Meeting of the Parliament 11 November 2015
I am pleased to make a brief contribution about the links between my constituency of Dumfriesshire and Malawi. The first project that I will talk about is the collaboration between the Dumfries campus of Scotland’s Rural College and researchers from Malawi, which has been going on for more than seven years. It started as a staff exchange project that involved work on improving milk yield and quality, but it was developed further by a research group under Dr Mizeck Chagunda of Scotland’s Rural College in Dumfries. In that project, researchers negotiated free airtime with a local mobile phone provider and signed up 80 farmers who texted in information on their cows’ milk production. If the yields were not as expected, the farmers were provided with advice by an extension worker.
Several other partnerships have followed with Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Mzuzu University to train farmers, extension workers, development managers, researchers and trainers. Eight postgraduate students and one postdoctoral scientist have been involved, 22 experts have worked between Scotland and Malawi and 28 farmers and 43 extension workers have been trained in forage production, feeding, animal breeding and data recording. Dr Chagunda received a special achievement award at the Malawi Association UK’s awards ceremony in April this year in recognition of his services to the Scotland and Malawi relationship.
Also this year, a former student at SRUC’s campus in Dumfries, Bettie Sindi Kawonga, received recognition in the shape of a $150,000 prize for her concept of incubation centres to help young unemployed people to become dairy entrepreneurs. That addresses two problems that are faced in Malawi—youth unemployment and low agricultural productivity. Bettie is now a lecturer at Bunda College of Agriculture, but she studied for her MSc in Dumfries, funded through the Scottish Government’s international development fund, and during that time she did very useful work with local primary schools.
The other initiative that I will describe briefly was launched only in August, but it has already achieved considerable success. Jan Jamieson was a primary teacher and headteacher in Dumfries and Galloway when, sadly, she died of cancer at the age of only 47. She and her husband, Sandy, had been involved through their church in projects that support young people in Malawi. After her death, her family felt that the best way to remember her commitment both to education and to Malawi was to launch a foundation to support young people in Malawi who have the academic ability to progress through secondary school and further education but do not have the financial resources.
In recognition of the importance of educating women and the educational disadvantage that girls suffer compared with their brothers, in the first instance, the foundation proposed raising funds specifically to support girls for at least four years and then possibly on through university. Amazingly, the sum that is required to support one girl through one year of education is only £150. Since the end of August, the foundation has undertaken an incredible programme of fundraising that has involved several local primary schools, and it has already raised funds to support 11 girls who are capable of academic achievement but who would otherwise not have had the opportunity.
At the foundation’s launch, Sandy Jamieson told an illustrative story, which might have been of Malawian origin. A small boy came across a huge number of starfish that had been washed ashore on a beach during a storm. He set about trying to throw them back, one by one, into the sea. A passing adult asked why he was bothering when so many had been washed up, as the boy could not make much difference. The boy responded by returning another starfish to the sea and stating, “It makes a difference to that one.” Global poverty can appear overwhelming when we look at it in its totality, but many projects are making a difference one by one to the lives of some of the poorest people in our world.
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