A Dirty Word Called 'Development'

By: Edem Djokotoe | 09/23/2010

Chapananga is a remote chiefdom on Malawi’s southern border with Mozambique. It is four and a half hours of meandering mountainous road and hard driving from Blantyre, the commercial capital of the country, where Nation Publications Limited, my host organization, is headquartered.

In a month and a half’s time when the rains start, the area will be inaccessible by road transport, including their sturdiest and most reliable of 4x4’s. This is because the Mwanza River and the three other tributaries of the Shire that flow through this rural outpost will have burst their banks, like they do every year, cutting the area off from Chikhwawa, where the only government hospital in the district is located. Chapananga is not a honeymoon destination by any stretch of the imagination, but it epitomizes the challenges of development in rural Africa and the tribulations of the millions of people who have been consigned by fate to live and die there.

People like Lusita Benelado, 26, who, less than 24 hours before we arrived in Chapananga, had given birth to a baby girl on the banks of the Mwanza River. She was walking her way to the nearest health center about 20 kilometers from her village when her baby made up its mind to arrive.

If Lusita had had her baby three years ago, she probably would have been delivered by a traditional birth attendant (or TBA) in her village. TBA’s have been an integral part of the national public health system for over 40 years, having been trained by government in conjunction with UNFPA through the Ministry of Health. However, early last year, Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika banned traditional birth attendants and decreed that in the interest of safe motherhood, pregnant women would have to deliver in health facilities. But how the directive is affecting pregnant women in parts of the country where public health facilities are thin or virtually non-existent is something the local media has not investigated.

Both Lusita and her young daughter were fine. But from the comfort zone of the Blantyre newsroom where I was sitting, I felt that this was a story worth pursuing for one main reason: maternal mortality is a development indicator and a Millennium Development Goal. I also felt that it would give me an opportunity to go into the field with a reporter, test run my mentoring approaches, and at the end of the day have a tangible editorial product to measure the training objectives by. Another thing: if management was happy with the outcome of the collaboration between me, the reporter and the subeditor who worked on the story, they would not only support me but help me to achieve the objectives of the Fellowship.

That was how I found myself heading to Chapananga exactly one month after I touched down at Chileka Airport to begin my Fellowship. I travelled with a young correspondent called Bobby Kabango who worked for Fuko, the weekly vernacular edition of the Nation newspaper. Fuko means “Nation” in Chichewa, the widest spoken language in Malawi. Bobby was the only one the paper could spare even though he is not employed full time, but the Weekend Nation Editor, George Kasakula instructed him to do an English version report for his paper.

The two-part English series we worked on, in collaboration with Emmanuel Luciano, the sub-editor, and the Weekend Nation editor, appeared in the paper on September 11 and 18. I couldn’t read the version that appeared in Fuko, but the paper’s editor, Claude assures me that he is happy with the depth and attention to detail in the article and hopes that I will work with Bobby on future assignments. “Bobby is the most reliable correspondent I have. Without him, this paper would suffer,” he said.

Sadly, Bobby can’t be employed until further notice because the government ban of advertising in the Nation has severely affected the company’s income.

But then all the other editorial departments are suffering from a serious shortage of staff and it is unlikely the situation will improve any time soon. Evidently, this raises implications for my Fellowship, particularly when it comes to putting together a comprehensive in-house training program on reporting, researching, writing and editing development stories.

For now, I am taking things one day at a time, working with reporters, editors and sub-editors at story at a time. Even as I write, the editor of the Nation’s Chichewa agriculture supplement, Herbert Chandilanga has asked me to help him conceptualize and plot his next edition. The four-page supplement is expected to catalogue the needs and challenges of rural farmers with the hope that policy makers and implementers will step up to the plate and put measures in place to help them. Of course, considering that I don’t speak a word of Chichewa, I won’t be able to evaluate the outcome of my interventions. The best I can do, under these peculiar circumstances, is to take Herbert’s word for it. For my part, I will help Herbert to tap into available expertise as part of the assignment, advising him to knock on the doors of agriculturists and scientists from the country’s research institutes to see what kind of technical solutions to the problems farmers face he can get from there.

Farming is the big story in Malawi these days, with the government basking in the glory of transforming the country from one heavily dependent on imported maize food to one that exports the commodity in five years. However, this is mainly because government is subsiding farming inputs, particularly fertilizer and seed, at great cost and with support from international development partners, including the European Union.

The sustainability of the farm input subsidy program is a touchy political issue and the Nation is treading very carefully in what it says and how it says it. As things stand, the newspaper company is already feeling the pinch of the government ban on advertising. In short, building capacity at the paper to cover Development will not be without its challenges.

Hopefully, the classroom should provide some respite to the challenges of development reporting in the newsroom in a country where the political leadership is intolerant of media and public criticism of its programs.

In the next two weeks, I should start teaching a Development Journalism course to working journalists pursuing a diploma course in Journalism at the Polytechnic, a constituent college of the University of Malawi.

Editors Note: Knight Fellow Edem Djokotoe travels to the remote city of Chapananga to report on lack of health facilities for pregnant mothers in remote parts of Malawi.

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