Malawi Ambassador to the USA, Ambassador Edward Y Sawerengera had a meeting with Malawians residing in Dallas Texas on Sunday 5th November, 2017. The meeting was held at the Holy Covenant United Methodist Church.
Ambassador Sawerengera briefed Malawians gathered at the meeting on the state of the economy of the Malawi and the electricity situation. He also talked of the status of the education sector in Malawi. He closed his remarks with an explanation on the Diaspora Engagement Policy in which he outlined its priority areas. He concluded by urging the gathering to attend the Malawi Diaspora Conference that would be held in September 2018 in New York.
Malawians raised a number of issues for discussions amongst them being the status of Dual Citizenship, land acquisition, voting in the Diaspora, National Identity Card Registration, Mobile Money and support towards funeral costs.
The discussion on the power sector, centered on ESCOM’s recent unbundling into two units: ENGENCO for power generation and ESCOM as a distributing unit. The generation was liberalized to allow independent power operators to sell their own power. This is a great opportunity that the Diaspora can take advantage of and invest in power generation plants, no matter how small, in the country.
On stabilization of the power sector, the Ambassador mentioned of the construction of two power stations; a 350MW coal plant at Kam’mwamba being constructed by a Chinese company to be ready by the end of 2018 and Hydro power plant at Mpatamanga which is being built with support from the World Bank and is expected to be ready by 2021
On the Dual Citizenship, Ambassador Sawerengera said that “This is a very important issue which affects the Malawi Constitution as such there is need to carefully examine all areas that would be affected by the introduction of such a change before matter is concluded”.
On the National Registration, he said that the exercise was still in progress in Malawi and would be extended to the Diaspora once all areas are covered in the country. Meanwhile, the Diaspora can register with their home districts whenever they visit Malawi. He further advised the grouping that voting in the Diaspora may take longer to implement because of cost implications. It is important to ensure that proper arrangements are put in place to ensure that the elections are fair and transparent.
On Banking, Malawians indicated that they are eager for a day they would be able to transfer money to Malawi without passing through a Bank. It was noted that the regulations are conducive for further development of the money mobile sector; however, there could be challenges on the technology to accommodate such transactions.
Before concluding the meeting, Malawians were urged to be united and consider of coming up with significant investments in Malawi.