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11. Does Financial Literacy Influence Use of Mobile Financial Services in Malawi? Evidence from Malawi Household Survey Data

Author:
Mirriam Muhome-Matita and Takondwa Chauma
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)
Abstract:
Mobile financial services are gaining prominence and could be a possible avenue for fast-tracking financial inclusion in developing countries, including Malawi. However, adoption and usage of such services remains low among the Malawi population. This study investigates the influence of financial literacy on financial behaviour of individuals in Malawi, specifically use of mobile phone-based financial transactions. Descriptive and econometric analyses were conducted using cross-sectional data obtained from the Reserve Bank of Malawi. Findings reveal that the likelihood of using mobile financial services increases with increasing levels of financial literacy, type of employment and peri-urban residence. Furthermore, men are more likely to transact on mobile phones than females and that although income levels matter in the use of mobile financial transactions, the magnitude of effect is negligible. Results suggest opportunities for expanding access to financial services and products such as differentiation in financial literacy education by characteristics of population including gender of users. Informal settings do not preclude expansion of digital payments, and therefore financial product innovation and addressing rural resident’s constraints to access mobile financial services is crucial.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Labor Issues, Income Inequality, Labor Policies, and Banks
Political Geography:
Malawi

12. Malawi: The Road to the 2019 Tripartite Elections. Reflections on Corruption, Land and Multiparty Politics

Author:
Stephanie Regalia
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI)
Abstract:
On May 21st 2019, Malawi will hold its tripartite elections, where voters will vote for the President, Members of Parliament and local Councillors. 2019 will also mark the 25 years of multiparty politics in Malawi since the one-party regime presided by Hastings Kamuzu Banda came to an end in 1994. The transition to multiparty democracy has been encouraging with the number of large political parties steadily growing and power peacefully changing hands between the four presidents, the country has known since 1994. In this context, the race to the 2019 elections is particularly competitive. The most recent polls place voter intention for the outgoing president Peter Mutharika and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) at a near tie with the lead opposition candidate Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). The MCP used to be the only authorized political party under Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s rule. Its return to the forefront of voter intentions signals important changes in the landscape of political actors in Malawi. This paper explores some of the reasons behind this changing political landscape. It looks at the DPP’s recent loss of support due to discontent with rampant corruption and a controversial land reform passed in 2016. It also examines the landscape of challengers, including the current Vice President Saulos Chilima, following his departure from DPP ranks to form a new political movement, the United Transformation Movement (UTM). Given the diversity of large political parties in contention, which also includes Atupele Muluzi’s United Democratic Front (UDF) and Joyce Banda’s People’s Party (PP), the possibility of securing victory in the 2019 presidential election may rest on the ability of political parties to form strategic electoral alliances. This may require moving past political parties formed solely around the personality and identity of their leaders to a more issue-based political debate.
Topic:
Corruption, Politics, Elections, Land, and Political Parties
Political Geography:
Africa and Malawi

13. Under Wraps: A survey of public attitudes to homosexuality and gender non-conformity in Malawi

Author:
Alan Msosa, Zione Jane Veronica Ntaba, MacDonald Sembereka, Eric Sambisa, Gift Trapence, Chiwoza Bandawe, Ndifanji Namacha, Eric Umar, Timothy Mtambo, Reverend Master Jumbe, Jones Hamburu Mawerenga, and Janet Mwandira
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Other Foundation
Abstract:
This report is called Under Wraps because it shows that Malawi has a comparatively high LGBTI population that is known by a significant number of ordinary Malawians to be socially vulnerable – but this reality remains hidden in Malawi’s social consciousness. Despite strong social values and aspirations of equality, non-violence, and belonging in a community, the majority of Malawians restrict LGBTI people from being openly recognized and safely included in families, communities, workplaces, cultural practices, and public policies. However, a large number of Malawians are thinking differently about discrimination, even the majority in relation to recognition of intersex people and violence towards LGBTI people.
Topic:
Public Opinion, Discrimination, LGBT+, Society, Homophobia, and Transphobia
Political Geography:
Africa and Malawi

14. Closing the Divide in Malawi: How to Reduce Inequality and Increase Prosperity for all

Author:
Clare Coffey, Jessica Hamer, and Chiara Mariotti
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Inequality between the richest and the rest in Malawi continues to rise, with poverty remaining extreme and endemic. Climate change is compounding the challenges, with recent droughts and floods likely to have worsened poverty, resulting in one in three Malawians relying on humanitarian assistance in 2016. Economic inequality threatens to undermine the hard-fought and important progress on some aspects of human development in Malawi. This report presents a vision, roadmap and policy recommendations for a more inclusive, equitable and prosperous Malawi. It shows that inequality is not inevitable but the result of policy choices made by those with power. Breaking out of slow and unequal growth requires government, development partners and institutions to work for all, especially for those living at the margins, rather than serving powerful vested interests.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Gender Issues, Inequality, and Tax Systems
Political Geography:
Africa and Malawi

15. Is Poverty a binding constraint on Agricultural Growth in Rural Malawi?

Author:
Mirriam Muhome-Matita and Ephraim Wadonda Chirwa
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)
Abstract:
Agriculture remains the most important sector in sub-Saharan Africa and is a dominant form of livelihood for a majority of the population that resides in the rural areas. In Malawi, agriculture accounts for 35 percent of GDP and generates more than 80 percent of foreign exchange. In addition, agriculture is the most important occupation for 71 percent of the rural population in which crop production accounts for 74 percent of all rural incomes. However, agriculture has failed to get Africa out of poverty, and most countries are experiencing low agricultural growth, rapid population growth, weak foreign exchange earnings and high transaction costs (World Bank, 2008).
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, Political Economy, Poverty, World Bank, Economic Growth, and Rural
Political Geography:
Africa and Malawi

16. Brain Drain in Africa: The Case of Tackling Capacity Issues in Malawi's Medical Migration

Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF)
Abstract:
In this strategic paper, the African Capacity Building Foundation shows how African countries can tackle the brain drain by understanding the emigration of medical personnel from Malawi, which in ways mirrors the wider African experience but is also unique. Like much of Sub-Saharan Africa, Malawi has poor health indicators, reflecting its low capacity to deliver quality health care. This situation is due in part to the limited capacity for training physicians and in part to the massive emigration of health workers, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s. The paper's objectives are threefold. First is to understand the state and extent of the brain drain challenge in Africa with an appropriate country case study. Second is to map the strategies, approaches and initiatives countries undertake to address brain drain issues. Third is to identify lessons and good practices in addressing the key capacity needs, specifically defining the roles of state and non-state actors.
Topic:
Health, Migration, Brain Drain, Capacity, and Public Health
Political Geography:
Africa and Malawi

17. Uncle Sam, Matchmaker

Author:
Ben East
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
I pictured myself in a Peace Corps-issue hammock on an island somewhere, or crossing high glaciers in the glaring Himalayan sun. Then the recruiter called and offered Malawi. Pointless to remind her what I’d written where the application asked my preference: ‘Anywhere but Africa.’ Before that call, a recruiter—maybe the same recruiter—offered another would-be Volunteer a choice. Would she prefer Nepal, or Malawi? A logical thinker with a Math degree and an Indian heritage, she chose Malawi. ‘I can travel to Nepal on my own any time. When will I travel to Africa outside the Peace Corps?’ So when the recruiter called me, fate was already decided.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Memoir, and Peace Corps
Political Geography:
Africa and Malawi

18. Canaries in the Coal Mines: An analysis of spaces for LGBTI activism in Malawi

Author:
Philip Browne
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Other Foundation
Abstract:
The question of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights continues to be a point of struggle and strife, extending from the depths of Malawi’s political history. Since its independence in 1964, the twenty eight- year dictatorship of Kamuzu Banda enforced a strict national Christian morality which has been sustained to the present day. The experiences and challenges facing LGBTI people in Malawi are shaped by laws, policies and practices that are informed by prevailing social, religious and cultural norms, that in turn shape public discourse around sexual minorities as contrary to Malawi’s culture and morality. The public debate on homosexuality has been complex, unpredictable and contested, and provides a snapshot of the difficulties LGBTI people face. Anti-homosexuality discourse has largely been driven by religious and cultural chauvinism.
Topic:
Human Rights, LGBT+, Exclusion, and Activism
Political Geography:
Africa and Malawi

19. Canaries in the Coal Mines: An analysis of spaces for LGBTI activism in southern Africa

Author:
Mark Gevisser
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Other Foundation
Abstract:
Like coal miners used caged canary birds, whose death was a warning sign of toxic gases in the mine tunnels, homosexual women and men, and transgender and intersex people in southern Africa are at the coalface of the multiple dangers in many of our societies today. How our societies treat lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people is symptomatic of the dangers facing all people who are excluded in some way or another in our societies, by those who have a grip on social, economic, and political power. To assess the depth and nature of social exclusion of LGBTI people across southern Africa and better understand how LGBTI groups are organizing to transform that reality, the Other Foundation commissioned studies of ten countries in southern Africa: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe participated in the development of the studies.
Topic:
Human Rights, LGBT+, Exclusion, and Activism
Political Geography:
Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Swaziland, Namibia, Mauritius, Botswana, Lesotho, and Southern Africa

20. The Role of Information and Communication Technology in Africa's Sustainable and Inclusive Development: Understanding the Capacity Challenges

Author:
Saulos Klaus Chilima
Publication Date:
08-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF)
Abstract:
This ACBF’s 9th development memoir features Right Honorable Saulos Klaus Chilima (PhD), vice president of the Republic of Malawi. In this series, he shares his memoirs, insights, and experience on The role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Africa’s sustainable and inclusive development: Understanding the capacity challenges. Malawi, like other landlocked countries in Africa, faces additional challenges in connecting to high-speed undersea internet cables like the East African Submarine Cable System and the East African Marine System. But the country has scored some considerable gains in ICTs and telecommunications. Currently, there are six major ongoing initiatives encompassing e-government, e-education, e-infrastructure, digital repositories, e-health, and e-banking.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Digitization, Information Technology, and Banking
Political Geography:
Africa and Malawi