Malawi: Minister Wirima Calls for Researchers to Come Up With Innovative Solutions for Humanitarian Crises


Minister of Education Madalitso Kambauwa Wirima has called upon researchers to come up with innovative solutions to solve the humanitarian crisis through modelling climate change and its impacts.

Wirima was speaking on Wednesday in Lilongwe during the launch of National Research Agenda (NRA) developed by National Planning Commission (NPC) in collaboration with National Commission for Science and Technology (NCST) with support from Unicef.

She said through the NRA, environmental sustainability pillar will allow researchers to come up with solutions that will solve the negative impacts of cyclone Freddy which the country is currently facing.

“I therefore direct the NCST to immediately put up a research call through NRA that will solve negative effects of cyclone Freddy using available resources in the Science and Technology fund,” she said.

Wirima also encouraged youths and Early Career Researchers (ECR) to respond to the call that will evoke the application of predictive Artificial Intelligence (AI) to project occurrence of the natural disasters and help improve preparedness to such catastrophic phenomena.

She added that effective implementation of NRA will stimulate economic growth and realize Malawi 2063 aspirations.

Wirima assured that her ministry will advocate and lobby Parliament to prioritize Research, Science, Technology and Innovations (RSTI) if Malawi is to catch up the new pathways of attaining socio-economic development and transformation.

NCST Chairperson, Professor Emmanuel Kaunda said the scientific world has not done much to be able to state in advance on how to alert people.