My New Job

This post provides a more detailed description of my roles and responsibilities here at Mzuzu University (the exciting pictures of lions, tigers, monkeys and all the other stereotypical images of Africa are coming I assure you... but with more of an urban planning flavour!). Before I embarked on this adventure, I attempted to describe to many of you exactly what this position would entail based on the original job description I was given. In other words, I didn't really know what I was going to be doing. All I knew was that this experience was going to be amazing and life changing.

Shortly after being introduced to my new office in the Physical Planning building (shown above), I quickly discovered that my job pretty much entails filling in wherever I am needed, which has included lecturing, preparing proposals, reviewing dissertations for fourth-year students, networking with other departments and overturning rocks in search of more interesting projects. My multiple roles is not surprising considering that the Department is under-resourced both in terms of faculty (3 full-time lecturers) and teaching materials (particularly current literature). As such, the lecturers are more than happy to have me on board.

I was initially a little nervous to take on these brand new tasks, but to paraphrase a great friend and mentor, 'what you don't know initially can be made up with confidence in your abilities and the rest can be figured out as you go along'. I think that this mentality (coupled with diligent preparation!) will continue to help me adapt.

I should also mention that this year marks the first graduating class of seven students for the department's Physical Planning stream. I couldn't imagine a better place to build capacity.

Job Description

I am one of seven multidisciplinary interns sponsored by the University of New Brunswick in partnership with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Our team includes interns with backgrounds in urban and regional planning, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Geographic Positioning Systems (GPS) and computer engineering. Over the next nine months, I will be working with the Department of Land Management (Physical Planning) at Mzuzu University to build capacity.

Current Responsibilities

So far, I have been assigned three planning courses to teach, which has been hugely challenging but also hugely rewarding. The largest challenge has been relating my planning experience in North America to the planning issues here in Malawi. However, this has made for great in-class discussion and debate, which is providing an opportunity to build a rapport with the students and learn more about the local context. The fourth-year students have even offered to take me to an informal settlement area in Mzuzu to observe the squalid conditions that the urban poor face (pics to come!).

Upcoming Projects

I’m also discussing an opportunity to partner with a lecturer on a research project comparing informal settlements in Malawi and Zimbabwe, which would be a fantastic opportunity in every respect. Informal settlements are unplanned communities that are inhabited by the urban poor. Such areas are characterized by substandard housing and a severe lack of services and infrastructure including water and sanitation. With increasing rates of rural-urban migration, these communities are expanding rapidly from the edges of cities in a totally ad-hoc fashion. The problem isn’t lack of planning. Rather, it’s the inability to coordinate infrastructure funding with policy objectives. As the lecturer I work with, Mtafu A.Z. Manda, put it, one professional footballer’s salary is equivalent to the Government of Malawi’s entire annual budget (World Cup analogies are very popular at the moment!).

The good news is that Department of Land Management will graduate its first class of seven Physical Planning students this year. The program is seeking to build its capacity to take on more students and is applying to the Royal Town Planners Institute (RTPI) to receive professional accreditation. Lots happening here in the world of planning and certainly no shortage of interesting and meaningful work!