In Malawi, English is a dominant language. Every parent wants their child to learn English at an early age. This is good. However, we need to go beyond that and promote Malawian languages as well, especially the less dominant ones. Languages are repositories of wisdom and knowledge, and conveyors of positive culture and values. Languages confer dignity and make one proud and confident of one's identity. These are crucial ingredients for a development mindset. 

Respect for and knowledge of other languages also promotes mutual understanding and peace by making it possible for diverse groups of people to understand and communicate and empathise with each other. This is what brings national development. Considering how we Malawians continue to divide ourselves based on regions and ethnicity, at the expense of national progress, multilingual education remains important.

Beyond the theme for this year’s ILD, I want to use the rest of this post to discuss the broader context of Malawi’s literacy rates, access to education, and the strangely very low targets set for the first ten years of the country’s long term vision, the Malawi 2063. The discussion will focus mostly on the recently released annual report of the Malawi 2063 First Ten Year Implementation Plan (MIP-1), spanning April 2023 to March 2024. I will also touch on the 2023 Education Statistics Report and the 2018 National Population and Housing Census.

First, the good news. According to the MIP-1 annual report for 2023-2024, Malawi's national literacy rate has improved from 68.6 percent in 2020, to 75.5 percent in 2023. That is a remarkable improvement, despite the gender differences that show a 14 percent gap, with male literacy at 83 percent, and female literacy at 68.8 percent. The national goal is to raise the rate to 81 percent, which is achievable, if only because it is rather low. We need to be aiming for a national literacy rate of above 90 percent by 2030, or even earlier.

 With political will, this is possible. The issue of low ambitions seems systemic; many of the targets in the MIP-1 annual report are set very low, with some of them absurdly so. I will get to this later.

The extent to which Malawi’s education system continues to lose students is quite shocking. Many learners are going to school but are failing to read and to learn, pushing a lot of young Malawians out of school every single year. The 2018 Population and Housing Census revealed that only 30 percent of adult Malawians completed primary school education, and only 8 percent completed secondary school education. These are sobering figures. 

Achieving the 2030 and 2063 goals requires strengthening the education system so that every learner learns how to read as early as possible, so they can complete primary school and proceed to secondary school. It is equally important to provide education opportunities to the masses who did not go to school, and to those who left before acquiring any qualification. There are millions of such Malawians, and they hold the key to developing the human capital the country requires. Looking at the targets that have been set for 2030, we seem not to comprehend the extent of the challenge. 

To illustrate the problem, let us take a closer look at the 2023-2024 MIP-1 annual progress report’s Indicator Performance Tracking Matrix. The primary school completion rate in 2023 was 48 percent, against a target of 54 percent. The baseline, using 2020 figures, was 51.20 percent, and the 2030 target was set at 60 percent. The secondary school completion rate in 2023 was 22 percent, which was also the target for that year. It’s reassuring to note that the target was met, but again for the reason that it was set very low. The baseline, in 2020, was 19 percent, and the 2030 target is set at 28 percent! 

The same worrying trend of absurdly low targets is seen in tertiary enrollment rates. The 2020 baseline figure was 30,970, and the 2030 target was set at a ridiculous 40,000. By 2022 the actual tertiary enrollment had already reached 64,519, rising to 74,200 in 2023. Interestingly, the 2018 Population and Housing Census recorded a tertiary enrollment figure of 90,000. 

I have an idea why the targets are being set very low. Take, for example, what happens with Malawi’s teacher-pupil ratio targets. The 2008-2018 National Educational Sector Plan set a primary school teacher-pupil ratio of 1:60. Anybody who has taught young children knows that 60 learners in a classroom is a big number that cannot guarantee quality teaching and learning. Because this target has never been achieved, it has deterred Malawi’s education planners and policy makers from being more ambitious, fearing failure. Hence some of the very low targets seen in the MIP-1 Indicator Matrix. 

The Malawi 2063 vision makes it “compulsory for every citizen to attain at least 12 years of formal education.” Obviously, this cannot wait till the year 2063. At the Transforming Education Summit, held during the 2022 United Nations General Assembly in New York, President Dr. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera presented Malawi’s National Statement of Commitment for transforming education by 2030. The statement commits that every Malawian will be provided 12 years of formal education. This is obviously not in line with the MIP-1 target of a secondary school completion rate of 28 percent by 2030. 

Both the 2030 and 2063 goals rest on the human capital development agenda, requiring a solid education system for those currently enrolled, and a strategy for those outside the school system. Malawi will be able to realise a demographic dividend only if it offers a good quality education both for those currently going to school, and for those who did not get a chance to enroll, or to finish. Considering that 92 percent of Malawian adults do not have a secondary school education, ensuring that every citizen has 12 years of formal education will be a huge challenge. Setting targets of 28 percent secondary school completion is at odds with that vision. 

The Malawi 2063 vision is built on three pillars of agricultural productivity and commercialization, industrialisation, and urbanization. While all three pillars depend on growing Malawi’s human resource, the development of secondary cities, one of the key drivers of the urbanization pillar, has the potential to accelerate development in the rural areas.

Functional secondary cities would therefore increase the country’s productivity by creating jobs for millions of young people. The MIP-1 has set a target of three secondary cities by 2030, but the Indicator Matrix has very little information on how this is to be achieved. For the secondary cities to materialize, it is imperative to improve education access especially for rural populations.  

Malawi’s secondary school enrollment rates have historically been low, meaning that there are far more Malawians of school going age that are not in school. In 2023, only 17 percent of the country’s secondary age population was in school, and only 22 percent actually finished secondary school. The 2023 Education Statistics Report shows a total secondary school enrollment of 485,650 in the entire country. This is the highest it has ever been. The 2018 Population and Housing Census indicated that the country had 1.9 million Malawians in the 15-19 age bracket, underscoring the fact that Malawi has far too few secondary schools even for those of the appropriate age. 

Providing a meaningful education to the millions of Malawians who are out of school hardly registers in the policy discourse. There is an urgent need to provide a meaningful education to citizens who cannot be accommodated in the formal secondary school system. The MIP-1 makes a provision for community learning centres to widen education access, but there are no indicators for this in the Indicators Matrix. And there is no sign that anything is being done about it. 

The targets set for TEVET in the MIP-1 are restricted to basic and secondary education, missing an important productivity opportunity for the millions of young Malawians outside the school system. The 2018 census recorded 6 million Malawians aged between 15 and 34, projected to rise to 8.4 million by 2030. Yet the MIP-1 target for TEVET graduates by 2030 is a paltry 15,000, from a baseline of 10,500 in 2020. Data for 2023 is indicated as unavailable. These low targets are untenable. They have to be revised.

The Malawi 2063 vision, inspired by the African Union’s Agenda 2063, is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Malawi to set and implement a bold development agenda. In designing the blue print, there was a remarkable effort to learn lessons from its predecessor, the failed Vision 2020 and not to repeat its mistakes. A year from now, it will be a mid-point for the 2030 goals. It will be an appropriate time to revisit the MIP-1 and its targets, as well as the Indicator Matrix. It will be crucial to recognize the country’s education crisis and to set new targets that can actually reflect the role that human capital development needs to be accorded, if we are to make serious investments towards the long-term vision.