Address by Joyce Banda

On the occasion of receiving the 1997 Africa Prize for Leadership

The Chairperson of the Hunger Project,

The Directors of the Hunger Project,

Your Excellency President Chissano of Mozambique,

Your Excellency W. Chokani - Malawi's Ambassador to USA,

Dr. Lubadili - Malawi's Permanent Representative to UN,

Malawi's Chief Justice Richard Banda,

Malawi's Minister of Women & Youth Affairs - Hon L Patel,

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is with a deep sense of humility that I rise to accept the 1997 Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger which this year is being celebrated jointly with the 20th Anniversary of the Hunger Project. I also feel greatly privileged and honoured to share this award with a distinguished son of Africa in the name of President Chissano. This prize, Mr Chairperson, is not only an honour for me personally but is also an honour for my own country Malawi and the National Association for Business Women, the Organisation I founded and work for. When you are so involved and fully engrossed in your cause, you do not know how much you have achieved until other people take stock of what you have done and recognise it. I am very grateful to the Hunger Project for the honour which I have received today.

I would like, Mr Chairman to thank the Hunger Project for its commitment to the promotion and empowerment. of the poor and the hungry in Africa. Malawi is a small country in Southern Africa the size of Pittsburgh. It shares borders with the Countries of Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania. It has a population of 11,000,000 with an annual rate of increase in population of 3.1%. Over 85% of the people live in the rural areas and are mainly dependent on subsistence farming for livelihood. 52% of the population are female and about 34% of the households are headed by women. Only 30% of the population is 'Literate. The World Bank has rated Malawi as one of the 13 poorest countries in the world, with 64% of its population living under the poverty line. Three quarters of Malawians are matrilineal and follow lineage from the mother. The mother is, therefore, the pillar of the family. The typical rural Malawian woman like most of her African sisters contributes 70% of labour for food production for the family; provides 50% of labour in domestic storage; does 100% of food processing, 50% in animal husbandry and 60% in marketing. Activities such as child care, sanitation and food preparation consume much of the woman's energy as she alone is responsible for daily work. In a study conducted in two villages in one of our districts, it was found that a woman's work day lasted 12 hours with household tasks taking between 1-6 hours. Gathering firewood and collecting water are the two major time consuming activities that are carried out by women. It takes a woman 5 hours a week to gather firewood and about 81/82 hours a week to collect water. The study also reported that women spend 39 days in a year caring for the sick or being sick themselves.

Most of these tasks involve arduous physical work and some of them are done over long distances, and yet must be performed daily with most crude tools, under rough conditions and with little or no training support, except from female children, whose destiny is always linked with their mothers. Against all these odds, the Malawi woman is expected to grow enough food for her family and yet extension services, credit, the control of land, livestock and other productive resources are in the control of males in the families ie: - uncles, brothers, husbands and chiefs.

Most Malawi Women marry early. The 1992 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) showed that the average age at marriage is 18 years, as compared to 24 years for men. By age 20, 3/4 of women are married, whereas fewer than one in five men are married by this age. Nearly all women are married by age 25. In this way their chances for acquiring a level of education that would open opportunities for a better life are reduced. Delaying marriage age at first marriage is one of the strategies for ensuring that girls persist in the education system discouraging early marriage so that they can have children when they are sufficiently mature.

This is the kind of environment in which I grew up. I got married at an early age and remained in a very unhappy marriage for ten years and after which I decided I could no longer continue my misery, and I divorced. I decided then that whether I remarried or not, I would never allow myself to be financially dependent on anybody again. I remarried in 1983 with a clearer vision of what I wanted to do with my life. Soon after, I started a business with one sewing machine, which my husband bought for me. After running my business for 4 years it became apparent to me that the success I had achieved as one of the largest women Garment Manufactures in the country was due to the support which my husband was giving me. All my banking transactions had to have his signature and I started to wonder what was happening to those women who did not have supportive husbands, as I was fortunate to have.

The business had helped me build up a lot of confidence in myself. My whole life had changed. I became more and more convinced that if the situation of women in my country was going to change for the better economic empowerment would be the key to that goal. Madam President there is a stubborn link between social economic and political empowerment. We do need to learn from our colleagues in other countries the compelling need to give economic issues equal time. If we had done that at independence, our countries should not be as impoverished as they are today. We first sought the "political kingdoms" and thought - that the economic kingdom would automatically fall into place. It did not; and now we have to do something for that neglect. History has and continues to show us that economically independent people are better able to negotiate for political freedom and social issues right from the family level. I am therefore more than convinced that women can gain some political power through the building of economic strength as entrepreneurs.

I fully agree with what the UNDP Human Development report says when it states that The Economic Empowerment of the Women, especially those living in poverty is one of the foundations on which sustainable human development must be built. Together with the political and social empowerment of women, it is the surest and only means of not only alleviating poverty in the short run but also of eradicating it and world hunger in the long term.

Studies have shown that women spend most of their income on their families. Food for the family is the highest ranking need among most women and especially among the poor. When women's income improves, the family is the first to benefit, and in our traditions where men eat first and best, men have become key beneficiaries of the women's economic empowerment programmes. Improved income allow women to buy seeds, fertilizers, more labour, afford technologies and therefore increase food production.

My desire to reach out and help other women grew and was driven by this ambition that I wanted to share with other women what I had gained from my own experience.

In February 1989 I visited the USA on a tour sponsored by USIS. During that tour I had the opportunity of holding meetings with several organisations such as the National Association of Women Business Owners. Back home in July 1989 I approached a few friends to explore the possibility of founding an Association of Business Women. This was at a time when Malawi was under one party dictatorship when everything had to be approved by the President. After obtaining the necessary approval which was granted after 18 months of bureaucratic procedures the National Association of Business Women (NABW) was registered in December 1990.

NABW's Mission is to promote the growth of businesses belonging to women and to encourage many more enter business. We fulfill this mission by accessing our members to credit, training, information and markets. We also act as a mouthpiece for our members. We have 15,000 members 60% of whom are rural women. As a matter of policy no woman gets a loan before she opens her own bank account. This we believe, gives her control over her income.

Our strength is the machinery we have down to grassroots level. Drawn from our membership of over 15,000 members country-wide, we have a committee of ten in each of the 26 districts of the country. No woman is eligible for election to this committee if she is not a Community Leader. We have a National Committee of 12 members elected from the membership. Each member on the committee heads a sector i.e Handicrafts, Services, Tourism, Garment Manufacturing etc. We have a Secretariat staff comprising 23 members of paid members. The supreme body of the Organisation is the general membership which exercises its authority through the Annual General Meeting, which is attended by the membership. Major decisions are made at these meetings.

Over the past 18 months we have disbursed US$2,500,000 in small loans and the organisation has trained 12,000 women over the past 5 years in different areas of business management and skills.

In our lending schemes, because women cannot afford collateral which most financial institutions require we use the peer pressure concept. The women get loans in groups of 5 to 8 people with one of them acting as leader for each group. This leader will ensure that each loanee repays the money and no member of the group will be eligible for another loan before the first loan is paid. Each group is required to open up a savings account to enable the group to build up their own capital and grow their businesses. Loans can be as small as US$50. Because of the system we follow our repayment rate is 85 to 90%. When women get to the main stream of the economy they are encouraged to join mixed organisations because by then they will have built confidence in themselves. In this way we have gained the confidence of other organisations and government and as a result we are always invited to all consultative meetings between the public and private sectors. We have been included on the Trade Missions to represent the private sector abroad.

Supported by UNFPA in July 1996 we launched a special program consistent with our Mission to provide information. We are providing family planning services and AIDS Prevention Education for our members. Through this programme the linkages between fertility control, economic empowerment and decision-making have been demonstrated.

Again supported by the Centre for International Private Enterprise we are implementing a Project on "Private Sector Agenda for the Economic Empowerment of Women in Malawi". This project is designed to build and strengthen NABW's capacity as an independent organisation, to develop and bring into play a much expanded, more highly targeted and results oriented, Private/Public Sector interaction which moves successfully from rhetoric to specific actions:

Under this project, NABW proposes to provide Malawi with a Private Sector focused plan of action for increasing the participation of women in the economic and political development of the country. The project builds on NABW's experience with developing and expanding business opportunities for women by operating across political and social boundaries.

I count myself fortunate that I have had the opportunity to work with many women and witness their growth from a point of not knowing where to get the next meal to feed their family to levels of financial independence that have placed them in the mainstream of business and this allows them to provide all the needs for their business, and families; moving them from being abused wives to respected mothers, wives and partners. I have watched these same women start sharing in decision making for their families. I have seen these women slowly reach out to help their families and neighbours. This often has resulted in their building enough confidence to stand for elections in other activities in their communities and quickly move all the way up to the policy formulating tables on National Organisations, parliamentary seats and State Corporations.

So what has NABW achieved? How has NABW affected or changed lives of our members? Mr. Chairman I will briefly give a typical example of testimony which many women have recounted to me: -

Six months ago a woman called Dorica came to my office and said "Mrs. Banda, I came to thank you for changing my life. I attended your meeting a year ago and among other things you said to us ‘The day you become financially independent, your household will be the first to feel the improvement'. You said that as we provide a better life for our families, we will gain respect from our husbands and children. Mum, it has happened to me. My husband works as a watchman. He never provided for the family. He beat me up constantly. I used to feed my children thick porridge with wild vegetables, but now I am able to provide food and clothing for my children. By the end of 3 months of running my business, I could buy a kilo of meat at US$2.50. I have even bought my husband a suit. I am able to take my children to fee paying hospitals and better schools. My husband involves me in the decisions we have to make in the family. I even told him in the face that I was not going to have any more children and did not get beaten up for it. And you know what mum, I have been elected to a local committee of the political party that I support". I sat there listening to her with great joy realizing that many more women in my country are slowly achieving similar empowerment, even though we are still limited in the numbers we can assist. There are many similar moving stories and we have decided that one way of giving hope to women is to document them for our records and for sharing with others in Malawi and elsewhere. This is a story which is repeated to me time and again. These stories give me a great deal of satisfaction to know that in our modest way we have managed to change the lives of our members. The effect of what all these women have said is that NABW has enabled their families to have a better standard of living and above all they have decent meals at their homes. NABW is therefore, although in a small way and within its limited resources helping to end Hunger in Malawi.

Once again I am delighted to accept the Prize which in a way is a resounding tribute to the women of my country who have refused to sit back and wait for handouts but have decided to do something about their situation. It is their determination and commitment to change their lives for the better which has given me the force and encouragement to continue to help in a small way in improving their lot.

On their behalf I say thank you.