Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, April 2002.

The Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy (MPRS) is the overarching strategy that will form the basis for all future activities by all stakeholders, including Government. The overall goal of the MPRS is to achieve “sustainable poverty reduction through empowerment of the poor”. Rather than regarding the poor as helpless victims of poverty in need of hand-outs and passive recipients of trickle-down growth, the MPRS sees them as active participants in economic development. The MPRS also emphasizes prioritization and action. The MPRS is built around four pillars. These pillars are the main strategic components grouping the various activities and policies into a coherent framework for poverty reduction. Pillar 1 promotes rapid sustainable pro-poor economic growth and structural transformation; Pillar 2 enhances human capital development; Pillar 3 improves the quality of life of the most vulnerable; Pillar 4 promotes good governance. The MPRS also mainstreams key cross cutting issues such as HIV/AIDS, gender, environment, and science and technology. Higher education institutions will introduce programmes in non-traditional subjects such as science and technology, gender, food security, human rights, biodiversity and HIV/AIDS, among others. This will involve the establishment of adequate research centres that would be addressing emergent development issues, providing grants to graduate students so that they participate in teaching undergraduate courses and as research assistants (pag. 55).
Pro-poor growth is economic growth that involves and benefits the poor. It is a prerequisite for broadening income distribution and generating employment. The most fundamental challenge for the pillar is to offer the poor an opportunity to generate their own incomes, whilst providing the medium and large-scale private sector an enabling environment for investment. This will be achieved through the promotion of specific sectoral sources of pro-poor growth, and the creation of an enabling environment for pro-poor growth. The key specific sectoral source of growth is agriculture, although efforts will be made to diversify, especially through Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs), into natural resources, manufacturing, tourism and small-scale mining. In agriculture, the focus is on the provision of necessary services and conditions to farmers for increased incomes. The overall objective of the health sector is to improve the health status of Malawians by improving access to, quality and equity of health services. This will be achieved through the design and implementation of an Essential Healthcare Package (EHP). The EHP will address the major causes of morbidity and mortality among the general population and focuses particularly on medical conditions and service gaps that disproportionately affect the rural poor (pag. xiii).
Even with the best strategies for pro-poor growth, human capital and safety nets, poverty will not be reduced unless there is development-oriented governance, political will and mindset. In particular, the technical design of the MPRS will be irrelevant unless there is the political, bureaucratic and popular will to implement it. The overall objective of Pillar 4 is therefore to ensure that public institutions and systems protect and benefit the poor. Strategies to address problems of governance will focus on strengthening systems of transparency and accountability across the public sector and ensuring popular participation in decision-making processes. Strong political will must be demonstrated by political leaders from all parties and by other decision-makers through willingness to make and implement hard prioritisation decisions and to avoid politicisation of development. Issues of mindset can be addressed by a concerted effort to change the terms of political discourse away from creating expectations of material gain in return for electoral support. Instead, efforts should be made to disseminate the message that the poor have to solve their own problems and that Government alone cannot do everything (pag. xiv).