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Abstract:
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This document constitutes a country position paper on poverty and employment in Malawi. It aims at analysing the possibilities of using employment and increased income opportunities as a means to poverty reduction in the country.
Unlike capital or land, labour is a resource that the poor have in abundance. Translating their labour into income through employment and other productive activities would be one important strategy for reducing poverty among them. This implies expanding employment and income generating opportunities for the poor people, and particularly those that live in the rural areas. The government of Malawi has taken several initiatives to improve access to opportunities for generation of employment especially in the micro, small and medium enterprises. This follows the realisation that the formal sector has not substantially grown over the past years.
The author recommends that the strategy to be followed would need to elaborate institutional linkages and networks. Specific institutions would be deliberately selected to act as the key process drivers. These would be given specific mandates, and their capacity built to the level that they could effectively engineer the required change. |