With 6.5 million people in need of humanitarian aid, this year’s El Nino–induced drought constitutes the largest humanitarian emergency that Malawi has ever confronted.
It also brings the second consecutive harvest failure to this small, landlocked country, which has yet to recover from last year’s severe flooding. Inadequate governance has amplified the negative impacts of both, compounding natural disasters with political and economic malfeasance.
Malawi has experienced rapid economic growth in recent years, but the gains of this growth have not been spread evenly and the gap between rich and poor has widened at an alarming pace. Today, half of all Malawians live in poverty.This report examines the sharp rise in inequality in Malawi between 2004/5 and 2010/11, and models the link between poverty, inequality and growth from 2015 to 2020.
It analyses inequality in Malawi across a number of dimensions, including education, health, wealth and income/consumption, and also looks at how inequality is reinforced by corruption, gender inequity and an unequal distribution of political power. The authors warn that unless the government takes action, many more Malawians will live in poverty by 2020.
Against the context of underlying poverty, HIV/AIDS and an over-stretched and underresourced education system, many children in Malawi have reduced and sporadic access to schooling and are at risk of permanent dropout. Evidence from the sub-Saharan Africa(SSA) region suggests that a disproportionate number of marginalised children are those orphaned and made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. International goals for Education for All (EFA) will not be realised unless education systems can reach out to and retain these children. More needs to be done in schools to address their specific needs and support their access to learning. Acknowledging this, there is a growing call for conventional primary schooling to become more open, flexible and inclusive.This report introduces a model of education that uses open, distance and flexible learning (ODFL) to strengthen and support access to learning within conventional schools.
The model utilises low-tech ODFL strategies –