Hansard

As has just been mentioned, during Parliament’s February recess, I visited Malawi along with my colleagues Liam McArthur and Elaine Smith on behalf of the CPA’s Scotland branch. As was also mentioned, we discussed committee processes with members of the Malawian National Assembly. It was eye-opening to hear about the difficulties that Malawi’s parliamentarians face in arranging committees, often due to time and cost constraints. They appeared to take a lot from our input. We have just heard the advert for the report, which all members should go and read immediately.

It seemed clear to me that that cross-parliamentary relationship has a tangible impact, not only on parliamentarians in Malawi but on members of our Parliament who take part in such visits. I hope that such engagement continues. As an aside, at the last meeting of the cross-party group on Malawi, it was really nice to see a couple of the young Malawian clerks, who were over here on an intern programme.

As Elaine Smith said, while we were in Malawi, we visited a number of projects that are supported by Scottish organisations, such as charities and schools. I was thrilled to attend Matindi girls academy, which is part of Mary's Meals. One of the classrooms at the school was built with the support of the pupils, staff and parents of Langside primary school in my constituency, and part financed by my old school, Holyrood secondary school. When I returned, I visited Langside primary school to discuss my trip with the pupils and to show them what their great work and support have helped to achieve in Malawi.

I took over to Malawi a generous donation of boots, balls and football strips from Queen’s Park Football Club, which is based at Hampden in my constituency. They ended up with those unfortunate young men in the young offenders institution.

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending Queen’s Park’s annual dinner, where I spoke to George Watson from the Spiders’ community team, who arranged the football equipment for my trip. He has a long-term interest in supporting Malawi, and we got talking about his latest trip to the village of Ekwendeni in north Malawi. It was his second successive year visiting the village, but this time he went with 14 folk, all from the southside of Glasgow, who went to share their knowledge and expertise.

Within that group were musicians, nurses, doctors, teachers and football coaches. They were based in the local church and, in the mornings, they helped to run a holiday club that offered 400 kids activities such as crafts, singing, music, hockey, parachute games—I am not really sure what they are—and, of course, football. As well as getting to take part in the activities, each child got a cup of porridge, and for some that would be their only meal of the day. In the afternoons, George worked for two to three hours with a group of coaches from the area to put on a course of coach education sessions. He challenged the coaches to put on a football festival on the last day of his visit, and more than 400 children took part in what was a remarkably well-run competition.

As we know, in many places football is the community’s lifeblood, but it was largely unco-ordinated in that area. George noted that there was the will to have an organised outfit, and that having such an organisation would make it easier for Queen’s Park to offer targeted support. At the dinner, he told me that his advice has been taken on board and that the Ekwendeni community football group has been established and a chair and office bearers put in place. Since then, Queen’s Park has been able to send over more football and other resources to assist with further development in the area for boys and girls of all ages. That is another brilliant example of how the relationship between Scotland and Malawi works at a practical, grass-roots level.

Because of the strategy that this Parliament has been working towards under successive Governments, there are countless examples across the country of groups and organisations just like Queen’s Park that are using their resources and expertise to empower people in Malawi.

One of the messages that we repeatedly received when we were in Malawi was that the co-operation agreement and the relationship between the two countries work so well because we both see the relationship as one of equals. Apparently, that is not always the case with some of the other arrangements that Malawi is involved in. At the heart of this successful arrangement between our two countries is the co-operation of equals.

As someone who has seen the benefits at first hand and has heard from others about their relationships with groups across Malawi, I commend the co-operation agreement between Scotland and Malawi to the Parliament, and I look forward to the next decade of our growing relationship with that beautiful country and its lovely, friendly people.