Malawi leader commends Brics focus on infrastructure development
Malawian President Peter Mutharika has commended the BRICS for coming up with the New Development Bank (NBD) and making it focus on investment in infrastructural development in its formative years.
Mutharika was speaking when he addressed the 10th BRICS Summit in Sandton South Africa.
President Mutharika said the focus on infrastructural development resonates very well with the development strategies of developing countries such as Malawi.
” As a global community, we have agreed on a new path for development. We agreed to fight poverty. We agreed to fight food and nutrition security. We agreed to create descent jobs. And we agreed to leave no one behind in our development agenda,’’ said Mutharika.
President Mutharika told the gathering that humanity can only achieve its common goal of eradicating poverty if there are genuine reforms on the global financial architecture.
‘‘I believe we can only achieve this common pledge of humankind if we set the right economic and political governance structures that work for everyone. We need genuine reforms of the international financial architecture,’’ Mutharika emphasised.
Mutharika also reminded the gathering that for a long time, developing countries have been investing in consumption and services more than investing in production and infrastructure.
This he said, needed a paradigm shift.
‘‘We need to finance infrastructure and energy as some of the prerequisites to development’’. Mutharika said.
Mutharika said Malawi is ready to do business with the rest of the world.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa opened the 10th BRICS Summit in Sandton on 25th July 2018 with a call for greater collaboration among BRICS member states as the world embraces the digital revolution.
BRICS is an economic block comprising Brazil, Russia , China and South Africa.
Its main objective is to agitate for reforms in the global financial structure by focusing on the world’s emerging economic giants.
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The mindset change has to start with African leaders. For far too long African leaders have focused on self enrichment generally investing their looted funds into western banks and assets. Most of the western countries having realised the greater weakness of African, they have taken full advantage of this to plunder economy after economy and sometimes with no regard for the damage they leave behind. Its like Slavery 2.0 on steroids. The story of assassinated President of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, should always inspire African leaders; As President, he lowered his salary to only $450 a month and limited his possessions to a car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer. A motorcyclist himself, he formed an all-women motorcycle personal guard. He required public servants to wear a traditional tunic, woven from Burkinabe cotton and sewn by Burkinabe craftsmen. He was known for jogging unaccompanied through Ouagadougou in his track suit and posing in his tailored military fatigues, with his mother-of-pearl pistol. When asked why he didn’t want his portrait hung in public places, as was the norm for other African leaders, Sankara replied “There are seven million Thomas Sankaras.”
Sankara rejected the idea of foreign aid, saying that “he who feeds you, controls you.” Wheat production rose in just three years from 1700 kg per hectare to 3800 kg per hectare, making the country food self-sufficient. He spoke eloquently in forums like the Organization of African Unity against continued neo-colonialist penetration of Africa through Western trade and finance. He called for a united front of African nations to repudiate their foreign debt. He argued that the poor and exploited did not have an obligation to repay money to the rich and exploiting.
In Ouagadougou, Sankara converted the army’s provisioning store into a state-owned supermarket open to everyone (the first supermarket in the country). He forced civil servants to pay one month’s salary to public projects.He refused to use the air conditioning in his office on the grounds that such luxury was not available to anyone but a handful of Burkinabes.
He sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars and made the Renault 5 (the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time) the official service car of the ministers. He reduced the salaries of all public servants, including his own, and forbade the use of government chauffeurs and 1st class airline tickets. He redistributed land from the feudal landlords and gave it directly to the peasants.
Sankara was assassinated by agents of imperialism in coup plot orchestrated by France on October 15, 1987.