Of Forex Shortage and Ethiopian Airlines Ticket Sales Discontinuing

 
I think the issue of forex shortage should not be a problem between Malawi and Ethiopian Airlines because according to tradingeconomics.com, Ethiopia seems to import more from Malawi than Malawi imports from Ethiopia. In 2020, Malawi imported goods and services worth $7.86 million from Ethiopia and Ethiopia imported goods and services worth $17.03 million from Malawi. Ethiopia can decide to clear out the value of the Malawi imports against their imports and remit the difference which is a surplus of the balance of payment to Malawi. Surely, if Ethiopian Airlines is one of the services Malawi imports from Ethiopia, Malawi technically has the ability to settle this payment. If trading in dollars, pounds or euros is the problem, I should believe that if Ethiopia is able to remit its trade surplus in Ethiopian Currency(ETB), we would be able to settle the current amount and future purchases of Ethiopian Airlines tickets using the Ethiopian currency.

I am a proponent of the idea that trade between Ethiopia and Malawi should not be settled using a third-party currency like the dollars, euros or pounds when Ethiopia and Malawi both have currencies of their own. Ministry of Trade & Industry - Malawi could consider facilitating a trading arrangement between Ethiopia and Malawi where we can trade in our own local currencies, the Malawi Kwacha(MWK) and Ethiopian Birr(ETB) after all there is a profitable bilateral trade between the two countries to the advantage of Malawians.

International Democracy vs American Democracy

 Google defines democracy as a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.

When we look at national democracy, we are looking at the population of that nation making decisions through its elected representatives as such the American democracy is a democracy that has been shaped into being by the people of America for the years that it has been in existence. 

At the level of international democracy, we are looking at the world population as a whole, but also looking at individual national democracies in their various regions shaped by the people of different cultures values and ideologies.

There seem to be very few principles of democracy that can be encouraged at the international level of democracy without conflicting with the cultural values of different nations.

At the onset of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, I had to find out more about both sides of the conflict and discovered among other things that Russia is a democracy and the Western countries, the USA, the UK and the EU do not acknowledge that but still consider it as a dictatorship. The Russian Constitution in  Article 1 says 

"The Russian Federation - Russia is a democratic federative law-governed state with a republican form of government." 

I realised the absence of the acknowledgement on the part of the western countries of democracy in Russia might be due to the differences in the way democracy in Russia has been implemented and the way it has been implemented in the Western Countries. Surely, what the people of Russia value is not the same as what the Western countries value. 

Another thing that came to light today is the restrictions the Taliban government is implementing in Afghanistan. Taliban is a world that means "student" according to Wikipedia, and it is said that the Taliban government does not allow women and girls to be in schools and yet there is a claim that the same Taliban government requires women to only visit female doctors. Does the Taliban government contradict itself? Surely, a student values education more than anyone else. Surely if there is an expectation of having female doctors, then there are means that women would attain such education. 

The USA has been to Afghanistan to try and establish democracy by force and yet the Taliban got back into government also by force meaning that they have not valued whatever the USA government was establishing. I could only think that perhaps the USA was advancing its own cultural values to a people that holds a completely different view of things according to their own culture. 

From these observations, I am thinking that we should consider separating principles of international democracy from the American view of democracy. Democracy is considered to be a type of government that recognizes the differences in views of its people and encourages co-existence and tolerance among the people of differing views. While this might exist within the USA, the USA fails to tolerate differing views of other democracies in the world. It fails to co-exist with other people in the world whose views are different from its own. 

The world has cultures and views different according to each region and when considering international democracy, we may need to consider also tolerance of these different cultures other than imposing views of the dominant democracies for that in itself is being undemocratic.

A Public Letter to The President

His Excellency Dr Lazarus Chakwera,

I have observed that your government has a great concern about the trade deficit due to the imports being more than exports. 

The concern exists to either push for depreciation of the Kwacha or floatation of the currency which is quoted in many textbooks as a solution to the trade deficits but they result in our goods and services being greatly undervalued. Selling things at a cheaper price does not always result in increased value gain. I will give an example of the current value of my services in Malawi as a PHP Developer compared to that of a PHP Developer in the USA. We virtually go through the same training yet my services are currently valued at an average of US$8,400/year while in the USA, a person receives US$84,000/year.  I find this unfair. If you are opting for depreciation how much cheaper would you want my services to go? $8,400/year does not meet my expenses to finish the month. I have to get an extra from borrowing or from a relative. Furthermore, cheaper does end up looking incompetent. Please stop depreciating the Kwacha. Start appreciating the Kwacha so that our goods and services may trade at a fair international price.

I cannot always complain without suggesting a solution. I observed that Europeans decided to implement a trade policy that is always resulting in a trade surplus. I feel we could do the same as I have outlined in the following short article:

• Improving Our Balance of Trade

I hope that this will be helpful to Malawi.

Sincerely,

Kondwani Hara.

Improving Our Balance Of Trade

Learning from the historical context of Balance of Trade in Europe:

Many countries in early modern Europe adopted a policy of mercantilism, which theorized that a trade surplus was beneficial to a country. Mercantilist ideas also influenced how European nations regulated trade policies with their colonies, promoting the idea that natural resources and cash crops should be exported to Europe, with processed goods being exported back to the colonies in return.
An early statement concerning the balance of trade appeared in Discourse of the Common Wealth of this Realm of England, 1549: "We must always take heed that we buy no more from strangers than we sell them, for so should we impoverish ourselves and enrich them." Similarly, a systematic and coherent explanation of the balance of trade was made public through Thomas Mun's 1630 "England's treasure by foreign trade, or, The balance of our foreign trade is the rule of our treasure".

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_trade#Historical_example

I resolved that we can create similar trade policies to improve our Balance of Trade and adopt them as follows:

EXPORT POLICY:

NEVER EXPORT NATURAL RESOURCES AND CASH CROPS, WHICH ARE OUR RAW MATERIALS, TO FOREIGN NATIONS BUT EXPORT ONLY FINISHED PRODUCTS WHICH WE HAVE MANUFACTURED OURSELVES.

 

IMPORT POLICY:

NEVER IMPORT FINISHED PRODUCTS FROM FOREIGN NATIONS BUT IMPORT ONLY RAW MATERIALS WHICH WE CAN USE TO MANUFACTURE FINISHED PRODUCTS OURSELVES.

This is because finished products have a higher value than raw materials the direction of trade of these, determine the balance of trade whether it will be a deficit or surplus.

Suitability of Jobs as Computer Scientist in the World of Management Information Systems

A team of 3 can make a complete product according to [https://mis.eller.arizona.edu/what-is-mis#difference]. Business, Science and Engineering. I am the computer science part of the process.

The Systems Development Life Cycle runs in Phases. Job security becomes a problem. You no longer have your job once the phase requiring you is complete.

The things that influence creation of a new system are limited as such you may not have a job as long as the information system is working. It might take one job in five years. You get the job when the system requires an upgrade.

I write a complete system within a period of one month to six months. Systems Support is part of the Systems Development process that gets to have a long lasting job. I don't know how to integrate myself into the systems support phase though someone suggested that I take up a job as a data officer. However such a job, I can end up creating one whole new system within one hour: its data model, interface and the server-side and a system is complete.