Economics and Business Forum

On population and corruption

It was heart-rending to hear through the BBC Focus on Africa about the drowning of more than 200 Africans, in the Mediterranean Sea, who wanted to reach an Italian island. Most of these were said to be from Somalia and Eritrea. The news was then substantiated with rows and rows of coffins.

Those people wanted to seek better economic life in Europe. Apart from jobs, some of the illegal immigrants into Europe said they wanted to go and live in countries where there was more freedom than in their own countries.

During the struggle for independence soon after World War II, Africans were urging colonialists to scram out of Africa. They hoped that once this was done, they would live idyllic lives on a continent that is flanked by three seas or oceans, Atlantic and Indian oceans and then Mediterranean Sea. Now we Africans are stampeding to enter the countries that we once abhorred as imperialists, colonialists and all that.

What has gone wrong or right? In spite of losing their colonies and empires, European countries are relatively better off than their ex-African colonies. How do we explain this?

Population growth rates matter. Growth rates of the gross domestic product (GDP) in Europe and other developed countries are rarely higher than those in African countries. Hardly anyone of the developed countries has recently achieved above five percent growth rates. In Africa during the past decade or so five percent has been the average, yet from the continent that is growing faster some people are fleeing as if it were a house whose roof has caught fire.

Population growth rates in Africa are such as to frustrate GDP growth rates. African governments are finding it difficult to create enough jobs for their people; hence, the exoduses. I have come across more than one passage by an Ethiopian spokesperson which asserts that Ethiopia is soon to become Africa’s third largest economy after South Africa and Nigeria. Yet not quite two years ago about 30 Ethiopians drowned in Lake Malawi while trying to reach the western shore from Tanzania enroute to South Africa.

Policies against rapid population growth need to be refined even here in Malawi.

Our President is very keen to promote safe motherhood for its own sake. This campaign should be linked with the policy of establishing or slowing down population growth. Women should be told that the fewer babies a woman has the healthier life she will enjoy and then she can engage in income generating activities whether she has a husband or not. The slogan should be ‘safe motherhood through child spacing’.

There have always been pundits advising governments not to interfere with natural population growth rates.  They say a large and growing population is a source of cheap labour. But this cheap labour cannot be put to use in a land where there is shortage of capital and land.

There are those who say necessity is the mother of invention; hence, population pressure will force some members of society to invent devices for survival. For example, land shortages will motivate people to discover methods of agricultural practice which will yield more on the limited land.

The trouble with this reasoning is that we do not quite know why inventions of modern civilisation takes place only in certain countries of the world not in others. Indeed most modern devices have been invented in Europe and America. Even there, it is mostly in countries such as Britain, France, Germany and then the United States. There is no guarantee that every country which experiences excessive populations will breed inventors and innovation. Vaccines for malaria and HIV and Aids will most likely be invented in Europe and North America though the need for them is greater in Africa.

Let us be hearing more about child spacing as one of the approaches to safe motherhood.

For a long time organisations such as Transparency International have been placing Malawi among countries where corruption is rampant. It used to puzzle me because corrupt cases were seldom being reported upon by local media.

The looting of public coffers which has been recently been uncovered speaks volumes about the level of perfidity and rapaciousness in this country. Spokespersons of opposition parties who are saying the People’s Party (PP) government should just concentrate on the current situation have something to hide. We, members of the public, would like to know when this level of looting started, and let the law take its course.

Calling upon the President, the Minister of Finance and head of the civil service to resign on account of these revelations is premature. No one should be punished for the crimes of another person unless they abetted the commission of those crimes.

The law concerning theft by public servants should be reviewed. Does it rise to the challenge?

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