Unpacking Mutharika’s dream colleges

At Ezondweni in Mzimba, we got a snapshot of what President Peter Mutharika’s dream of community colleges looks, feels and smells like.
On Monday, it was all there: fumes of fresh paint, dust from piling bricks, harmers driving nails into planks, wet cement on chalkboards and artisans on ladders, picks tearing rocks in toilet pits, retouching Mzimba’s skills development centre.
The dirty work was enough to banish Senior Chief Mtwalo from his royal office, the epicenter of a remote setting where the youth empowerment centre is in final touches.
“We are making history. Lucky are the youth to learn here. They shall have the formal training some of us missed,” said Ezekiel Kamanga, a painter.
Brush by brush, the ragged walls of a class block got a pink coat, so did the life journey of the painter, 38, —mirroring the plight of the majority of boys and girls in Mzimba. He left Mjiri Community Day Secondary School in 1997. After Form Four, his boyhood dreams became nightmares.
Kamanga spent three years doing nothing. In 2000, he opened a mini-shop which was ransacked by thieves within months. He narrated why he did not succeed in the business:
“In the absence of basic business skills, I had hardly saved a tambala to keep me going in case of bad luck.”
He often went to bed not knowing what to do the next day, he says. In 2001, he was on a bus to South Africa where he worked as a house boy for a couple which saw the log in his eye: lack of a life-changing skills.
“I didn’t qualify for university; I didn’t even attempt technical education because of overwhelming competition for few technical colleges. Besides, I thought my poor parents could not afford fees beyond secondary school,” he explains.
Now, the man has three skills—computer engineering, painting and photography—following part-time trainings initiated by his South African master who reportedly believed that adults without skill are babies; personifications of dependency.
Kamanga was lucky to outgrow babyhood without tasting the long jam of skill-seeking Malawians usually reduced to figures of unmet demand.
The country has seven technical colleges, including the State-owned Nasawa, Soche, Lilongwe and Salima. The grant-aided Mzuzu, Livingstonia and Namitete are church-owned.
According to Technical, Entrepreneurial and Vocational Education and Training Authority (Teveta) director of training programmes Wilson Makulumiza-Nkhoma, only 35 in 100 000 people in the country have access to vocational training.
“It is pathetic. We are the lowest in the Southern Africa Development Community [Sadc], much lower than Botswana with a smaller population and Mauritius, a small island,” decries Nkhoma.
In the two countries, access to technical education accounts for between 1 200 to 1 500 out of 100 000 inhabitants. By contrast, up to 20 000 school leavers in Malawi apply for places in technical college, but only 1 000 are selected.
“It’s a pity that 19 000 interested have nowhere to go. This has to change,” says Minister of Labour and Vocational Training Henry Mussa.
They go somewhere. The likes of Kamanga head for South Africa to do unskilled jobs.
Empty packets of cheap spirits which are driving youths crazy were all over in the shadow of the refurbished learning block, especially where five young men from the vicinity were digging a pit latrine.
Thud by thud, Xavier Madise, 30, swung his pick in the depth of the pit. Slapping off sweat from a visibly hardened face, the father-of-two narrated: “Renovation of the college has created jobs for us, but this is all we can do.”
He regrets dumping school while in Form Two at Chilinde Community Day Secondary School in Lilongwe and returning to the village where he ended up “marrying too quickly”.
“With the earnings, we can afford basics for our families than just the popular sachets,” he said.
Apart from alcohol abuse, where do thousands of young Malawians with no chance for tertiary education go?
Ezondweni Primary School head teacher Regina Msiska confirms the infamous sachets are as tragic and widespread as early marriages and teen pregnancies.
She said unemployed youths are increasingly enticing pupils under 18 into drunkenness and risky sexual affairs.
“Without proper role models, boys and girls go astray. Local achievers can help restore their ambition,” says Msiska.
She adds that her school, which lies opposite liquor shops, loses at least four girls a year to early marriages.
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reports that one in two women aged between 20-24 married before their 18th birthday.
This is why Mtwalo thanks government for the programme. He envisages it helping the youth strive for “bigger things than manufacturing children” and spending decades abroad “to accumulate the goods we buy at Ekwendeni.”
“Every country, even South Africa, favours people with skill,” says the chief who has dedicated three teachers’ houses, three classrooms, three offices and a courthouse to the community college.
Mutharika visualises the colleges creating employers, not employees. Mussa calls it job creation through skills development, a model lauded by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
A 12 member ministerial committee estimates K9 billion will be enough for all 28 districts to have a college each.
Next week, Mutharika is expected to launch the initiative with just 11 colleges. Each will roll out with three to eight courses. The standard trades include carpentry and joinery, welding, plumbing, bricklaying, design and tailoring. The required quota is 20 trainees per quota, meaning 100 per cent.
Mzimba North MP Agnes Nyalonje is thankful that the district is one of the first beneficiaries. Others are Karonga, Nkhata Bay, Nkhotakota, Dedza, Ntcheu, Mchinji, Blantyre, Thyolo, Chiradzulu and Phalombe.
However, Nyalonje implores policymakers, technicians, implementers and politicians to work in collaboration to establish solid structures and training programmes.
“Across the board, we have more people who need education than facilities in place. While pursuing quota system or equitable selection of students into higher education, we need to increase the number of facilities as well,” she says.
Slowly excitement is building up that a dream which some rejected as a campaign lie is coming true.