In this Podcast, UK Aid Match team members Emma and Gem reflect on their visit to Malawi to visit four UK Aid Match grant holders. Listen in to hear how the recent ‘poly-crisis’ is affecting grant holders delivering projects in Malawi, how they have been responding, and the importance of adaptability and flexibility within project design.
Emma 0:01 – 0:58
Hello, and welcome to The Learning Post, a podcast dedicated to sharing insights and learnings from the UK Aid Match fund. My name is Emma Hayward, and I'm a Performance and Risk Manager for UK Aid Match, as well as your host for this episode.
Today, myself and Gem Clark, UK Aid Match Fund Portfolio Manager will discuss our recent monitoring and support visit to Malawi, where we joined four UK Aid Match grant holders to get a sense of their current progress, and in particular how they have each been responding to a series of compounding contextual challenges.
The visit was made back in April and May of 2023. We started in Lilongwe with UNICEF and CBM Global, then travelled South to Blantyre, to meet with World Child Cancer and Sightsavers. I’d like to extend our thanks again to these grant holders for the open discussions and efforts in welcoming us.
So, let’s get started. Hi Gem. Perhaps to start off, we could talk about the current context in Malawi, and how this has changed over the years?
Gem 1:03 – 1:51
Yes absolutely. So I lived in Blantyre, in the South of Malawi, for almost 4 years, and I left back in 2017, and have been fortunate to be able to go back twice more since then to visit grant holders. It’s a really special place for me. Going back this time, it was evident that the country has been through some really difficult times of late.
We heard the words poly-crisis a lot throughout the project visits, and I think it’s a really useful term to sum up the extremely challenging operating context in Malawi and the multiple crises the country has experienced in recent months and years.
We talked about the poly crisis in another podcast recently, looking specifically at inflation and the global cost of living crisis and how this is affecting UK Aid Match projects around the world… The visits really brought to life what we were talking about in that earlier podcast
Emma 1:51 – 3:05
Thanks Gem. And just to paint a little more context for our listeners, we visited Malawi 6 weeks after a devastating Cyclone, which caused immense damage and loss of life and displaced more than 650,000 people. The cyclone arrived just weeks after one of the worst cholera outbreaks experienced in Malawi for over 40 years, which had already been declared a national emergency.
We were pretty fortunate actually to be able to travel to Malawi at this difficult time. The true impacts of what projects are achieving is always more easily conveyed when seen in person, than what you can read in a report, and when we can meet with community members and project staff and talk more freely in person.
This visit was especially meaningful because we could see first-hand both how projects had been adapting and responding to a series of emergencies, and how the projects themselves have become even more relevant to the needs of communities within this poly-crisis context.
The commitment of both the project staff and the different communities and stakeholders we met with was very clear but it was also clear that there were additional challenges, like delivering the initial scope of work within their original budgets because of the impacts of inflation, currency devaluation, soaring fuel prices and a general uncertainty day-to-day about how these market forces are moving.
Gem 3:05 – 4:11
Absolutely, and it is not only grant holders that are having to make difficult decisions about how to manage finite resources.
Individual households are also struggling to meet their needs as the cost of basic goods,…. food, medicines… fuel, for example…. have skyrocketed in Malawi in the last year or so….. and in the projects we visited, it was clear that this cost-of-living crisis was testing assumptions about peoples health seeking behaviours. For a lot of households in Malawi with limited resources, prioritising healthcare is a challenge, which has been exacerbated by these multiple compounding external crises.
On our visit to World Child Cancer, we met families on the Children’s Cancer Ward at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre. World Child Cancer have been reimbursing families for their travel and providing welcome packages of essential items like soap and food. Sightsavers and CBM Global are providing similar support for people facing cataract surgery. We were told that without the projects’ support they would not have been able to travel the long distances to the hospital or cover the cost of their stay and would have been forced to abandon the diagnosis and treatment that could save their children’s lives or loved one’s sight.
Emma 4:11 – 4:37
Yeah, this is an interesting example – some might ask us whether endorsing the use of travel grants is the right approach in a long-term development project design, and maybe in some contexts there might be a more sustainable way to approach this, but I think in these difficult circumstances, when household vulnerability levels are so precarious, decision-making and prioritisation can often be quite immediate-needs based, so perhaps this approach can make it easier.
Gem 4:37 – 5:14
Absolutely. This is a really interesting point, and it makes me think of projects that have a market-based approach in their design as its again about people making decisions about how they prioritise their household income and spending.
We heard from UNICEF that many families were struggling to find money to pay for safe drinking water and improved sanitation, which was a really serious issue when you consider that Malawi was experiencing one of its worst ever cholera outbreaks when we visited.
They have set-up a sanitation loan programme which was in early stages when we visited but had the potential to be a very effective tool in the aftermath of the Cyclone. And it was positive to hear the optimism amongst the community members who had already participated in this scheme.
Emma 5:14 – 6:00
I’m wondering how this model plays out in variable economic contexts, even in less challenging times, sanitation is not always at the top of a household’s priority list when there are limited resources, so in this compounding poly-crisis situation, it will be interesting to follow the uptake of these sanitation loans.
And this throws up a common tension about sustainable development projects vs creating dependency. It also brings us back I think, to our previous point about budget management in a crisis.
Transport grants and WASH facilities can be high cost inputs for a project especially in a context of inflation where the price of goods is constantly increasing. Grant holders will still be working with finite budgets, and will be making difficult decisions about how and what they adapt in these circumstances.
Gem 6:00 – 7:12
Yes exactly. I think what this whole visit really brought home to me was the idea that, with increasing climate, security and economic emergencies globally, we can anticipate more and more situations where a typical (in adverted commas) development project might be derailed or interrupted by a crisis, and increasingly I think it’s important that projects are designed with this flexibility and agility to be ready to adapt and respond as relevant in any given context. That’s not to say to be ready to down tools and pivot to an entirely new emergency, in a different location, or with a different group of people - although the pandemic has probably taught us that even this sometimes might be needed – but more... to expect that a group of project participants in any given context is more likely now to experience further external shocks, and if a project is designed without the flex to adapt and support with these shocks, the projects aims may be less achievable.
Strong risk management and scenario mapping are a key way to build this in from the start, alongside clear sustainability planning- which is important for supporting projects and stakeholders to build long-term resilience.
Development programmes need to ensure flexibility in design and be able to respond to humanitarian emergencies, which are likely to increase.
Emma 7:12 – 7:32
Definitely. This point actually came up at a recent UK Aid Match grant holder Reference Group meeting – unfortunately this poly-crisis context is not unique to Malawi and many grant-holders are now experiencing similar compounding challenges and having to make quick decisions about how to pivot aspects of their projects to respond to unexpected events.
Gem 7:32 – 7:46
Yes, and as fund managers we have been exploring how we can make adjustments to our systems and processes to allow a bit more flex in these scenarios. In fact, we have a webinar for grant holders coming up shortly on this very subject so watch out for that.
Emma 7:46 – 8:15
Thanks Gem – that should be really interesting.
It’s been great to reflect on our time in Malawi together. Before we go just wanted to say a quick thanks again to all the grant holders who welcomed us during the visit.
To listen to our previous podcast on the global economic crisis head over to the news section of the UK Aid Match website at ukaidmatch.org/news.
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