Thu, 23 Feb 2017 09:59:37 +0000
ALTHOUGH no money changed hands in the Maizegate scandal which has claimed the job of Malawi’s minister of Agriculture there is need for an internal inquiry here in Zambia to establish a number of issues.
The most important of which is Transglobe a company which was not registered in Zambia or indeed Malawi itself and yet a permit was issued to transport maize into Malawi.
The parliamentary report indicates that officials from Transglobe met with Dr. Chaponda to discuss the deal intended to facilitate the shipment of the maize and from all indications Malawi must have convinced Zambia to release maize to Transglobe.
There is even a suggestion that the cost of transporting the maize was to be borne by the Zambia Cooperative Federation (ZCF).
By all accounts, the transaction is fraught with many unanswered questions that must be clarified in order to create clear standards and procedures of export to ensure that food security is maintained and that any exports must be well regulated.
There are indeed many lessons to be learnt from Malawi and the manner in which poor grain management can lead to bad planning culminating in a non-existent food crisis.
ADMARC, Malawi’s grain marketing authority, misled government into believing that a food crisis was imminent as a result of drought and yet the reality was that a lot of maize was still in the hands of small scale producers who could not be paid because there was no cash cover for the crop.
It was easier for ADMARC to declare a crisis and thereafter seek government support including a loan from the PTA Bank to import maize from Zambia among many other countries. The intention was to import 300,000 metric tonnes of maize which experts estimate as the minimum required to avert a crisis.
There was no such crisis. It was all a figment of the minds of “experts” who were determined to gain from imports through the manipulation of the crisis and ultimately transportation of the crop.
The ultimate loser in this entire exercise was the small scale farmer who was left with maize that could not be bought because the only money available were loans through Letters of Credit to purchase from outside Malawi.
This unfortunately is the scenario in most African countries where the word ‘research’ to identify real needs is never taken seriously resulting in huge expenditures of public resources from which only a selected few benefit.
The same can be said about our own input support programmes such as FISP intended to serve subsistence farmers to increase their output and improve food security. The intention equally was to wean off these farmers once they were stable and therefore, self-sustaining.
Sadly, that stage has not been reached and may never be reached because the ultimate beneficiaries have been large scale and commercial farmers who buy off the inputs at ridiculous prices.
Peasants are more interested in cash to meet their immediate needs and challenges. The result, therefore, is a spiral of never ending demand for inputs.
There is need for much more rigorous research to establish both the actual functional demand that will provide the requisite outcome.
It is not good enough to simply speculate and pour money into an exercise that in the end drains the treasury without reaching the intended recipients.
