By Sylvester Kumwenda
Lilongwe, August 25, Mana: The National Planning Commission (NPC) will from August 27 to August 28 hold a National Development Conference to discuss national long-term development plans and the successor to Vision 2020, dubbed National Transformation 2063.
With the 1998 Vision 2020 coming to an end this year, the NPC under its mandate has been holding consultations in order to gather views from Malawians on the next developmental path they would like to see Malawi take.
During a press conference in Lilongwe on Tuesday, Director of Development Planning for NPC, Dr Grace Kumchulesi, said the development conference, which becomes the first for Malawi, will provide an opportunity for stakeholders to validate views gathered.
“As per our mandate, we have started the work of formulating the next vision, which will be a successor to vision 2020 and a lot of work has been done.
“There have been a lot of nationwide consultations which engaged different groups of people including the young at community, national and district levels.
“So this conference will validate the emerging issues from the consultations. What will be drafted into the next vision should be a true reflection of what Malawians would like to see. We want to have this vision ready by January 1, 2021,” she said.
The conference is expected to get together experts in different fields who will be able to provide insight, direction and advice on how particular matters could best be handled in order to achieve the objectives of the new vision.
This first development conference will be held under the theme “Beyond Political Freedom to Inclusive Wealth Creation and Self Reliance.
“What we are saying is that we have enjoyed political freedom for some time but we now have to think beyond that and thinking of inclusive wealth creation,” she said.
Kumchulesi said the year 2063 has been chosen as by then, Malawi will be enjoying about 100 years of independence.
He said there is need, therefore, for the country to align Malawi’s national development plan to Agenda 2063 which is a development plan guiding Africa and for Malawi to start thinking of sustainable development.
“We do not want just to be thinking about ourselves or our children, but we have to start thinking of later generations to come after them, so we want to be talking of sustainable development,” she said.
The conference will have both virtual and physical participants. This has been designed in order to observe COVID-19 preventative regulations and also to give an opportunity to people in diaspora to contribute towards the conference.
Kumchulesi said a lot of interventions have been in place to ensure there is continuity of development programs.
“Instituting the independent NPC is one of the ways itself as it will be coordinating implementation of developmental activities of various stakeholders so that they should all be at the same page.
“We will also be coming in to ensure that the capacities of the different stakeholders are enhanced, and we will also be tackling issues of Monitoring and Evaluation.
“These, to some extent, lacked in the ending Vision 2020,” she said.
President Dr Lazarus Chakwera is expected to officially open the conference. Moving forward, the conference is expected to be held on an annual basis.
