Deputy Minister Mdooko presses for responsive National Population Policy

Deputy Minister of Education, Nancy Chaula Mdooko has stressed the need to have a National Policy that address challenges of rapid population growth.

Mdooko was speaking on Wednesday in Lilongwe during the launch of the revised National Population Policy.

She said just like many other developing economies, the challenge makes it difficult for countries to fully meet the agricultural, educational, and economic needs of their population. 

Further, she said, population growth has a profound impact across multiple sectors.

” For instance, high fertility rates imply growing demands for water, sanitation, energy, agriculture, housing, employment, health, and education,” Adding that there is a direct relationship between population and development. 

Thus, why the National Population Policy has been developed to address such factors that undermine efforts towards sustainable economic and social development, she said.

Mdooko said the policy focus is on the six priority areas of managing population growth, Inclusion of vulnerable and marginalized populations, climate change adaptation and resilience, information Management, financing, and capacity strengthening, linkages and coordination and all the six priorities are interlinked. 

While the goal is to have a manageable population with adequate and high-quality social services and economic opportunities that can meaningfully contribute to national development. 

Mdooko added that the education and health sectors have a role to play in the implementation of the Policy. 

“The Policy will use the right-based approach rather than coercive measures.” 

Therefore, she said, aiming at increasing access to voluntary family planning; encouraging female education and ensuring that girls stay in school; integrating demographic and population data to inform development planning across sectors can help ensure that key sectors of development, such as health, education, environmental protection, and infrastructure to sufficiently meet the needs of the current population while working toward a growth rate that is amenable to sustained economic and social development. 

Mdooko observed that this can be achieved if all stakeholders in the sector combine efforts with a common goal.

African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) Country Director, Dr Nyovani Madise said the policy is very progressive as it looks at a number of pillars including population, climate change and finance among others.

“This policy also has information on how it can be implemented in order to achieve the aspirations,” she said.

Academician from University of Malawi (UNIMA), Dr Monica Jamali Phiri said the country need to manage its rapid population growth.

“There are number of factors that the academia can assist like coming up with statistics to give policy makers a picture on what is happening on population,” she said.

Malawi developed the policy in 1994, revised in 2012 and revised again in 2023 to align it to Malawi 2063 vision.