One of Malawi’s Civil Society Organizations, People’s Federation for National Peace and Development (PEFENAP), has pleaded with the United Kingdom (UK) Government to reverse its decision of cutting aid to Malawi.
According to Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) Annual Report, the UK government is cutting aid to Malawi by more than 50 percent from £52 million (about K57 billion) per annum to £25 million (about K28 billion).
Reacting to the development, PEFENAP Executive Director Edward Chaka said this is bad news to the country since the scaling down of foreign assistance is likely to impact Malawians who were benefitting from UK Aid projects.
Chaka then asked the UK government to consider reversing this decision and has also asked other local CSOs and other UN agencies to talk with the UK government for a possible reversal of the decision.
“PEFENAP is appealing to local CSOs, Sister UN agencies to engage the U.K. government to reconsider reversing its decision as the consequences from the cuts could be fatal and may derail the 2063 Canaan agenda as well as undermine government achievement of global sustainable agendas (SDGs).
“Malawi has already witnessed a sharp increase in teenage pregnancies and child marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic, if the U.K. continues with its decision to reduce its resources that equip basic health infrastructure for women and girls to access family planning products, more girls and women will die of unsafe abortions,” said Chaka.
He added that with this cut in core budgetary support, Malawi needs to adjust its programming to take into account of finding other partners to support those programs or completely closing them.
However, he also said the aid cut should also be a wake-up call for Malawi to stop relying on donor aid saying the country have sculptures of programming that may sustain the country’s socio-economic development.
He is of the view that corruption, injustices in the country’s justice system and abuse of public resources remains a major contributory reason and recipe for relying to Donor AID a thing which he said should not be condoned anymore.
“Good and bad news altogether – Good that we make use of our available locally income generation structures work for us to stand on our toes. Bad news that the cut always put Malawians at a corner whereby we start believing in dying twice before the real death as a country – cowardice thinking,” he added.
He has since advised the National Planning Commission (NPC), a government entity to be more vibrant in overseeing framing and implementation of long-term development plans that would see the country being self-dependent in due course
