By Donata Mpochela
MZUZU-(Maravi Post)–Malawian Artists and Arts Group says lack of government investment in the industry is on lower side considering that it has taken seven years to reach the level of boosting artists’ economical identity.
Key study undertaken by Malawi government through Copyright Society of Malawi (COSOMA), in collaboration with National Statistics Office (NSO) and United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2013 concluded that the economic contribution of copyright based industries in Malawi is at about 3.46 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Despite the noticeable contribution to GDP, the creative sector remains the least developed amongst development priority areas such as Malawian creative and cultural products, education, and health.
Hence, this has come about, among other reasons due to scarcity of skilled artisans with both technical and entrepreneurial abilities to produce and market Malawian creative and cultural products.
But, Malawi Arts Supremacy Founder, Lazarus Baluwa Nkhata said in an interview on Saturday that government is losing a lot not investing in arts sector.
“The government is losing a lot because there is economical growth in investing in arts as such it helps in uplifting Malawian currency,” Khata explained.
He added that due to lack of investing in arts has a brought a terrible problem of piracy in the country.
“To me piracy is not a big issue not a big issue but constitutions and law enforcers need to stiffly work on it because people are still buying, selling, and burning artistical work in different film and musical places.
“I still see the possibility of channeling back the money to artists if we can work on the problems,” Nkhata explained.
Commenting on the matter by an Artist Homage said piracy is a major problem to the music industry in order for the industry to develop.
“Piracy causes loss of sales which makes musicians to be unemployed because they do not benefit from their work.
“In most cases piracy comes in a result of lack of information on the importance of registering their music with COSOMA because Musicians Union of Malawi does not conduct workshops in order to highlight on the importance issued and how to protect, promote artistical products.
He said: “Music is a business that requires capital. This is hard for many youths especially artists to get employed.
“Much money has not been invested in musicians hence, the inability of talented broke musicians to get good production and good marketing.
“If the government had invested more in arts sector, music would have been a tourist attraction and economic booster in the country,” Homage said.
