VIEW POINT : On Malawi’s Education Policy 2008-2017 | Dr Johnstone Kumwenda

Sunday, 22 November 2009
Source: The Sunday Times (Malawi)

In this article I will attempt to answer the questions: ‘what does the Malawi Education Policy 2008 to 2017 say about higher education’ and ‘how does it propose to achieve what it says it will achieve?’

Priorities on higher education

The policy recognizes three main priorities in relationship to higher education. These include:
1. Priority 1: Governance and management
a. Develop policies designed to encourage private providers of service to be in line with minimum quality requirements
b. Prepare and put in place a Higher Education Act
c. Institute a semi-autonomous accreditation and quality assurance agency under supervision of Council for Higher Education
d. Strengthen governance, management, oversight, transparency and accountability of higher education institutions
e. Develop and implement programs to improve quality and efficiency funded by universities themselves from their own resources
2. Priority 2: Access and equity


a. Double enrollment over the next 5 to 10 years focusing on critical academic areas while increasing efficiency in public universities to keep spending by the state to approximately current levels while expanding private universities
b. Mainstreaming special needs education in all programs
c. Mainstreaming mitigation of HIV/Aids among students
d. Increase access for female students and students with special needs where applicable
3. Priority 3: Quality and relevance
a. Focus on infrastructure development on science and technology laboratories, workshops and ICT
b. Monitor quality, accreditation standards and advise government on higher education policy
c. Upgrade teaching and learning infrastructure in colleges
d. Improve staff qualifications especially lecturers without PhDs


I would now like to discuss some of the subthemes from each of these three priorities separately taking out the ones that I think may not serve us as well as we would like.
1. Funding: The issue of funding is very important. Some of the bullets state, “Develop and implement programs to improve quality and efficiency funded by universities themselves from their own resources while keep spending by the state to approximately current levels” (second part from priority 2). The question one may ask is whether the universities in Malawi have the capacity to generate own income. What does it take for universities to do so? The internal market in Malawi is small. There are few industries that would commission universities to carry out tasks that would bring adequate sources of funding to universities. In essence, without increasing government subvention to universities, the anticipated expansion may not take place

2. Increasing intake: The issue that has raised the ugliest exchanges in our debate is about whom is eligible to get into university. Increasing intake is the natural solution to the current debacle. The statement on increasing intake says, “Double enrollment over the next 5 to 10 years focusing on critical academic areas while increasing efficiency in public universities to keep spending by the state to approximately current levels. The two public universities in Malawi currently recruit about 1,400 students maximum each year from secondary school. We have on average between 3,000 and 4,000 eligible students for university entrance. Doubling intake to the public universities will not recruit all the eligible candidates. If we assume that secondary education will improve with time, the number of eligible candidates will also increase in this decade. What will become of the increasing number of eligible students? The issue of maintaining current funding levels and yet double intake is a source of concern. The universities are already struggling to keep afloat despite the increased funding in the past 5 years. The emphasis on universities’ self-generated funding is at present not realistic.

What can we learn from other nations that started almost like Malawi?

Mark J. Schafer of Louisiana State University in his paper “Household change and rural school enrollment in Malawi and Kenya”, says both Malawi and Kenya developed their national education systems around the British model after gaining independence from Great Britain in the 1960s but Malawi failed to invest its limited resources in education at the same rate as that of Kenya. Kenya allocated a greater share of the national wealth to education. From 1970 to 1995, Kenyan government expenditure on education averaged 6.4 percent of GDP compared to Malawi’s only 3.8 percent. Kenya's public educational expenditure tripled from $121.1 million in the 1970s to $378.7 million in 1980, an average annual increase of 11.4 percent.

During the same period, Malawi's public educational expenditure increased only 2.4 percent annually, from $35.5 million to $45.2 million in 1980. In a similar analysis Dr Nicola Swainson says in 1990, Zimbabwe spent approximately eight times more (in US dollar terms) on each primary pupil than Malawi. In the same year Zimbabwe's expenditure per pupil at secondary school level was USD 233 compared to Malawi’s USD 41.

Malawians pursued an elitist strategy of limited enrollments in high-quality schools aimed at training diplomats and managers. In stark contrast, Kenya exhorted all citizens to contribute to school expansion through a self-help strategy called harambee (a Swahili word meaning ‘let us all pull together’). Malawi’s education system therefore remained highly selective while Kenya empowered local communities to determine the pace of primary school expansion.

Conclusion: The current policy falls short in a number of areas that are important in moving this country forward. Dr DD Phiri has written over and over again about the Asiatic economic tigers. The recipe for their success is a simple one; invest in education today massively (not in a token manner) and leap the dividends 25 to 30 years later. By not doing so now, the current debacle we have now pointing fingers at each other will continue after we are long dead.