Scottish Government release Contribution to International Development report

15 February 2021

We are delighted to welcome the publication of the Scottish Government's third Contribution to International Development Report.

We are delighted to welcome the publication of the Scottish Government’s third Contribution to International Development Report.

We welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to transparency and public engagement through their international development work, and we join others in celebrating all has been achieved through 2019-20.
Opening the report, International Development Minister Jenny Gilruth MSP, says:
“This Report on the Scottish Government’s contribution to international development covers the period from April 2019 to December 2020 but, when looking back over the past 11 months in particular, no report can be written without acknowledging and focusing on the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is an unprecedented global crisis, leaving no country or people unaffected. Despite the effects of the pandemic, the Scottish Government’s commitment to our partner countries of Malawi, Zambia, Rwanda and Pakistan has not wavered.”
The Scottish Government’s ongoing commitment to internationalism and global citizenship has also been underlined in the recent Scottish Budget which includes a £10 million fund for international development and a £1 million Humanitarian Emergency Fund (HEF).
The report details how, with Scottish Government support, a range of organisations have delivered vital work in the areas of health, education, water and climate, sustainable economic development, civic governance, and renewable energy.
We include below full details of all current Scottish Government-funded projects in Malawi.

Scottish Government international development projects currently funded in Malawi


International Development Fund: Malawi projects 2018-2023

St John Scotland
Project: Community action and service access for maternal, newborn and child health
Project description: The project aims to improve maternal, newborn and child health by increasing health behaviours and the use of critical health services, and by removing barriers to the provision of Malawi's Essential Health Package (EHP).
Total funding: £457,591

NHS Tayside
Project: Scottish Emergency Medicine – Malawi Project
Project description: To develop fit for purpose and sustainable Emergency and Trauma Units at all Central Hospitals in Malawi – replicating the significant improvement to delivery of essential Emergency care as experienced at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital Blantyre (the pilot for this project), with the aim of delivering in Malawi, for the first time, a National Emergency and Trauma network.
Total funding: £1,007,504
University of Edinburgh
Project: Moving towards sustainability: strengthening rural health facilities, upskilling providers and developing mentoring capacity to support roll-out of cervical cancer 'Screen and treat' services across Malawi.
Project description: The project will build on the prior collaborative and successful partnership working between Malawi and Scotland in delivery of same day cervical cancer 'screen and treat' programmes, and seeks to support rollout of that work in Northern, Central and Southern Regions, based on developing effective mentoring tools, strengthening health professional skills within Malawi, and extending services to rural health facilities.
Total funding: £1,288,378
University of Glasgow
Project: Towards a Dental School for Malawi – The Maldent Project
Project description: To establish an undergraduate dental degree (BDS) programme within the Faculty of Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Malawi, which will train Malawian dentists who are 'globally competent and locally relevant' and will be able to provide support for the delivery of a national health programme.
Total Funding: £1,312,424
Water Aid
Project: Deliver life to mothers, girls and children in the southern region of Malawi
Project description: To improve the health of mothers, girls and children in rural and peri-urban low income areas of Machinga and Zomba by facilitating access to safe water, improved sanitation and good hygiene in health care facilities, early childhood development centres and communities.
Total funding: £1,012,500
Global Concerns Trust
Project: Tools and training for livelihood in Malawi
Project description: To contribute to the reduction of poverty, the enhancement of economic sustainability and participation in development processes of disabled men and women in Malawi, while promoting skill development, well-being and engagement in international development of people with disabilities in the UK.
Total funding: £706,407
Mary's Meals
Project: Mary's Meals pre-school and primary feeding programme in Malawi
Project description: This project will provide school feeding to vulnerable children in 27 primary and 79 Early Childhood Development centres (ECDs) in Zomba, southern Malawi, reducing classroom hunger and promoting access, participation and progression through primary education.
Total funding: £1,080,000
Sense Scotland
Project: Promoting equal access to education in Malawi North
Project description: The project will work in Northern Malawi with children, young people, families, schools, communities and all traditional and governmental authorities to address negative attitudes towards disability, improve access to quality and relevant education and to enable all children regardless of disability to reach their full potential. In everything we do we will use a rights based, social model of disability.
Total funding: £1,239,488
University of Strathclyde
Project: Rural energy access through social enterprise and decentralisation (EASE)
Project description: The EASE project works with local and national structures to address energy poverty in marginalised rural communities in Dedza and Balaka Districts through the deployment of appropriate renewable energy infrastructure and service provision under sustainable social business models and decentralised energy strategies.
Total funding: £1,332,533
Chance for Change
Project: Access to Justice
Project description: The overall objective of this project is to support the Malawi Government in enabling access to justice, and humane, child-welfare based treatment for children in conflict with the law in Malawi.
Total funding: £949,333
Challenges Worldwide
Project: CROPS
Project description: The overall aim of the project is to strengthen farmer owned crop Value Addition Centres while creating rural sustainable business models and wealth for smallholder farmers.
Total funding: £998,074


Police Scotland in Africa
The Scottish Government provided Police Scotland with £500,000 per year until 2019 to support the specialist training they are carrying out with police forces in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda for tackling gender-based violence and improving child protection.
This builds upon work that Police Scotland has been doing with the Malawian Police Service since 2016, supported by funding from our IDF, in response to and as part of the Government of Malawi's Food Insecurity response plan.
From 2019, following the success of Police Scotland’s work with police forces in Malawi and Zambia to help them tackle gender-based violence and improve child protection, we are supporting an expanded Police partnership programme to protect vulnerable groups in Malawi and Zambia. The phase 2 expanded programme will now support leadership to tackle local issues and give support to a wider range of marginalised groups such as women, children, those with disabilities, LGBTI and people with albinism.
Blantyre-Blantyre Clinical Research Project
The Scottish Government are providing the University of Glasgow with £1 million over five years, which will be match funded, to fund a collaborative clinical research project with the College of Medicine in Blantyre, Malawi, and the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust.
The project will set up three fully-equipped laboratories at the College of Medicine in Blantyre, enabling scientists there to conduct research into increasingly prevalent non-communicable diseases in Malawi. This will create a comparison between the populations of Blantyre in West Central Scotland and Blantyre in Malawi, and is believed to be a unique study between two such countries.
The project will aim to establish the key markers of certain non-communicable diseases among the local population, and to compare these results with research into the Glasgow Effect and the prevalence of similar conditions in the population of West Central Scotland. The new facilities will also enable the College of Medicine to host clinical trials of the drugs associated with these conditions, and provide a future platform for clinical trials in other areas.
Scotland Malawi Psychiatry Capacity Development Project and Zambia extension
The Scottish Government are providing up to £300,000 over four years to the Scotland Malawi Mental Health Education Project (SMMHEP) to deliver the Scotland Malawi Psychiatry Capacity Development Project. This project aims to address the chronic lack of mental healthcare provision in Malawi.
Building on two previous Scottish Government grants that established Malawi's first ever M.Med Psychiatry, it will provide funding for four trainees to become clinically qualified psychiatrists at Malawi's College of Medicine. Trainees will undertake two years' training at the College of Medicine and two years' specialist tuition at the University of Cape Town. The trainees will be supported by e-learning materials previously created under a University of Edinburgh project funded by the Scottish Government.
Building on SMMHEP (which was Malawi only), we awarded an enhanced package of support to improve psychiatric care in Zambia and promote cross-border psychiatry training with Malawi in October 2018.
Led in Scotland by the SMMHEP, this mental health programme is innovative and incredibly powerful. It involves mental health staff from across a collaboration of NHS Boards in Scotland, coming together to support two of our partner countries, and in collaboration with the Colleges of Medicine in both Malawi and Zambia.
Livingstone fellowships: Malawi and Zambia
The existing Livingstone Fellowships Scheme by Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow provides a framework for sponsored trainees to come and work in the Scottish Health Service for a year or more. This has previously allowed the doctors an opportunity to extend their experience before returning to Malawi to take up consultant posts. We are providing funding of £200,000 from February 2018, building upon the existing Livingstone Fellowships Scheme, expanding it to Zambia too.
The Livingstone Fellowship Scheme, provided through the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and Faculties in Scotland, will allow three experienced doctors from Zambia and Malawi to spend a year in Scotland receiving further training which they will then take back home to the benefit of their communities. It will also provide funding for up to a further eight doctors from both countries to receive the smaller fellowship grants.
Malawian College of Medicine: governance initiative
Scottish Government funding has had a long-term partnership with the College of Medicine, Blantyre, Malawi since 2005, and in fact the College was named in our original 2005 Cooperation Agreement with the Government of Malawi. In 2018, the College of Medicine identified two priority areas which would benefit from Scottish support, on governance and their dental school, partnering with Glasgow University. The two initiatives, proposed from Malawi and agreed by the Scottish Government, were announced during the visit of the President of Malawi to Scotland in April 2018.
Governance
The College of Medicine will shortly become a fully independent university. The University of Glasgow, which already has successful partnerships in place with the College, has agreed to establish a formal mentoring and support link to assist them with this new phase in their development. To help fund this, we will invest £100,000 over the next two years to support this Malawi Governance initiative.
Dental training
The College’s dental school requires a pre-clinical skills facility known as a ‘phantom head’ unit. This allows students to learn operative techniques before they begin to treat patients. We are providing £50,000 to fully refurbish the phantom head unit at the College’s Lilongwe Dental Skills facility.
Social enterprise academies: Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda
We are supporting the establishment of Social Enterprise Academies (SEAs) in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda to join the global network of SEAs. Our funding to the Social Enterprise Academy in Scotland is enabling peer-to-peer working to set up and support those new SEAs in our partner countries. Scottish expertise will help a generation of entrepreneurs set up social enterprises in southern Africa, backed by funding from the Scottish Government. Scotland’s Social Enterprise Academy has since finalised a three-year partnership with Jubilee Enterprise in Malawi, with discussions taking place with local organisations in Rwanda and Zambia.
Social enterprises are businesses that trade for the common good and reinvest any profits to deliver on a social or environmental purpose.
Water Division: resource management and governance partnership with the Government of Malawi
A key example, which contributes to SDG6 (Clean Water & Sanitation) and to SDG16 (on Governance), is the ongoing joint working under the HydroNation agenda between the Scottish and Malawian Governments at official level on water resource management, governance and legislation.
Peer-to-peer knowledge sharing on key issues has informed new legislation introduced by both countries in updating aspects of water law and dialogue has highlighted many common areas of interest including water resource management, community management of assets and increasing public engagement.


Management of the funds: African Lakes Company Ltd
The investment is managed by a new Scottish company, African Lakes Company Ltd (ALC), reviving the original African Lakes Company that was established in Glasgow in 1878 to develop trade as an effective way of displacing slavery in Malawi.
ALC has a small board of directors drawn from the investors, and an experienced investment panel made up of private investors and expert advisers. The investment panel will determine investments after considering advice from their appointed Malawian investment advisers.


Organisation: Smileawi
Total funding: £13,470 (Feasibility Study Grant)
This feasibility study aims to support Smileawi, Malawian stakeholders and Bridge2Aid to test the model of “task shifting” basic training for emergency dentistry to Malawi’s existing network of Medical Assistants who operate in rural areas where no dental services are currently available through a field trial in Jenda, Northern Region.
Organisation: Wasteaid
Total funding: £15,000 (Feasibility Study Grant)
This feasibility study aims to support Wasteaid and ICCM to assess the capacity building needs of different groups of local stakeholders to tackle waste management in north and south Malawi, to identify appropriate lines of action, and to produce a plan for follow-on work.
Organisation: International Voluntary Service
Total funding: £14,985 (Capacity Building Grant)
This capacity building proposal for International Voluntary Service and their centrally-based Kenyan partner, Roko 20, aims to build on previous work and produce more effective digital tools for training, communications, partner relationship management and monitoring & evaluation. These two organisations will collaborate with a third, Scotland-based partner, Classrooms for Malawi, to share experience and learning.


The Turing Trust
This ICT project aims to provide digital skills to 9,000 Malawian girls, marginalised by gender, disability and geography and the necessary teacher training to create a sustainable pathway for digital education.
Total funding: £60,000
Children’s Medical Care Malawi (CMCM)
This project will support the upskilling of tutors to provide essential paediatric emergency care training to 900 nursing students across four college sites in Malawi.
Total funding: £60,000
Seed for Life
This project represents the scaling up of a sustainable food programme in Bemvu, Malawi.
Total funding: £59,700
International Resources and Recycling Institute (IRRI)
This project will provide solar powered lighting and basic phone charging systems to five off-grid primary schools in Bvumbwe, Malawi leading to improved learning outcomes and teacher retention.
Total funding: £59,725
Leprosy in Utale Village Plus (LUV+)
This project will provide income generation support for nine communities of persons affected by leprosy in Zambia and Malawi.
Total funding: £59,800
Friends of Chitambo
A project to support further development of emergency response services in Chitambo District in central Zambia, including training for hospital and first responder staff, emergency call handler protocols and training, and promoting knowledge resources on emergency medicine in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Rwanda.
Total funding: £60,000


Aiming Higher in Malawi
Project: Aiming Higher in Malawi (AHIM), in partnership with Female Education & Empowerment Centre, is looking to significantly raise the livelihoods of 420 Guardians with 420 children with disabilities and 2500 of their siblings in rural Mulanje South West and Thyolo East. The main aim of the project is to increase agricultural productivity and strengthen climate resilience of the guardians by promoting kitchen gardens, small scale irrigation and using locally constructed shallow wells. The project looks to reduce poverty and increase food security and in the longer term, this project will lay the foundation for plans to introduce livestock to the community and move the focus towards income generating activities, and selling surplus produce for a profit.
Grants: Year one: £34,424 ; Year two: £25,576 ; Year three: £0 ; Total: £60,000
First Aid Africa
Project: First Aid Africa (FAA) aim to build their work in Northern Malawi through direct work with the College of Nursing in Mzuzu and through building the sustainability of their own Malawi office. Having identified that nurses lack formal training in emergency first aid outwith the clinical context, this proposal aims to build training within the college of medicine, building capacity through their direct involvement in community based delivery of training, increasing overall access to emergency first aid in the area and building expertise within the college.
The project will also look at growing the capacity of the Malawi team, based currently in the North, to deliver commercial first aid training across Malawi as a means of income generation.
Grants: Year one: £19,401 ; Year two: £20,461 ; Year three: £20,131 ; Total: £59,993