Malawi Business press

One weak aspect of our new democracy is the press. Democracy demands an informed electorate and this requires an informed press.

Taking one aspect of our political debate – the economy – our press is singularly uninformative. Usually news consists of press handouts from the PR departments of the private sector and NGOs: “Toyota gives away two minimum buses” . There is no critical examination of these handouts (often dished out during a luncheon or cocktail) and no follow up.

 

Numbers matter in economic analysis.  Now try and make sense of this excerpt from The Malawi Times:

“In 2005 cotton farmers covered 88,535 hectares (10,000 square metres) which resulted in 506,363 metric tonnes of production while in 2008 area coverage was 69,826 hectares representing a downfall of 18,709 hectares.

Cotton production has been peaking that 2006 recorded 56,563 metric tonnes- increasing considerably to 62,233 in 2007, 63,290 in 2007 and 76,761 during 2008. Production is expected to improve this year following some relatively improved pricing at last year’s markets.”

Quite often economic news on Malawi appears in the foreign media but not in our local press. Ironically, the foreign media reports are written by Malawi journalists attached to the international media. So it is unlikely that the reporters for the domestic market are unaware of all this. It seems they do not belive it impoart for the locals.

 

The poor quality cannot be blamed on poor finamces. Our local papers allocate more space to advertysing than is normal  in African countries. Indeed there seems to be no norms about how much space can be taken up by ads in Malawi.