Youthful miners hone skills

By James Mphande
The Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST) is one of the implementers for the Jobs for Youths project coordinated by the Ministry responsible for Youths and on February 20, 2020 opened a two-day orientation session for incubates under small scale mining among the youth.
Speaking when she opened the African Development Bank funded project in Lilongwe, Director of Youth, Judith Msusa, said the programme aims at building the capacity of the youth in the country to come up with business ideas that can be nurtured to create jobs for them and their colleagues.
“The youth constitute the largest percentage of our population and those that are out of school and out of employment is over 17 percent. As such, we want to reach out to around 70,000 youth country-wide and train them in various areas for them to initiate business opportunities that will also benefit other youths,” she said, urging those selected under the MUST incubation programme to work harder because their success will benefit many more youths.
Msusa said other youths in areas such as ICTY, agriculture and others, are also being incubated under different organisations such as MHub, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources and others. The aim is to have a pool of well-versed entrepreneurial youths in sectors that have potential to spur the country’s development.
“Apart from giving them knowledge and skills, we are also looking at issues of access to finance for those that start their businesses and already we are working with the Reserve Bank of Malawi to support the project through one of its subsidiaries. Another area we will focus on is on having established and reliable markets for these youths. We are also developing a curriculum on entrepreneurship so that their startups are run professionally because we have noted that most SMEs die within the first five years due to lack of business acumen,” she said.
On her part, Eva Chikababwa, a ceramics lecturer at MUST and one of the coordinators for the project at the University, the orientation meeting had pooled together 25 youths from across Malawi.
“Our only worry is that we were prepared to enroll 200 incubates but we did not receive enough applications. The challenge is that mining in Malawi is dominated by foreigners and our people seem not to understand the value of mining. However, we will now go out in the rural areas to enlighten people and mobilise more to enroll under the programme,” said Chikabadwa.
She said the incubates will during the orientation be drilled on areas with potential mining opportunities and the type of mineral deposits in specific areas of the country.
“We are also helping them with information on laws and regulations governing mining in Malawi, various value adding and mineral polishing processes. We hope by the time they come out of this training, they will be more enlightened on the various aspects of small scale mining,” she said.
One of the incubates, Donnex January, 23, from Chiradzulu and a quarry miner, said his interest is on issues of health and safety in quarry mining and the various regulations around it.
“I want to learn more and be a pioneer in serious and professional quarry mining so that I can earn a living through it and support fellow youth to establish their own quarry mining businesses,” said January.