Featured Documentary: Education in Malawi

Malawi is one of the poorest and least-developed countries in the world, where over 40 percent of its population lives on less than a dollar a day. Even though primary education is compulsory and has been free for almost two decades, poor infrastructure and a chronic lack of resources means that not every child gets a shot at education.

Malawi is one of the poorest and least-developed countries in the world, where over 40 percent of its population lives on less than a dollar a day. Even though primary education is compulsory and has been free for almost two decades, poor infrastructure and a chronic lack of resources means that not every child gets a shot at education.

There are nearly a quarter of a million Malawian children aged six to 11 who have never been enrolled in school and officials will readily admit the country is unlikely meet its millennium development goal of ensuring every child completes a quality primary education by 2015. 

While enrolment numbers are rising, dropout rates, though improved, remain high. The proportion of students finishing 8-years of basic education is 53 percent for boys and 45 percent for girls.

Primary education has been free since 1994, but the system was ill-equipped to cope when attendance rates increased by more than a million in a year. Nearly 20 years later, the struggle to meet demand persists, with chronic shortages of both teachers and classrooms.

But the Malawian government has acknowledged the importance of education and development. This is evident from the national strategic paper approved in 2003 as well as various state investigations and surveys which have been carried out during the course of the last ten years.

Malawi was chosen by the Roger Federer Foundation owing to the particularly vulnerable situation currently facing this small, landlocked country in southeast Africa. The 2009 UN Human Development Report listed Malawi as the 13th poorest country in the world. Two-thirds of the country’s 14.2 million inhabitants get by on less than one dollar a day. Around half of the population of Malawi is under the age of 15, and AIDS represents a huge problem in the country.

In 2009, the foundation and Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest bank, established partnership with ActionAid, a regional development organisation headquartered in South Africa. Since 2009, 1 million dollars has been channelled through the Foundation each year, investing a majority of the funds in care and education projects in Malawi.

[quote] An estimated 92,000 children stand to benefit, either directly or indirectly, from this endeavour which could provide some much-needed hope and change in Malawi. [/quote]

This documentary series examines life in Malawi, particularly for the children who will be impacted by the Roger Federer Foundation and Credit Suisse.