Children and Youth Development in Malawi

Both local and international actors agree that in just one generation,the human gains derived from various well designed and wellimplemented programmes in child and child development can help breakthe cycles of poverty, disease and violence that affect so manycountries.The World Bank says ensuring healthy child development is aninvestment in a country's future workforce and capacity to thriveeconomically and as a society.

The benefits of investing children andyouth development encourage greater social equity, increase theefficacy of other investments, and address the needs of mothers whilehelping their children. Policies that seek to remedy deficits incurredin the early years are much more costly than initial investments inthe early years.

Yet, according to United Nations Children’s fund (UNICEF), the earlychildhood years tend to receive the least attention and lowestinvestment from governments, as every year, countless numbers ofchildren are stopped in their tracks – deprived, in one way oranother, of the love, care, nurturing, health, nutrition andprotection that they need to survive, grow, develop and learn. Itestimates that nearly 11 million children each year – about 30,000children a day – die before reaching their fifth birthday, mostly frompreventable causes. Of these children, 4 million die in their firstmonth of life.In many of the world’s poorest countries, child mortality rates haveeither not changed or else they have worsened. In sub-Saharan Africa,child mortality averages 173 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Accordingto the Malawi Multiple Indicator Cluster (MICS) 2006 survey, whichGovernment in collaboration with UNICEF officially launched in Julylast year, the maternal mortality remains at 807 per 100,000 livebirths in the country, which means Malawi still has one of the highestmaternal mortality rates in the world, even though the trends showthere has been substantial improvement in recent years. The infantmortality rate is estimated at 72 per 1000 live births, while the under five mortality is 122 per 1000 per 1000 births, according toestimates for five years preceding the survey.

It is clear, therefore, that Malawi needs to make substantialinvestment in Early Childhood and as well as youth development (themajority of whom face unemployment today) if the country is to makemeaningful progress in winning the battle to alleviate poverty for thebenefit of the generations to come.