Cooking up a bright future for Malawi tourism

The bustling kitchens of Baby Grand are a long way from Malawi, but it is here, in one of Glasgow's busiest restaurant chains, that Dumisami Kapanga and Shadreck Helepa are hoping to learn the skills that will help kickstart their tourism industry back home.

The students have been brought to Scotland as part of a vanguard of gifted entrepreneurs who it is hoped will provide expertise, enthusiasm and business acumen to transform the economic fortunes of Malawi - one of the world's poorest countries.

As part of their stay, they are spending 18 hours a week learning customer care skills, cooking and working as waiters at Brel and Ad Lib, both part of the Baby Grand Group in Glasgow. They will also be enrolled on four-year tourism undergraduate degrees at Glasgow Caledonian University.

According to Mr Kapanga, 23, the options in Scotland could not be more different from his home country. "Life is hard there. You don't know how you are going to get by each day. There are huge problems with HIV. If you are not infected, you are affected," he said.

Mr Kapanga, who was born and grew up in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, was well-educated and worked as a graphic artist after his parents died when he was a teenager, but his job paid the equivalent of £15 a month and opportunities were limited.

Now halfway through his degree, he said he wants to instill the professionalism learned in Glasgow back home. "The thing I notice here is how much pride Scottish people have in their own culture. I would like to see that in Malawi." The students' stay in Scotland has been sponsored by the Moffat tourism centre at Caledonian University and Billy McAneney, owner of the Baby Grand Group.

Malawi is ranked as the 10th poorest country in the world by the United Nations and has been ravaged by Aids/HIV, unemployment and difficulties in its agriculture sector. Tourism is seen as the way forward, but training people to run bars, hotels and attractions to standards expected by wealthy tourists in the West is not easy.

The Scottish Executive, which has formed strong links with Malawi, provided £250,000 to upgrade the African country's Institute of Tourism and bolster skills of people working in tourism. The Moffat Centre, which is administering the fund, is refitting the institute, providing books and up-to-date technology to replace its one, clapped-out PC.

John Lennon, professor of tourism at the Moffat Centre, said he also hopes to bolster the academic rating of the institute and will be enrolling eight people on distance-learning masters degrees.

"This is one of the most rewarding projects I have been involved in," he said. "Malawi has great potential for tourism. It is beautiful, safe and the people are incredibly friendly. If you want to see an authentic piece of Africa, it is the place to go."

Mr McAneney, who founded the Malawi Tomorrow charity which spends around £50,000 a year on projects in Malawi, said: "We are not simply going to train these people up and leave them to it'. We want to make sure that when they leave us, they not only have jobs to go to but play a role in transforming the fortunes of tourism in Malawi."

Country profile
Malawi's economy is said to be half the size of Falkirk's - or 1% of Scotland's

The country's population is 12.6 million people

More than half the population lives below the poverty line

Most Malawians rely on subsistence farming but the food supply situation is precarious

Moves are under way to exploit uranium reserves to boost meagre export earnings

Since the mid-1990s the country has privatised many loss-making state-run corporations

Tens of thousands of Malawians die of Aids every year and a programme to tackle HIV-Aids was launched in 2004