Did you know that a fifth of Malawi’s territory is covered by water, mainly Lake Malawi?

For the people along the water bodies, boats are almost everything.

In Mlowe, a fishing community on the southeastern side of Rumphi along the lake, the vessels are not just about transport and fishing, but also a matter of life and death. They help rush patients to better-equipped hospitals upland.

However, the shoreline communities that depend on the boats to generate income and sustain their lives lack boat-making skills.

Fishers say most of the boats chugging up and down the northern tip of the freshwater lake are costly because they are made in Monkey Bay, Mangochi, the southernmost part of the country’s largest source of fish.

Andrew Nkhwazi, from Zowo in the lakeshore setting, explains: “As fish keep vanishing due to overfishing and falling water levels, we need stable boats to reach fishing grounds in the middle of the lake where commercial fishers return with better catches.

“However, we pay a huge cost because we don’t know how to make the boats. We only make dugout canoes, which have become useless and risky due to dwindling catches in shallow waters.”

The boat made by trainees has become a trusted ambulance along Lake Malawi

The skills gap has left artisanal fishers lagging behind and with little earnings to show for their hard labour, including paddling shaky canoes in wavy waters commercial counterparts speed with bigger engine boats.

The authority responsible for technical, entrepreneurial and vocational education and training (Tevet) has weighed in to tip the scales for the good of locals like Nkhwazi, whose livelihoods hinge on fishing in the lake.

Responding to the needs of communities in their natural settings, the Tevet Authority has trained over 23 young Malawians in Mlowe in boat making.

The mobile training facilitated by Ngara Community Technical College comes in response to the transportation needs of the promising rural communities only reached by a narrow rutted, rocky road that winds like a snake if viewed from the top of Boliwoli Escarpments, widely known as Chiweta Hills.

Only one of the trainees in the tailor-made initiative was a woman, contrary to the country’s Gender Equality Act, which requires no sex to take more than 60 percent of seats in public training and employment.

This mirrors male dominance in the fishing and boat making industry.

Speaking at the end of the training, Tevet Authority executive director Elwin Sichiola commended Ngara Community College for imparting relevant skills to the youth in remote areas.

However, he said Malawi cannot fully develop if women are left behind in skills development for job creation and poverty alleviation.

He said: “While it is commendable that the youth in the area have been trained in boat making, the fact that only one female out of the 23 participated is a worrisome development.

“Women and girls ought to be encouraged to participate in these programmes because skills know no gender. The Tevet Authority is doing its part to ensure that more female candidates enrol in male-dominated trades, but what is lacking is community support.”

He said it is only through strong partnership and gender-aware community outreaches that skills development initiatives in the country can go far.

Sichiola said Tevet Authority is striving to mainstream gender in its training hence he expects more females to enrol in skills development programmes.

Ngara Community Technical College principal Glyn Nyirongo urged the participants to put their skills to use to solve the various transportation challenges their constrained communities face.

“I expect that with the newly gained skills, boats will be locally produced and maintained in the community,” he said.

The Tevet Authority has donated an engine boat ambulance to Mlowe Community to help ease transportation challenges.

The boat licenced by the Marine Department was produced by the trainees in their rural locality through the on-the-job approach.

Traditional Authority Mwamlowe says the boat has eased challenges faced by patients and pregnant women in the hard-to-reach setting.

He stated:  “The community here has no alternative means of transportation apart from water transport, so the donation is quite critical. For years, we didn’t have an affordable and reliable boat to ferry patients to health facilities upland.

The chief is happy that the locally-built boat will be repaired by local hands within the community.

“I believe they will be able to put their skills to good use whenever the need arises,” he says.

The training included how to seal leaky boat.

Extra reporting by James Chavula

The post Youths learn boat-making first appeared on The Nation Online.