By Hopewell Chin’ono
President Peter Mutharika of Malawi and his Vice-President Dr Jane Ansah made calls for prayers so that God would give Malawi rain due to a dry spell. I find this weird and truly ridiculous. Praying is okay, but praying for rain in Malawi’s case shows a failure to understand nature and science, and it is truly an insult to God.
If Malawi is facing water problems and agricultural disruption from dry spells, the starting point of the conversation should be infrastructure development, not prayer.
Malawi is home to one of the largest freshwater bodies on the planet, Lake Malawi, a lake that holds about 8,400 cubic kilometres of water. It is not a seasonal dam, it is is a permanent, renewable freshwater reserve capable of supplying the whole of Malawi’s domestic, agricultural, and industrial needs many times over.
The issue here is not that God forgot to give Malawi water. The water is already there and in abundance. The real issue is that the country has not invested adequately in the required pipelines, pumping stations, treatment plants, irrigation canals, and national distribution systems to move that water from the lake to farms, towns, and cities.
Malawi only needs US$3 billion to push water from Lake Malawi to every village and city, only US$3 billion. Malawi loses US$1.5 billion to corruption every year. Malawi needs prayers to help stop corruption, not to ask for water, it is there already, it only needs pumping.
Malawi already has a price reference point for the Salima to Lilongwe Water Supply Project, which is designed to move lake water inland to the capital, it will cost only US$315 million.
Prayers do not lay pipes. Fasting does not build dams. Church services do not construct irrigation schemes.
If anything, believers could argue that divine provision has already been made through geography. A country blessed with a lake of that magnitude has been given a natural strategic resource.
The responsibility of leadership is to convert that natural resource into food security through engineering, not religious sermons.
Nations that take water security seriously, like Israel in the region where Jesus was born, build transfer canals, national irrigation grids, and agro-water corridors. That is how they drought-proof agriculture.
So when leaders respond to climate change problems primarily with calls for national prayers, it raises a governance question. Are they capable to lead? Are they mobilising faith, or are they substituting policy failure with religiosity?
Malawi does not need rain water to survive during dry spells. It needs infrastructure to utilise the water it already has in Lake Malawi. I have always said that religion is misused especially in Africa, what we need is more common sense and not prayers.
Religion is misused to cover incompetence and to mask corruption by the political elite.
Lake Malawi has more than enough water to supply the entire country many times over. It holds an estimated 8,400 cubic kilometres of freshwater. Malawi’s population is about 20 million people. So even if each person used 100 litres of water per day, that equals 2 billion litres per day, or 0.002 cubic kilometres per day, which is about 0.000024 percent of the lake’s capacity.
At that rate, the lake could theoretically supply the country for thousands of years without depletion, because natural inflows from rivers and rainfall continue to replenish it. So dont misuse God’s name, build infrastructure, the money is there, don’t just steal and abuse it.
Malawi must look at what Ethiopia did. The Ethiopian leadership did not ask Ethiopians to pray for divine intervention. They built a dam called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to generate electricity to power national development, industry, and water infrastructure across the country.
Malawi already has Lake Malawi, it just needs to build infrastructure to pipe and push the water around the country. Stop the looting, build infrastructure!
the country for thousands of years without depletion, because natural inflows from rivers and rainfall continue to replenish it. So dont misuse God’s name, build infrastructure, the money is there, don’t just steal and abuse it.