The Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) says it is overwhelmed with the success of the Financial Literacy Week it held in the Central Region from October 27-30.
RBM principal examiner on consumer and financial literacy, Madalitso Chamba, said in an interview with Malawi News Agency (Mana) that through the consultation meetings at Wulian car park and road shows around Lilongwe, the goal of reaching out to the different segments of the population had been achieved.
She said the level of participation from different financial sector players like the Bankers Association of Malawi (BAM), the Insurance Association of Malawi, Microfinance Network, Malawi Savings and Credit Cooperatives Union (Muscco) among others had been encouraging and the response from their target audience had been overwhelming.
“The outreach has been overwhelming because so much people have been coming to these meetings and we have been able to present different messages.
“At the end, we are having evaluation questionnaires which we are administering to people randomly and from the assessment that we have done, it shows people have learnt a lot,” Chamba said.
She added: “Despite having some hiccups, looking at the evaluation and response we had, I strongly feel we have lived according to our expectations.”
However, Chamba said there had been some challenges during the week in terms of literature brochures, saying the plan was to have literature in English and Chichewa, but the Chichewa brochures were not ready until Wednesday.
“That was one of the hiccups we had because here we are talking about people who have low levels of education.
“So, some of the brochures we were distributing were in English and some people could not understand them. So, the combination of English literature plus Chichewa presentations simplified the content we were trying to create our awareness on,” Chamba explained.
One of the financial market players, Regina Nzima, who spoke to Mana on behalf of the capital markets, said the programme had gone as planned and had achieved more than expected.
“We managed to reach out to people we had here and beyond. Another important aspect is that most of the people we met here are people with less knowledge of what we do. Most of them know about banks and other sectors, but we have managed to reach out to them to talk about shares, the Treasury bills, Savings and credit Cooperatives (Sacco) and insurance,” said Nzima.—Mana
