Malawi-A Tyranny Of Doubt

The Tyranny of Doubt Malawi In March last year, Cyclone Freddy ripped through Malawi and southeast Africa, killing 679 people, displacing almost 660,000, and causing property damage totaling more than $500 million. Thirty-nine-year-old mother Gladys Austin was one of those hundreds of thousands who had to flee her home in the southern village of Makwalo after heavy rains destroyed a sandbar on the Ruo River, reported the Guardian. The resulting floods also washed away her livestock, grain, and the rest of her goods. Luckily, she and her family received international aid to rebuild. But many Malawians have not been so lucky. A year after Austin and her community struggled with flooding, communities in Malawi were dealing with one of the worst droughts in memory due to the meteorological phenomenon, El Niño. Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera recently declared a state of disaster due to the drought throughout much of the country, reported the Associated Press. He said Malawi needed $200 million in humanitarian assistance to cope with the problem, or else face potential famine. The drought was already forecast to shave multiple points off of the country’s gross domestic product, further constraining growth that would help the country overcome its deep poverty and desperate need for economic development. The good news, however, is that Malawians have created a “laboratory for low-cost community-led projects” to improve climate resilience, wrote World Politics Review. Farmers, for example, are teaching each other about soil conservation, water management and crop diversification. Others have developed plans for inter-cropping, or growing multiple crops together, composting, organic pest control, and other measures that mitigate the effects of climate change on agriculture. These efforts extend to more sophisticated commercial enterprises. In the capital of Lilongwe, for instance, computer scientists have established a technology incubator that now supports firms, for example a banana tissue culture lab, CNN noted. Malawi has also been working closely with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change – Blair is a former British prime minister – to help develop AI companies so that they might leapfrog other stages of economic development and benefit sooner from the latest tech trends. The Malawi University of Science and Technology also recently launched an AI research center with the assistance of American schools, Voice of America added. Still, Malawi faces governance challenges under Chakwera that could threaten to stymie anyone’s dreams of a better tomorrow in the country. Amnesty International recently criticized a top court decision to uphold a ban on same-sex sexual conduct, for example. The US State Department decried Chakwera’s oversight of torture and other human rights violations, too. Some journalists investigating corruption, meanwhile, are in hiding, even as the corruption chief resigned under pressure. Malawians face the tough task of standing up for their rights and fighting to survive the weather. And as Deutsche Welle noted, despite making strides in some areas, locals say that “Doubts about the country’s future loom large.” Share this story