Muslim Representation Vis-a-vis Country's Authorities

Muslims in Malawi are least represented in the country’s strategic institutions. The case in point is the current on-going constitutional review process where out of the 25 selected special law commissioners entrusted with the review of the constitution, only two Muslims were present who in fact were selected in other capacities other than to represent the Muslim interests.

The other area where Muslim participation is absent is in the production of the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy paper, which is the overarching development framework for the country. The stakeholders consulted were largely from the civil service and no Muslim name appears on the list; an obvious consequence given the few numbers of Muslims employed in the Government. The other major stakeholder group is the legislature and no Muslim Member of Parliament appears in the list, an obvious consequence given the fact that we have less than 20 Muslim Members of Parliament out of the total of 193 legislatures in the country. The other significant group was cabinet ministers and no Muslim cabinet minister was mentioned where only 5 ministers are Muslims in a 35 member cabinet.

Related to the above is the evident, conspicuous and painful absence of Muslims in benefiting from the widely implemented National Economic Empowerment policy. The policy aims at ‘bringing about socio-economic transformation to enable the poor in Malawi (muslims forming the major part) to be in a position to make their own decisions that will determine and control their economic destiny by making them share in the ownership, control, and management of the country’s wealth thereby increasing their participation in the formal economy in Malawi’.[1]

A number of programs have been initiated and implemented in line with the policy aimed at improving access to financial capital ie privatization and microfinance loan schemes; training ie the setting up of small and medium enterprise training institutes such as SEDOM, DEMATT, and MEDI; business advice and information services and promotion of technology just to mention a few. Muslims have not benefited from any of these initiatives thereby making them perpetually vulnerable within the poverty circle.

The other government area where Muslim presence is inadequate is in the parastatal board membership. Only 30 Muslims are spread in various boards where in each case they constitute insignificant minorities against the total number of close to 200 members present in various boards. The rest of the membership is filled with Christians.

In fact the above Muslim underrepresentation further undermines their effective participation in the development activities of the country. Indeed coupled with the above education difficulties, such state of under representation helps to effectively lock them out of the development endeavors and initiatives of the country thereby perpetually condemning the majority of the Malawian Muslims to poverty.

  Muslim Relations with the Muslim World