Vice President Saulos Chilima, a well-known advocate for mindset change and business unusual approach to issues, is this Friday set to speak at the Wealth Creation and Mindset Change conference organised by Sycamore Consult Limited at Crossroads hotel in Blantyre.
Spokesperson for the Vice President confirmed the development, adding that the Vice President who is also Minister for Economic Planning and Development will speak at the conference on the context of the MW2063 – the country’s development blue print – which centres on wealth creation and has mindset change as one of its seven enabler.
“So yes, I can confirm that the Vice President will address the conference this Friday in Blantyre,” Phiri said.
The MW2063 blue print identifies agriculture productivity and commercialization, industrialisation and urbanization as the main three pillars whose implementation will be spearheaded by seven seven enablers.
The seven enablers are mindset change, effective governance systems and institutions, enhanced public sector performance, private sector dynamism, human capital development, economic infrastructure and environmental sustainability
Some of the topics to be tackled during the upcoming conference include wealth creation at the workplace, developing a wealth creation mindset, business capital raising, entrepreneurship, developing a saving and investment culture, agriculture for wealth creation in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), and creating business and personal wealth on the stock exchange.
In his landmark mindset lecture delivered in Lilongwe on October 2020, Chilima challenged Malawians on the need to change their mindset, as a precursor to personal development, national development and the smooth implementation of public sector reforms.
Said Chilima: “We have become a nation too obsessed with trivia. We no longer get interested in life changing discussions. We need to change this.”
Meanwhile, Managing Director for Sycamore Consult Audrey Mwala has said it is high time Malawians “de-programed” their negative mindset and replace it with a new mindset of wealth creation if the country is to prosper as envisioned by the Malawi 2063.
Mwala, Malawi’s renowned specialist in Private Public Partnership (PPP), business due diligence, financial management and project management, told The Nation Online that there is so much negativity and wrong thinking that make Malawi as country to fail to move forward
Said Mwala: “ There is so much negativity, there is so much wrong thinking that make Malawi as country to fail to move forward. So we want people to have a new mindset, we want people to have new mindset, we want to de-program the mindset of existing people, reprogram it with new mindset so that they should begin to see different things, take different risks, have different perspectives so that when we create a new person out of that, then we will be able to allow that person to create wealth.”
Mwala said the reality is that today, Malawians are demanding too much goods and services because of exposure to the international community and also due to population boom-which she said is rapidly rising relative to the availability of resources and infrastructure.
According to Mwala, Malawi’s neighbouring countries such as Zambia have their own per-capita income-which is derived by dividing total national output or income by the population size-exceeds $1000 mark yet Malawi’s per-capita or average income is way below.
Malawi’s per capita income is only at around $603 as of end 2020 from $228 in 1996.
Experts contend that such a status quo is not worth smiling considering that such an increase is on account of the recent rebasing of GDP by the National Statistical Office (NSO) which saw nominal GDP increasing to $10.9 billion in 2020 from about $8 billion in 2019.