Speech at an Official Dinner hosted by HE Arthur Peter Mutharika, President of Malawi
State House, Malawi, 11th November 2014
Excellency Arthur Peter Mutharika,
Mrs Mutharika,
Ministers,
Your Excellencies,
Distinguished guests,
May I open by thanking you President Mutharika, and your wife Gertrude, for the “céad míle fáilte” – the very warm welcome – which you have extended to Sabina, to myself and to the entire Irish delegation. We are honoured and delighted to be in your beautiful country. It is a country which truly deserves its reputation as the warm heart of Africa, or, as we would say in my native language “an croí cineálta agus cairdiúl na hAifric”.
Indeed, Mr President, our countries share more than just a warm welcome. Our national histories, however distinctive they may be, are ones that chime – in your recollections, we hear the echoes of our own past.
Both our nations have experienced the scourges of colonisation and hunger – “the terror of the hungry grass”, as Irish poet Donagh MacDonagh described it. In the last century, both have also had to struggle for independence. In Ireland, we will soon celebrate the 100th anniversary of our independence, while Malawi celebrates this year its first fifty years of independence.
May I offer my congratulations to the people of Malawi on this important anniversary. I also wish to salute 20 years of multi-party democracy in Malawi, and the first tri-partite elections which you held last May. It is greatly uplifting to see the public discourse, here and across Africa, shifting away from war, disadvantage and the legacy of colonisation, to debates about socio-economic rights and the nature of citizenship.
Malawi and Ireland are two small countries who have emerged from a British colonial past. One of the most damaging aspects of colonialism, I believe, is the way it robs us of a holistic and diverse view of the past. How to imagine a future released from the burdens of distorted past memories, and seemingly insurmountable present difficulties? “Imagine” – not imitate – is the important term here. Indeed, while brutal and inhuman deeds cannot, for the most moral of reasons, be forgotten, it is only through an act of imagination and creativity that we can prevent the tragic memory from colonising our future.
In Ireland, we have recently entered what we call “a decade of commemorations” of a series of seminal events which led to our independence, in 1922. Finding a fair and comprehensive way of dealing with the past, one that can win the confidence of all, is a huge challenge – but one we are doing our best to face up to with honesty, both ethical and historical.
Today Ireland’s relations with the United Kingdom have acquired a new maturity. It has been a remarkable turnaround, which happened within the space of a generation. My father fought for Irish independence, and in April of this year, I became the first Head of that independent State to accept an invitation to pay a State Visit to the United Kingdom. Ireland and Britain are now equal partners within the European Union – friends who trade together, who are able to revisit their common past with openness and mutual respect, and who work together to support the peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland.
Dear friends, as you know, this year the world is also commemorating the centenary of WWI, one of the most destructive and pointless wars in the history of mankind. Over 200,000 Irishmen fought in that war, while here in Malawi, thousands signed up to fight with the King’s African Rifles, and were engaged in battles against German-led troops, mainly in what is today Tanzania. No other British dependency in Africa suffered the loss of such a high proportion of its young manhood as Malawi did – with all the devastating consequences this had in subsequent years, including the famine Malawi experienced in the immediate aftermath of the War. May the remembrance of those events guard us forever against the dark passions of extreme nationalism.
Mr President, our two peoples are united in friendship – a friendship which my visit acknowledges and will, I hope, contribute to deepening. The history of Irish involvement in Malawi goes back many decades – it is a history of missionaries, of volunteers, of development workers, each group fostering friendships and partnerships through their work and social interaction.
This work continues today; and I wish to assure you that it will continue in the future – and I would like, on behalf of the people of Ireland, to acknowledge the commitment and generosity of all those who are involved in developing our partnership with Malawi. I take great encouragement from the spirit of cooperation that infuses the relations between our two nations, and I know that we will continue, together, to find solutions to great challenges that we face jointly in our increasingly interdependent and globalised world.
I know that there are young Irish people who are living and working here in Malawi on development projects and I look forward to meeting them over the coming days. I would also like to acknowledge the many hundreds of young Malawians who have travelled to study, work and live in Ireland in recent years. They make a welcome contribution to Irish society, and I hope that when they return home they will bring with them, to their family and communities, not only new skills, knowledge and talent, but also a connection with Ireland, including, most of all, enduring friendships.
Malawi is a country of many communities, with different tribal identities, each with their distinct history, language and traditions, but all living and working together harmoniously.
Such values of communality and solidarity are very precious. In Ireland, in Europe and globally, we have paid the price of an excess of individualisation, a confusion between individual freedom and the pursuit of self-interest. Against the current trends in increasing commodification of life, I believe that it is indeed vital that we preserve a sense of the shared world, the public world, so essential to our lives together.
The need to balance the individual and communal dimensions of rights is one that arises in particular in relation to the question of land use and land ownership. Can the value and significance of land be seen exclusively through the prism of individual property ownership? I personally believe that other functions, such as, for example, the significance of land for the social continuity of groups, for ideas of kinship and ascendancy, for intergenerational solidarity, must be taken into account.
I am extremely interested in the profusion of projects and ideas currently being developed across Africa, that accommodate the complex nature of rights in many rural contexts, and my wish is for my country to offer its steady support to the blooming of such projects.
The eradication of hunger and poverty is one of the main overarching objectives of Ireland’s development cooperation – one that is informed by our own past. Our development partnership with Malawi has 3 chief areas of focus:
improving food productivity and addressing hunger;
building citizens’ and communities’ capacity to deal with climatic and other shocks;
and supporting the continued strengthening of governance structures.
As you are well aware, Irish engagement with Malawi dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, when the first missionary orders arrived here. Our direct bilateral aid partnership has a much more recent history, coinciding with the opening of our Embassy here in 2007.
More than half of Ireland’s support to Malawi goes to agriculture and nutrition interventions. I want to avail of this occasion, Mr. President, to applaud Malawi’s continued global leadership in this area of nutrition.
May I note in particular Malawi’s ranking in the global annual hunger and nutrition commitment index. Run by the Institute of Development Studies, and supported by Irish Aid, this index ranks 45 governments on their political commitment to reduce hunger and under-nutrition. Malawi features in the top three countries – an achievement you can be very proud of indeed.
Dear friends, as we are here gathered for dinner, it may be appropriate to mention in more detail some of the substantial, indeed sustaining, staple of our partnership. Ireland is proud to have worked closely with the International Potato Centre to develop and introduce new and improved varieties of both the Irish Potato and the Orange Fleshed Sweet Potato. We have also supported the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics and the Malawi Seed Industry Development Programme, which, over the last 5 years have made significant strides in responding to the need for good quality and a sufficient quantity of seeds, particularly groundnuts.
With the World Agro-Forestry Centre we have also implemented a “food security through agro-forestry” programme, to promote awareness of the food, fuel, fibre, and fertiliser benefits of trees.
I am happy to say that these partnerships extend beyond the walls of research institutions, to local government, the private sector, civil society organisations and rural communities, building on indigenous knowledge to improve the nutritional, social, economic and environmental well-being of rural households.
Agricultural development is widely accepted as an essential element in reducing poverty and hunger, in particular family farming, upon which depends the livelihoods of so many. In a country like Malawi, where most people are small scale rural producers, agriculture, and in particular small holder production, is one of the drivers of socio-economic transformation.
I very much look forward to visiting the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, later this week, where Malawi’s brightest and most innovative minds craft and implement innovative solutions for our common challenges.
Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, my wife Sabina and I very much hope that our visit to Malawi will contribute to building an even stronger partnership, an even warmer friendship, between Ireland and Malawi.
May I thank you once again for your hospitality, and wish you every success, happiness and future prosperity.
Go raibh mile maith agaibh go léir; Zee – komo, ku – wam – biri!