Can ICT drive Malawians towards Agenda 2063?
Recently, the Malawi Communications and Regulatory Authority (MACRA) launched its 2024 State of ICT Report which, apart from revealing the level at which Malawians are using and adopting ICT services, also how ICT has been positioned as a critical enabler of Agenda 2063. What is in this report about and why is it important? Our reporter Jonathan Safuli writes.
Malawi has never failed to decide where, development wise, it wants to be after a well-defined period of time.
In the year 2000, every Malawian was clear where the nation will be 20 years later. A carefully written development agenda, called the Vision 2020, was launched, an agenda which made it clear that by the year 2020, which is four years ago today, the country will have attained the status of the middle income economy.
The World Bank defines a middle-income economy as a nation with a per-capita gross national income (GNI) of between $1 036 and $13 615. By 2020, Malawi’s per capita GNI was $350.
Why did we fail?
That, among others, is a question that Dr Thomas Munthali and team at National Planning Commission (NPC) were tasked to answer as Malawi embarked on developing a fresh post-Vision 2020 development agenda.
“The Vision 2020 suffered because it was fundamentally premised on poverty reduction. A lot of interventions were made but they didn’t make the communities self-reliant and resilient in the face of disasters and global economic shocks,” said Munthali.
He added that the country need to shift from poverty reduction to empowering communities to create wealth, be self-reliant and also resilient.
Driven by that philosophy, Malawi today has, again, defined where it want to be, this time, by the year 2063. That definition is contained in a document called the Agenda 2063.
Launched in 2022, Malawians have agreed that by the year 2063, the nation shall be an inclusively wealthy and self-reliant industrialized upper-middle-income country that can primarily fund its development needs.
The question, then, is: How will enable Malawi to attain its Agenda 2063?
According to Munthali, the Agenda 2063, in its 10-year implementation plan, recognizes several enablers but singles out ICT development as a critical enabler of inclusive wealth creation.
“We believe and understand, both research and observation, that having a robust ICT infrastructure with cross-country coverage of reliable and affordable services can foster technological adoption and digital access,” he said.
Even Daud Suleman, director general of Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) agrees.
“As Malawi embark on the ambitious path outlined in the Malawi 2063, understanding the dynamics of ICT access and usage becomes paramount. Malawi 2063 prioritize ICT development as a catalyst for inclusive growth, job creation, and poverty reduction,” he said.
He added that Agenda 2063 emphasizes the need to harness ICTs to transform key sectors such as tourism, agriculture, mining education, healthcare, and governance, thereby improving the quality of life for all Malawians.
Its one thing, of course, to wax lyrical of ICT as an enabler of Agenda 2063; its another to have ICT services on the ground so that Malawians are, indeed, adopting and using them. The understanding is that you can’t talk of ICT as an enabler of Agenda 2063 without understanding the level at which Malawians are adopting and using ICT services.
To bridge these two extremes, Macra, in conjunction with the National Statistics Office (NSO), released finding of the National Survey on Access and Use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by Households and Individuals in Malawi.
According to the report, the 2023 National Survey on ICT collected information on access and use of various ICT services and products to measure progress in the adoption of ICTs in the country.
“This follows previous surveys which were conducted in 2019 and 2014 with the same scope. Specifically, the survey covered access and usage of radio, computer, television, telephone, mobile phone, internet, E-commerce, postal services, digital financial services, cyber security, electrical and electronic waste management, and child online protection,” reads the report.
However, in general terms, the report makes it very clear that affordability of ICT services in the country remains a serious challenge as evidenced by low adoption and use.
Suleman attributed this low adoption and use of ICT services to several factors among others being affordability of digital services and devices; the digital divide especially between the urban and rural populations; ICT literacy levels; radio and ICT convergence; inclusive digital economy; and lack of strategic approaches to harness the power of ICTs.
SIDE BAR: KEY FINDINGS
- Household ownership of radio at 42.4 %, at individuals is 34.1 percent, and 57.2 percent of individuals listen to the radio.
- Households with a working television set across the country is 10.9 %, individual viewership at 22.2 %.
- Households owning a local TV decoder (Kiliye-Kiliye) are 24.8%. 68.4 % of households that have access to local TV stations. Only 6.8 % households have access to pay TV services.
- Households owning a functional computer at 3.3 %, at an individuals is 2.9 %.
- The proportion of individuals who access postal services is 4.5 percent.
- Most common cybersecurity incident: Receiving a fraudulent call or SMS asking for money or personal banking details (85.5 percent) followed by identity theft (33.4 percent) and receiving a fraudulent email asking for money or personal banking details (18.2 percent).
- Majority, 85.3 %, individuals do not report the incidents that they encounter.
- 2 % of children aged between 9 and 17 years access the internet of which 23.2 percent experience online incidents that bothered or upset them in some way. However, 46.1 percent did not report such incidents to anyone while 20.5 percent reported to a friend of their age.
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