Commission, stakeholders for alignment of policies to MW2063

National Planning Commission (NPC) says there is need to align the country’s various policies to the Malawi 2063 (MW2063), the country’s long-term development blueprint.

Speaking in Lilongwe on Thursday on the sidelines of a validation workshop on the assessment of sectoral policies alignment to the MW2063, NPC research manager Andrew Jamali emphasised the need for the policy space to align to the key areas of focus of MW2063 pillars and enablers.

He said: “We have a new vision in place and a new implementation plan, the 10-year implementation plan. These are new documents, but the policies have been here for some time although others are new.

“But the key question is how aligned are these policies to the key areas of focus in the vision under the pillars and enablers of Malawi 2063?”

Jamali said they will identify misalignments of each policy under the pillars and enablers of the MW2063 against the pillars and enabler focus areas and later make appropriate recommendations to bring about their alignments.

“The key issue is that there are some policies which are not talking to the new vision in terms of their focus areas and we need to do something about it so that the policies should talk to the new vision, either upon their review, or if we can do a policy addendum or readjustment, it has to be done,” he said.

In an interview, University of Malawi social sciences professor Happy Kayuni said lack of alignment is one of the reasons Vision 2020, the predecessor of MW2063, failed as authorities were not aggressive to ensure that the vision speaks to other policies.

He said it is encouraging that NPC is working to align MW2063 to the other policies that the country has.

“It is important that all the policies operational should speak to the Malawi 2063, otherwise we will be talking about a lot of issues within the Malawi 2063 not being implemented because the policies are the ones which will be implemented on the ground,” Kayuni said.

Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry director of the business environment and policy advocacy Madalitso Kazembe said as the private sector, they want to see action from government when implementing policies.

She said: “If there is misalignment between policies and Malawi 2063 then nothing is going to happen.

“This is a critical step for National Planning Commission to undertake as it contributes to Malawi becoming a middle-income country.”