There is a popular proverb in Nigeria that “what an old man sees while sitting down, a young man cannot see while standing” . This resonates well with what happened a few weeks ago when President Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera witnessed the symbolic harvest of wheat. The president received a backlash from his foes and naysayers alike.
They all went to town saying the function was too small to attract the presence of the whole State President
A few weeks down the line, the narrative about the wheat farming in Malawi has changed altogether and vindicating the President in the process that his attendance was worthwhile.
Coming from the past, where we grew up having leaders who were indifferent to wheat farming and only paid their attention to tobacco-dubbed the “major forex earner” and from the background where we were meant to believe that Malawi does not have the climate good enough to grow wheat, this is a big milestone wealth celebrating.
This is the milestone that will feed into President Chakwera’s transformative agenda born out of his growing desire to see Malawi becoming a wealthy, self-reliant industrialised upper middle income economy by 2063.
It is one thing to dream and another to have structures in place to actualise the dream.
Now as it has become a norm especially with the emergency of social media that bad news spread faster than positive ones. You will not see this being highlighted as a positive step by the Chakwera’s administration towards reducing the importation of wheat from outside, and it had to take a tweet from a none Malawian man with the name James Hall telling us that for the first time Malawi will have the large scale harvest of wheat.
He says Malawi imports 200 000 tonnes worth $48 million a year which is a lot considering our shrinking economy.
He writes: “Congrats Malawi: makes its first successful large-scale wheat harvest after trying for years to find grain suitable for its soil. Malawi imports 200,000 metric tonnes of wheat at $48 million. To achieve self sufficiency, it may take four years to produce enough-but on the way.”
This news means Malawi may not require to import such volumes of wheat and the need of importing the grain will go down drastically in years and we will stop the importation completely sooner than later granted that Chakwera who is the champion of the transformative agenda stays put at the helm of leadership until 2030.
