Challenges Facing Muslims in Malawi

Muslims in Malawi face a number of socio-economic challenges and organizational.  The section below looks at some of these challenges.

1.0 SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHALLENGES

Most of the socio-economic challenges Muslims face includes economy (poverty), participation in Government social development projects, education, and health.

1.1 Economy (Poverty)

The economy of Malawi is agro-based with unemployment rate of 9%. Out of the total labor force of 82%, 60% depend on agriculture which in a large part is subsistent. Statistics have further revealed that 81% of the subsistent rural farmers own less than one hectare of land, despite the fact that 97% of the entire crop production in the country, 98% of which is maize, is produced by these rural farmers. [1] Muslims approximately constitute 60% of these rural farmers.

According to the latest Welfare Monitoring survey, 50% of Malawians live below the poverty line and 21% of these are considered ultra-poor. It is also worthy noting that 53% of these poor people live in the rural areas while only 24% live in the urban areas. The figures also indicate that poverty is most prevalent in the Southern region recording 60%, where one finds the highest concentration of Muslims, as compared to 51% on the Northern Region and 46% in the Central Region.

It is also important to mention here that poverty in Malawi is highly linked to education levels of household heads. Recent statistics indicate that people living with illiterate household heads of which Muslims top the list, have a higher risk of being poor than those living with literate household heads, 64% and 44% respectively. [2]

However, as lamented elsewhere in this document, Muslims need to mount a deliberate research to come up with specific statistics on the levels of poverty across the country instead of using proxies or extrapolating from other findings.

1.2 Participation in Government Social Development Projects

Social development projects in Malawi are either survival in nature and once-off in terms of implementation, as is the case with food for work and public works programs (bridge construction etc) where results are more tangible and immediate, or long term service and social oriented in nature as is the case with community policing programs where results are less tangible and requiring a certain level of appreciation for long-term planning.

Statistics indicate that the Southern Region where Muslims are in large numbers, register the highest participation levels in public works and food for work programs, 14% and 16% respectively, followed by the Central region, 12% and 5%, and lastly Northern Region, 8% and 5% respectively.  The trend is completely opposite when it comes to community policing where such participation requires social awareness of the security concerns of the community and require some elements of planning. The results indicate participation rate of 4% in the Southern Region as compared to 4% and 3% respectively for Central and Northern regions.

While the participation rates above are far from being favorable at a national scale, the figures show that they are even less favorable for the Muslims.

Next...Education

[1] Ibid

[2] Ibid