S4M-10712 Scotland and Malawi

The Presiding Officer (Tricia Marwick): The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-10712, in the name of Humza Yousaf, on Scotland and Malawi, a special relationship.

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Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP): It has been said of Malawi that it is the warm heart of Africa. What better country could we seek to have a relationship with?

I will pick up on some of the things that Sarah Boyack said about agriculture and highlight some of the great challenges that we in our western developed world are imposing on countries such as Malawi—and perhaps on Malawi in particular.

Two thirds of Malawi’s exports are tobacco. We are rightly seeking to remove tobacco as a major part of our society, for the health of people in our country, and other countries are doing the same. However, when we do that it will have a significant effect on the economy of a country such as Malawi, in which two thirds of exports are tobacco based. We therefore owe a duty to countries such as Malawi to help them cross over to a more beneficial mode of agriculture. They are essentially self-sufficient when it comes to food for themselves, but we are already seeing a danger that tobacco farmers, in the face of reducing profits, move across to grow cannabis. That will not be helpful in the long term for people who are in desperate need in countries such as Malawi.

Climate change is making agriculture a more formidable challenge in many countries in Africa, and we in the developed world are largely responsible for that. We therefore need to ensure that we support people in Malawi, which we are already doing. We have a number of programmes there that we support.

I have, of course, said before in the Parliament that climate change in Africa in particular has a gender bias in that it differentially affects women over men, as women are generally the homemakers and the agronomists. While the men sit round the village table discussing the state of world affairs, the women do the actual work. They walk further to get water and get less from the soil for their efforts, as a result of climate change. Therefore, I very much welcome the initiative that the previous Administration took to build effective relationships with Malawi, which continues to be sustained by the current Government.

We have a number of relationships with Malawi. Hastings Banda, who was born in about 1898, came to Edinburgh to convert his medical qualification to one that was acceptable in the UK. In 1941, the University of Edinburgh awarded him three separate awards. My father, who was studying medicine, knew him; indeed, he was in some of the same classes. I do not necessarily hold up Hastings Banda’s contribution to Malawi as one of unalloyed success, but he at least started off the country.

Let us remember that many of the African boundaries were arbitrarily imposed by colonialists, so we share some of the blame in that regard.

A great thing happening in Malawi is that a sense of adherence to that country—artificial as it was in its genesis—is clearly being reflected in public life today.

A democracy can be tested simply: a democracy exists if a Government allows itself to be removed from office by a ballot of its people. Malawi has passed that fundamental test, which we should much welcome.

I welcome what both the Opposition parties say in their amendments. I do not know what the Government’s position will be, but each contains merit. Malawi is an important friend of ours; let us be an ever-important friend of Malawi.

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