Striving for a living in Malawi

By Richard Harvey
Former Chief Executive, Aviva Group

Children go hungry if crops fail Working to insure a better future Watch: Richard before setting off

The idea of 'degrees of poverty' doesn't come home until you arrive in Malawi and see just how much poorer the people are here than anywhere else we have been.

Malawi is ranked the poorest country not to be at war; the most densely populated country only to get one rainy season and sits just about bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index.

All of these are accolades its wonderful and friendly people could do without.

Malnourished

Arrive, as I did, this January in the middle of the rains, and the lush green grass and shrubs fool you into thinking that life here is easy. But the countryside is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Most of the year it is arid and parched.

The newly planted maize, Malawi's subsistence diet, is nowhere near mature. In fact March is the hunger month, when last year's stocks have run out and malnourished children with pot bellies and matchstick arms can be found in all the malnutrition centres.

Actually, you don't even need to go that far - 45% of Malawi's under fives are stunted from malnutrition.

Many Malawi children end up at malnutrition centres each year

When we arrived things were looking fair for this year's harvest; good rains - a bit too much in fact - but a great relief as global warming has generally disturbed weather patterns, bringing crippling drought to many parts of Africa.

Poor yield

However, from the moment we landed, the sky cleared and the new maize is now becoming stunted, so the prospect of grim conditions at the end of 2008 looms when the poor yield has been consumed.

Despite the green countryside, you quickly notice there are not many trees, and here is one of the keys to Malawi's precarious state.

One of the few ways to make a small living is to produce charcoal, the universal fuel of Africa. Two or three trees will produce 10 bags with a sale value of about £2 each, after burning in a crude earth kiln.

With few other avenues open to the rural population to make any money, the tree felling has enormously outstripped the naturally slow rate of growth, given the limited rainfall.

Producing charcoal is one of the few ways to make a living in Malawi

Deforested

Small scale charcoal production like this is, strictly speaking, illegal, but the rules are unenforceable. In fact, as we chat to the roadside charcoal burners a police car pulls up to make a purchase.

They tell us that without the work their families would starve, but they have to go further and further - and they mean 15 to 20 kilometres - from the road to find the wood.

We are at the side of the relatively new highway from Lilongwe to Blantyre, so this new commercial route has, unintentionally, deforested another great tract of Malawi.

With the deforestation comes soil erosion and a host of other problems, continuing to put pressure on the fragile subsistence economy.

Sustainable

The Concern Universal project we are working on is here to start to tackle some of the problem.

If we can improve the energy use in the district with more fuel efficient cookers (anything beats the standard three stone fire), more use of solar power, and start programs for planting woodlots then perhaps demand can be reduced to a sustainable level.

Richard taking part in a focus group in Malawi

But maybe we can do better than that by encouraging other income generating activities for the charcoal burners.

After all no one in their right mind would volunteer for this hard and unhealthy work - did I forget to mention the carbon monoxide poisoning they tell us about?

After all, these are hard working entrepreneurs, who could be running a bakery, a pig farm, or irrigating out of season maize.

So it is back to the interconnectedness of everything. It's training, capacity building and leadership that are really going to save Malawi - and perhaps the planet.

The opinions expressed are Richard's, not the programme's.