Chakwera mandates Chilima to provide Malawi 2063 vision document outline

President Lazarus Chakwera on Tuesday launched the country’s new master plan, Malawi 2063, a successor to Vision 2020, with an emotional call to the citizenry for mind change, dedication and to embrace the power of hope and belief that Malawi can develop.

Speaking from Kamuzu Palace where he was joined virtually by Vice President Saulos Chilima who spoke from his office at Capital Hill, President Chakwera said time had come for Malawians to pull in one direction and hope for the better

“Let us embrace the power of hope. The hope that we can change our country if we agree to do so. It is possible,” said President Chakwera who was also being followed virtually by former Malawi Presidents and Vice Presidents.

Taking his turn to provide the broad outline of the document, Vice President Chilima said the  MW2063 centres on “wealth creation” and  “self-reliance” and that the blueprint will be operationalized by a 10-year implementation plan on which a 5-year plan of quick wins will be drawn-out.

“The MW2063 is anchored on three key pillars: Agriculture productivity and commercialization, Industrialization, and Urbanization (with development of tourism hubs as a key component. The achievement of these three pillars will be catalysed by seven enablers that will include  Environmental sustainability, Economic infrastructure, Human capital development, and Private sector dynamism,” Chilima said.

On implementation modalities, Chilima said there are two lessons to  learnt from Vision 2020 as a country.

“The first lesson is that the national development agenda  [Vision 2020] did not survive political transitions. Successive administrations wanted to be identified with their own projects to the detriment of the agreed national development agenda. Second, there was poor alignment between the long-term vision, medium term plans that operationalize it, and the annual budgets that fund it.”

But having learnt from the past mistakes, Chilima indicated that the implementation framework of the MW2063 seeks to remedy this defect through guiding principles that will include alignment of party manifestoes to the Vision, its Pillars and Enablers as well as alignment of medium-term development plans and budgets to the vision.

To this effect, Chilima said consequently, implementing the Vision requires and entails a review of the Political Party Act, requiring that henceforth political party manifestos be aligned to the MW2063 to avoid short-termism by political administrations.

On threats that include Covid-19 that could delay our take off, the Vice President said the National Planning Commission in collaboration with Ministry of Economic Planning and Development and Public Sector Reforms as well as the Ministry of Finance are co-ordinating the development of the COVID-19 Socioeconomic Recovery Plan to map a trajectory from response to recovery.

In concluding his speech, just like President Chakwera , the veep too  appealed for the need for all Malawians, within and abroad, to begin thinking and doing things differently.

“Mind-set change is needed even more today than when we began talking about it. Achievement of MW2063 requires belief in our own country, dreams and abilities since it demands us to be more productive, innovative and competitive,” he said.