their offices and some escaped from the campus.
The students are claiming that they have not received their allowances for nine weeks and demand immediate payment.
“This is what we call peaceful standstill,” said one student Cedrick Kwelani.
“We want our stationary allowance,” he said.
Speaking before students chanting solidarity songs denouncing management and Government over the strike,, Kwelani said authorities in the finance department at the University were behaving in a suspicious manner for holding on their allowances describing them as “tricksters”.
“Today when we checked our bank account we found out there is no money. The Director of Finance has refused to give our money,” said Kwelani as some students shouted names which cannot be printed.
“We asked them to deposit our allowance before banks were closed but they did not heed our call. We need our money today,” said Kwelani speaking on behalf of the rioting student.
He said the matter has been discussed for longer time but the authorities were adamant not to honour the payment.
“As students we believe in diplomacy we tried all means of dialogue including sending students union leaders but they have refused to address us,” he said.
Police said they would remain there overnight to ensure no violence was poured onto the streets.
Vice Chancellor Prof Landson Mhango and Register Reginald Mushani were not immediately available for comment.
Mzuzu University was established by an Act of Parliament in 1997 as Malawi’s second national (public) university in Malawi. The first students were admitted in January 1999.
In July 1994, former President Bakili Muluzi, decided that a new University should be established and that it should be located in the Northern Region after the government had studied the problems inherent in the delivery of tertiary education in the country.
It seems to be that time of year again; student unrest.
When one thinks of student riots, one thinks of concerned principled young people striking a blow against tyrannical regimes for the rights of others. Not so in Malawi. It always seems to be the most privileged looking for more.
In one of the poorest countries in the world, which is seriously dependant on foreign aid, at a time where this aid might be drying up, this group of the elite, want more and the want it now. (and maybe there are reasons). I’m sure there are excellent young people involved, but they really are the privileged in getting third level education free.
Many of them will leave the country, when they graduate, and from what I see, give little back to the country which spends so much scarce resources on them.
All my comments are based on my experience, of working in remote rural areas: Primary education is almost non existant, with poor buildings and facilities and poorly trained teachers. Secondary education is distant, often poor quality and expensive. BUT third level education is free. AND finally a large number of these graduates leave the country and give nothing back. It makes me sad to be questioning education, having been a teacher with a firm belief in the potential of education all my life, and having seen what it has done for IRELAND in a post famine context.
Of course our primary education was, from the beginning, of a very high standard and delivered by very driven and well trained individuals who were respected and valued by the community, our second level schools were provided by religious, who may have had their failings but they were also driven.
Third level education was expensive and also for the few, when we were at Malawi’s stage of development.
My advice to them is to get back to work, take a bit of pain in solidarity with your disadvantaged neighbors, stay in Malawi when you graduate and make a contribution.
