Chakwera tells Mzuzu University graduates: ‘The future we want is captured in Malawi Vision 2063’
President Lazarus Chakwera has challenged the graduates of Mzuzu University (Mzuni) to turn their minds towards the study and mastery of the national development blueprint Vision 2063, which succeeded Vision 202.
Chakwera was speaking when he presided over the first congregation as Chancellor of Mzuzu University which was held virtually on Friday.
The vision, dubbed MW2063, is an aspiration and a successor to Vision 2020 which sought to make Malawi secure, democratically mature, environmentally sustainable and self-reliant with equal opportunities for and active participation by all.
The crafters of MW2063 envisage Malawi using lessons learned in the Vision 2020 in propelling the country forward. The long-term goals are part of the global developmental framework and anchored “to the global Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs], including their variants moving forward; the continental Agenda 2063 that defines the Africa we want, and the strategies of the Regional Economic Communities to which [Malawi] belongs.”
“I therefore feel duty-bound to remind all of you graduating today that the future we want is captured in Malawi’s Vision 2063, which we all launched together as a nation last month.
“You are the first cohort of Malawians to graduate from University since that launch, which means you are the first Malawians to graduate into an era of implementing that vision. You
may have laboured day and night for many months to study books on various subjects and to master various disciplines to get here, but in Mzuni’s spirit of embracing progressive change, I call on you to now turn your minds towards the study and mastery of that national vision we share for the future of our country,” said Chakwera.
He continued: “I call on you to study and master it not for the purpose of receiving a credential after so doing, but for the purpose of identifying some part of that vision that you will personally dedicate your life to turn into a reality. “
The President said in pursuing the national vision is an enterprise that calls on those wqho have graduated to “create solutions that do not yet exist in order to solve problems we have not yet faced.”
He said: “ It is an enterprise that not only requires embracing progressive changes in the world around you, but also requires advancing progressive changes into the future ahead of you. It is an enterprise that will put the full array of your talents and training to good use, thus producing the outcomes that higher education is meant to produce.”
Quoting Daniel Coit Gilman, who served as the first president of Johns Hopkins University in 1876, Chakwera said the intended outcome of higher education is not a good job or a good qualification or a good title.
The intended outcome of higher education is “less misery among the poor, less ignorance in schools, less bigotry in the temple, less suffering in the hospital, less fraud in business, less folly in politics,” he quoted.
Said Chakwera: “If we look at our society today and do not see these outcomes, then we must accept that ours is a society without many truly educated people in. This legacy of educational institutions that produce educated fools that are ill-suited to create solutions to the problems we face today and curate solutions to the problems we will face tomorrow is a legacy that should embarrass us.”
The Vice Chancellor John Kalenga Saka said a team of 15 youthful lecturers was put in place to contribute towards the realisation of Malawi 2063 Agenda.
National Planning Commission (NPC) , an independent institution established by an Act of Parliament in 2017, is mandated to formulate the medium and long-term development plans of the country and coordinate their implementation, says agriculture productivity and commercialisation, resource-based industrialisation and urbanisation will form the economic backbone of the Vision 2063.
NPC director general Thomas Chataghalala Munthali said the pillars—which are inter-related and inter-dependent and are key to inclusive wealth creation and self-reliance.
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