downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 377.51articles per million people
- Year
- 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.JRN.ARTC.SC)
- History
Malawi
No dimension reaches 50 on usable evidence. Raise Building first, at 21.3. Experimentation needs more evidence: confidence is 0.17.
Raise, lowest first
| Dimension | Confidence | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Building | 0.57 | 21.3 |
| Anticipation | 0.46 | 23.4 |
| Learning | 0.55 | 47.1 |
| Adaptability | 0.48 | 49.6 |
Measure before managing
| Dimension | Confidence | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Experimentation | 0.17 | 0.4 |
| Agency | 0.22 | 56.6 |
| Shared Purpose | 0.25 | 50.7 |
| Trust | 0.29 | 69.4 |
| Coordination | 0.40 | 83.4 |
These lists are the country's capability agenda, computed from the scores. Read the full agenda. It names comparable evidence from other countries and the 18 gaps in the registry.
Why this country is included: Added in the 9.0.0 completion, which takes every country of a million people or more that is measurable in all nine capabilities.
Anticipation23.4Confidence0.46usableHow capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?
Malawi
Read Malawi beside up to three other countries, down to the indicator behind every row.
- Usable or good evidence
- Thin evidence, hollow point. The dashes open further as confidence falls.
- The point still sits at the score, because confidence never moves it.
- Click any axis to see every country on that dimension.
A score from 0 to 100 is a position inside the frame that all the benchmark countries set: zero is the weakest on a dimension and 100 is the strongest. A score of 10 puts a country near the floor of that frame and does not mean 10 percent of a capability.
| Coordination | 0.40 | 3 of 5 | 0.83 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Trust | 0.29 | 3 of 7 | 0.86 | no trend | 50.0 | -19.4 | |
| Agency | 0.22 | 2 of 5 | 0.58 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Shared Purpose | 0.25 | 2 of 6 | 0.79 | no trend | 45.0 | -5.7 | |
| Adaptability | 0.48 | 4 of 6 | 0.78 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Learning | 0.55 | 3 of 4 | 0.81 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Anticipation | 0.46 | 2 of 4 | 0.96 | +8.1(2) | 22.0 | -1.4 | |
| Building | 0.57 | 4 of 6 | 0.90 | -0.6(2) | no data | no estimate | |
| Experimentation | 0.17 | 3 of 9 | 0.56 | no trend | 7.0 | +6.6 |
How to read this page
Each dimension has a score from 0 to 100. It shows where this country sits among all 125 countries in the comparison frame, not a percentage. Confidence sits beside the score. A dashed radar edge and hollow point mean the evidence is thin. The records below show each indicator, its raw value, year and source.
A panel estimate, when present, is a separate judgment about what the indicators miss. It does not change the score or confidence. The panel's provenance is shown beside the estimate.
- direct capability measuredirect capability measure Measures the thing itself.
- capability inputcapability input Measures something that supports the capability.
- downstream outcomedownstream outcome Measures a result that usually follows from the capability.
- perception proxyperception proxy Records what people or experts say, not what they did.
Confidence
- very thin0.00 to 0.25
The score rests on one or two indicators. Do not quote it on its own.
- thin0.25 to 0.45
A minority of indicators, or evidence old enough to have moved. Read with care.
- usable0.45 to 0.65
Enough evidence to compare countries, with known holes.
- good0.65 and above
Most indicators observed, recent, from official or intergovernmental sources.
A row marked no dataset exists is a gap: the benchmark wants data that nobody publishes. A retired row has a source this project chose not to use. Both reduce confidence. The glossary defines each term, and the limits page lists where these numbers are known to be wrong about the world.
Anticipation
How capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?
+8.1 over 10 years, from 15.3 in 2016 to 23.4 on 2 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 64.344index 0-100
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IQ.SPI.OVRL)
- History
Government foresight capacity
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No comparable international dataset. OECD and UN work is descriptive, not scored. Envisioning would have to build this.
Long-horizon research commitments
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of new grants
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the share of R&D spending classed as basic research, which is the make-up of a spending stock, the construct D142 retired business R&D share for. OECD MSTI publishes that share for its members only, and UNESCO UIS no longer serves R&D by type of research (construct audit, 2026-10-02). The behaviour behind it is a funder committing to a horizon: a grant awarded for five years or more is a decision to wait for a result. Untried: no memo has triaged a grant register. National funders publish award lists one by one with their own durations, and commercial grant aggregators fail the inspectability rule. Wireable on a grant-level register with award and end dates, on one definition of a competitive public grant, for half the frame or more.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
R&D expenditureWorld Bank (GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS), 2019
0.18 % of GDP, rank 91 of 118. Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: money committed to research is what a country spends, and spending it does not show the country reads the future well (D122).
Researchers in R&DWorld Bank (SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6), 2019
25.2 per million people, rank 106 of 114. Full-time-equivalent researchers per million people.
A condition, not scored: a standing stock of people who could investigate is what a country has, not a record of what they found (D122). Correlates with income but survives size normalization.
Secure internet serversWorld Bank (IT.NET.SECR.P6), 2024
32.5 per million people, rank 113 of 125. Servers using encryption in internet transactions, per million people.
A condition, not scored: a diffusion stock of digital adoption that money buys, not an act of anticipation (D122). Spans four orders of magnitude, so its rank is read on the published value and its correlations on the logged one.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
National Planning Commission foresight work for Malawi 2063
Malawi's National Planning Commission, which signed a UNDP initiation plan in November 2020 to create a foresight unit and horizon scanning capability, reported for 2022/23 that it produced a foresight modelling report with modelled scenarios for the Malawi 2063 vision, policy briefs on three of the vision's pillars with UNDP and the finance ministry, and foresight modelling training for planners from ministries and academia.
1 reports, foresight modelling reports produced (assessing malawi's trajectory towards mip-1 milestones and mw2063 aspirations), FY2022/23. National Planning Commission of Malawi, 2023 Annual Report (financial year 2022/2023), section 3.3.3 Enhanced Foresight Initiatives, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The statutory planning commission that owns the national long-term vision built a small foresight and modelling capability with UNDP support and used it to test the vision's targets against scenarios and to train planners in ministries.
Limits: The commission reports on itself, in a PDF (section 3.3, printed pages 38 to 39, PDF page 42). The metric is a single report, and the text does not say how many policy briefs were written, only that they covered the urbanisation, industrialisation and agricultural productivity pillars, so the delivery figure is thin. The foresight work leans on UNDP: the unit was set up under a six-month UNDP initiation plan (NPC news item, 26 November 2020, https://npc.mw/2020/12/npc-undp-sign-agreement-to-initiate-implementation-of-foresight-project/) and the 2022/23 briefs were produced with UNDP, so the record cannot separate national capacity from donor support. The commission is primarily a development planning body that monitors the Malawi 2063 vision and its first ten-year implementation plan, which sits closer to planning than to open-ended scenario foresight; its modelled scenarios are tied to vision targets. No later annual report was read, so status rests on 2022/23, and the report gives no staff count or budget for the foresight function.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 22.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
I move up two points on panelist B's point that long-running research institutions in health, such as the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome programme and the College of Medicine, are durable organisations that track emerging risks. They are largely foreign-funded and the state's own planning remains donor-reliant, so I stay below the indicator score.
- 24.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
A and C fairly note repeated food and forex crises and Freddy's toll, so I trim two points; I stay above them because the agricultural and health research-practice networks and village civil protection committees are anticipation that article counts miss.
- 21.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Negligible research output and repeated food, forex and cyclone shocks with donor-led response. Panelist B's research-practice networks in health and agriculture are real but sector-specific and donor-linked, so I move up one point only.
Agency
How able are individuals and organizations to turn an intention into action?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
New business density
direct capability measureset aside, older than 15 years- Raw value
- no dataper 1,000 aged 15-64
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS)
- History
The latest value, 0.086 per 1,000 aged 15-64 in 2009, is more than 15 years old. It does not count toward the score, the scale or the coverage, and it stays in the history.
Note: Directly observes intention turning into a registered entity. Undercounts informal activity, which matters for India and Brazil.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 37days
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.REG.DURS.MA.DY)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 7count
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO)
- History
Adults doing digital tasks
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of adults
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- ITU / UNESCO UIS (SDG 4.4.1, ICT skills by type)
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked whether adults can perform standard digital tasks, which reads a skill level, the kind of stock D122 moved out of the scores with internet users. It now counts the act: a person who did the task. It is not the internet users condition beside it, which counts access. Candidate: ITU ICT skills by type (SDG 4.4.1) through the UNESCO UIS API, probed 2026-10-02. Sent a message with an attached file reaches 33 of the 53 countries then in the frame, 25 at 2018 or later, with no United States, India or China and most of Africa and Central America missing; two other task items reach 31 and 16. The items are self-reported and the task list has changed between rounds. Wireable on one task observed for half the frame or more at 2018 or later.
Perceived control over life
perception proxymissing- Raw value
- no datamean 1-10
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (A173)
- History
- no data
Note: A perception: the publisher-weighted mean, on a 1 to 10 scale, of how much freedom of choice and control respondents feel they have over the way their life turns out, from the official Joint EVS/WVS 2017-2022 results table, release 5.0.0. It observes the felt capacity to act, not action. The table prints the mean to one decimal and no top-box share, so the row stores the mean and ties are common. Fieldwork years differ by up to six years: the 37 countries emitted were surveyed between 2017 (eight, the US among them) and 2023 (India), and every value is stamped with the release year 2022. Response style on 10-point scales differs across cultures, and a closed autocracy can read high: Vietnam and Nicaragua sit near the top of the frame. Countries with separate EVS and WVS samples (Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands) are held, as for interpersonal trust. See D127 and A15.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Individuals using the internetWorld Bank (IT.NET.USER.ZS), 2024
19 % of population, rank 119 of 125. Share of the population that used the internet in the last three months.
A condition, not scored: access to the basic tool of modern agency is what people have to act with, not a record of them acting (D122). Saturates near 95%, which compresses the top of the range.
Financial account ownershipWorld Bank (FX.OWN.TOTL.ZS), 2024
50.4 % aged 15+, rank 95 of 122. Adults with an account at a bank or mobile money provider.
A condition, not scored: holding an account is the precondition for almost any economic action, not the action (D122). Global Findex, published every three years.
Credit to the private sectorWorld Bank (FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS), 2024
7.9 % of GDP, rank 120 of 124. Domestic credit provided to the private sector by financial corporations.
A condition, not scored: financial depth is a stock of money available to actors, not what they do with it (D122). High values can also signal a credit bubble, so more is not always better.
Coordination
How effectively can independent actors organize around shared objectives?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
Government effectiveness
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_GE.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The WGI aggregate the opinions of experts and firms, and in this set the four WGI series correlate with each other between 0.93 and 0.98 while correlating with log GDP per capita at 0.91. That is one perception of national wealth counted in three dimensions. Cross-agency delivery records are the replacement and they are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Regulatory quality
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_RQ.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. Same measurement as government effectiveness, filed under a different name, correlating with it above 0.93. See D23 and A4.
Logistics performance
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataindex 1-5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (LP.LPI.OVRL.XQ)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The LPI is a survey of international freight forwarders, so it records how a country looks to global logistics firms. A small country with a small port scores low whatever its state can organise, which is artefact A9. Container throughput and border time are observable and stay. See D23.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 78.118hours
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (TRD.ACRS.BRDR.EXPT.BRDR.COMP.HR.DB1619)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 107.15percentage points from approved budget
- Year
- 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (GF.XPD.BUDG.ZS)
- History
University-industry collaboration
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Innovation Index
- History
- no data
Note: GII carries it, but the underlying item is a WEF executive opinion survey whose microdata is not inspectable. Excluded on principle 4.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.931index 0-1
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- V-Dem (v2x_cspart)
- History
- one year
Public-private collaboration
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No comparable dataset. PPP investment databases measure infrastructure finance, not collaboration capacity.
Behavioral check, not scored
Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.
Customs clearance time for exportsWorld Bank (IC.CUS.DURS.EX), 2025
2.979 days, lower is better. Average number of days to clear direct exports through customs, as reported by manufacturing firms that export directly, in the World Bank Enterprise Surveys.
Days a manufacturer that exports directly says its goods took to clear customs, from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. It is the time the border took on firms' own shipments, current where the Doing Business border time this capability scores is frozen at 2019. It is not scored for two reasons. The number of firms behind each country's figure is published only in the survey microdata, and on a proxy from the published tables 37 of the 53 countries in the frame when it was checked clear 30 exporting firms; Mexico, the Philippines, Israel and nine others may not. And the question changed: surveys fielded from 2024 also ask how long release took across all border agencies, and drop an answer where customs alone took longer, so a country surveyed on both sides of the change can move severalfold with nothing at its border changing. India reads 17.3 days in 2022 and 2.5 in 2025, on more than 9,000 firms each time. No country in the frame has two surveys on the new questionnaire yet. Income is not why it is left out: it barely tracks log GDP per capita.
Trust
How much cooperation is possible beyond immediate personal networks?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
Rule of law
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_RL.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite correlating with control of corruption above 0.95 and with log GDP per capita at 0.83. Court throughput and case clearance rates are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Control of corruption
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_CC.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite. It measures reputation for corruption, which is not the same thing as corruption, and it tracks income closely. Prosecution and audit records are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 522days
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (ENF.CONT.DURS.DY)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 26.031% of firms
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 3.169scale 0-4 (never to always)
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- V-Dem (v2jucomp_osp)
- History
- one year
Intentional homicide rate
downstream outcomeretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataper 100,000 people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5)
- History
- no data
Note: Added 2026-08-26 by D23 as the observable replacement for two retired WGI perception composites, and retired 2026-08-27 by D44 when the diagnostic built in D42 measured what it was doing. It raised this dimension's correlation with log GDP per capita by 0.288, from 0.096 to 0.385, the largest single wealth contribution anywhere in the model. It was added to fix wealth contamination and it was the wealth contamination. The dataset is sound and the objection is to what it measures here: homicide is driven heavily by organised crime, a society can be physically safe while trusting very little, and across this country set the variation it carries is mostly income. Behavioural trust measures remain a gap.
Generalised interpersonal trust
perception proxymissing- Raw value
- no data% agreeing
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (A165)
- History
- no data
Note: Share answering that most people can be trusted in the official Joint EVS/WVS 2017-2022 results table, release 5.0.0. The adapter uses the publisher-weighted country results, emits only countries with one survey row, and holds countries with separate EVS and WVS samples until the respondent-level weights can be pooled reproducibly. See D57 and D64.
Trust in public institutions
perception proxyno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% expressing confidence
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD Trust Survey / WVS
- History
- no data
Note: The OECD survey covers members only. Mixing it with WVS items for India and South Africa would break comparability. The Joint EVS/WVS confidence battery (E069) reaches 37 countries from one release, and confidence in the courts (E069_17) is published beside Trust as a check under this id rather than scored: every item of the battery tested (courts, civil service, police, parliament and government) reads higher in the closed and electoral autocracies of the frame than in its democracies, which is deference as much as confidence (A13). The gap stays open for a measure that does not reward a court that cannot rule against the state. See D132.
Cooperation beyond the in-group
perception proxymissing- Raw value
- no data% expressing trust
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (G007_34_B)
- History
- no data
Note: The distinction that makes this dimension worth measuring: whether trust reaches a person with no tie to the respondent. Generalised trust asks about "most people", which a respondent can fill with their own circle; this item names the stranger. China is the clearest case, high on most people and low on a person met for the first time. The value is the publisher-weighted share answering trust completely plus the share answering trust somewhat, the one sum of two printed columns the adapter stores, exact to about 0.1, over all respondents including don't know and no answer. EVS and WVS ask the same question on the same four-point scale; where one country has both samples, the WVS share is a median 2.2 points higher. Trust in people of another nationality (G007_36_B), which the row once also named, is left out because it reads attitudes to foreigners as much as trust. Fieldwork runs from 2017 to 2023 and every value carries the release year 2022. Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are held, as for interpersonal trust. See D140.
Court case clearance rate
downstream outcomeno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of incoming cases
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- CEPEJ / OECD / national court statistics
- History
- no data
Note: Whether a court finishes what it starts, counted from case records rather than asked in a survey. D23 named it as the observable replacement for the two retired WGI composites and it has stayed unfilled since. CEPEJ publishes it for Council of Europe members and OECD for its own members, so no single publisher reaches this country set, and a harmonised series needs the project second source adapter. See D57.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 50.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
I hold 50, and the panel agrees: the 2020 Constitutional Court annulment and the respected rerun are strong institutional evidence, offset by firm bribery at a quarter of firms and the Cashgate legacy.
- 51.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
The panel agrees closely; the 2020 annulment and compliant rerun is strong behavioural evidence, and village banks carry cooperation beyond kin, offset by 26 percent firm bribery and Cashgate, so I hold near my round 1 score.
- 49.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
The Constitutional Court's annulment of the 2019 election, accepted by the government, is behavioural evidence that institutions rule against power, which the compliance score may miss. Bribery at 26 percent of firms and Cashgate pull it down.
Learning
How effectively does the country acquire, distribute, and update knowledge?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.413index 0-1
- Year
- 2020. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (HD.HCI.OVRL)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 42.319% of firms
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.FRM.TRNG.ZS)
- History
Adult learning participation
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no data% of adults
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Eurostat / OECD PIAAC
- History
- no data
Note: The best available measure of continuous learning capacity, and it exists only for European and OECD members.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 1.534ratio to world average
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- OpenAlex (citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent)
- History
- one year
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Tertiary enrolmentWorld Bank (SE.TER.ENRR), 2022
2.7 % gross, rank 121 of 124. Gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education.
A condition, not scored: enrolment counts people in formal education and records nothing learned (D122).
Public education expenditureWorld Bank (SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS), 2022
2.7 % of GDP, rank 104 of 125. Government expenditure on education as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: public spending on education is a pure input, and learning is what the dimension asks about (D122).
Vocational share of secondaryWorld Bank (SE.SEC.ENRL.VO.ZS), 1996
0.74 % of secondary, rank 118 of 125. Vocational pupils as a share of total secondary enrolment.
The value is from 1996, more than 15 years old.
A condition, not scored: the share of secondary pupils on a vocational track describes how a school system is built, not what anyone learns in it, and higher is not unambiguously better (D141). It marks a route into skilled work that does not run through university. Learning reads research citation impact, firm training and the human capital index instead.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
National Adult Literacy Programme
Malawi's Ministry of Gender, Community Development and Social Welfare has run the National Adult Literacy Programme since 1986 through volunteer-taught community classes. Enrolment in Adult Literacy and Education reached 171,434 learners in the 2024/25 financial year, against about 82,000 participants in 2006.
171,434 learners, learners enrolled in adult literacy and education, 2024/25 financial year. 82,312 learners, adult literacy participants, public and ngo classes combined, 2006. Malawi Government, Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Annual Economic Report 2025 (Budget Document No. 2), section 15.2.2.1, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The ministry responsible for community development runs adult literacy as a standing national programme. It organises classes of about 25 learners through district community development officers and volunteer instructors that communities choose, and NGOs and churches run parallel classes under the same policy.
Limits: The gap asks for a share of adults, and this is a count of learners in one literacy programme. Against Malawi's adult population, roughly 10 million people aged 15 and over, it is under 2 percent. That ratio is our rough computation and is not published. The figure is the ministry's administrative report, carried without method in a budget document. It does not say whether NGO and faith-based classes are included. The series is inconsistent: the Annual Economic Report 2024 gives the same 158,048 as learners who 'graduated' in 2023/24, and the 2025 report uses it as the previous year's enrolment. The 2006 comparison comes from a different ministry, the department's earlier home, and counts public and NGO participants together, so the two numbers may not measure the same thing. Literacy classes are one narrow kind of non-formal adult education. They say nothing about vocational, workplace or tertiary adult learning. The 2008 report records that the programme aimed to reach 2 million of 4.6 million illiterate adults by 2000 but had reached about 860,000 by 2006. It also records 'magnitude of failure', volunteer instructors whose minimum qualification is primary school grade 8, and inadequate funding. The 2025 report names the National Strategy on Adult Literacy and Lifelong Learning, not NALP, so treating the 2024/25 enrolment as the same programme begun in 1986 is our reading. Enrolment says nothing about completion or literacy gained.
Experimentation
How easily can new approaches be attempted, tested, abandoned, and improved?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 3per million people
- Year
- 2016. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 499per million people
- Year
- 2016. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.TMK.RSCT)
- History
Resident industrial design applications
downstream outcomemissing- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (IP.IDS.RSCT)
- History
- no data
Note: A filed design is a registered attempt at a new product form: cheaper and more frequent than a patent, so it reads as many small experiments (D126). Three traps. China subsidised design filings, as it did patents, so its count runs ahead of the attempts behind it. EU applicants increasingly file at the EUIPO rather than nationally, and resident counts at a national office miss those filings, so EU members read low. The Netherlands has no series because designs there go to the Benelux office. Read it beside resident trademarks, which it partly duplicates.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 16049per million people
- Year
- 2026. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv)
- History
- no data
Venture deals
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD / national VC associations
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The id keeps its first name so evidence records, links and published files still resolve. The row asked for venture capital deployed as a share of GDP, a level of financial depth of the kind private credit is (D122). A count of first rounds counts attempts started with outside risk money, which is what this capability asks about, and a large round counts once. Candidates, none wireable: the OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Financing scoreboard carried venture capital for 6 of the 16 countries the frame held on 2026-08-26, as amounts in national currency, latest year 2022, with Brazil, India, South Africa and Singapore absent (D21); national venture capital associations publish counts on their own definitions; commercial deal databases cover the world and are not inspectable (D10). Wireable on an inspectable deal count with one definition of a first round for half the frame or more. Read A1 before treating this dimension as measured.
Early-stage entrepreneurial activity
direct capability measuremissing- Raw value
- no data% aged 18-64
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, TEA rate)
- History
- no data
Note: From the GEM Adult Population Survey, entered by hand because GEM has no open API. TEA counts every new business, so necessity self-employment scores the same as a funded startup, which is why Chile and Argentina sit above the United States here. Read it as how many people are trying, not as how much value the attempts create. GEM does not run every economy every year: Singapore last took part in 2014 and the recency term marks that value down hard.
Tolerance of entrepreneurial failure
perception proxymissing- Raw value
- no data% not deterred
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, fear of failure rate)
- History
- no data
Note: Stored as 100 minus the published GEM fear of failure rate, so the direction matches the rest of the registry. GEM measures that rate among adults who already see good opportunities, not among all adults, so the denominator differs from the label. Attitudinal: bankruptcy law and time to discharge would be the observable substitute and are still worth wiring beside it.
Firms through regulatory sandboxes
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no datafirms per million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- national regulators
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the number and breadth of live sandboxes, which is a policy stock: a regime can exist with nobody in it. It now counts what passes through: firms a regulator let test under relaxed rules, and firms that came out, authorised, withdrawn or failed. Regulators publish cohort lists and exit reports one by one. The evidence corpus holds 22 records against this row, most of them counts of firms admitted or exited, each on the definition and window of its own regulator, and no register assembles them on one definition (O1 triage sweep, 2026-10-01). A realistic candidate for Envisioning to build from those lists. Wireable on a register that counts admissions and completions on one definition for half the frame or more.
University spinouts
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- national TTO associations
- History
- no data
Note: Reported nationally with incompatible definitions of what counts as a spinout.
Business share of R&D
capability inputretired, see notes- Raw value
- no data% of R&D
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD MSTI / RICYT
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-10-02. The only working source, OECD MSTI joined with RICYT for Latin America, covers 34 of the 53 countries then in the frame, but the row reads the make-up of a spending stock: who performs the R&D a country pays for. R&D spending itself is a condition since D122, and the share is high both where business research is large (Israel) and where total research is tiny and one firm dominates it (Thailand). State enterprises count as business, so China and Vietnam read their ownership model. UIS stopped publishing the series in 2023. Firms trying new things are read through patents, trademarks, designs and entrepreneurship instead. See D142.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 6.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
I move up two points: the repeated redesign of the input subsidy programme, tested and evaluated, is a state policy channel for trying and abandoning approaches. Most other trials are donor-run, and private experimentation channels are near the floor with stale IP data.
- 12.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.30
A and C are right that many trials are donor-run rather than domestic, so I trim three points; I stay above them because smallholder testing of crops, inputs and off-farm work is constant real experimentation the stale IP counts cannot see.
- 7.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.30
Every observed row is at the floor and the IP data date from 2016. Panelist B's pilots are often donor-run rather than domestic, so they say little about home capacity to try, abandon and improve.
Adaptability
How effectively can the system respond when circumstances change?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 5.072% of labour force
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 42.1% of unemployed
- Year
- 2013. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- ILOSTAT (DF_UNE_TUNE_SEX_AGE_DUR_NB)
- History
- one year
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.512index 0-1, lower = more diversified
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- UNCTAD (US.ConcentDiversIndices)
- History
- one year
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 1.53% of products not exported competitively at the start
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Harvard Growth Lab (hs92_country_product_year_4.csv (doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ))
- History
- one year
Disaster preparedness and recovery
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- INFORM / UNDRR
- History
- no data
Note: No source observes a country preparing for or recovering from a real shock. INFORM publishes its lack of coping capacity apart from hazard and exposure, but that dimension averages government self-assessments and governance perception indices with stocks such as roads, phones and physicians, which is the perception layer D23 retired plus conditions money buys (D122). Sendai and WHO reporting are governments grading themselves. A warning-reach survey item is a check candidate. See the disaster preparedness memo.
Institutional responsiveness
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No dataset exists. Measurable in principle from legislative and regulatory timestamps, which no one has assembled comparably.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Labour force participationWorld Bank (SL.TLF.ACTI.ZS), 2025
63.2 % aged 15+, rank 95 of 125. Share of the working-age population in the labour force.
A condition, not scored: how much of the population is in the labor force at all is what a country has to reallocate, a level set by norms, schooling and age, not a record of it reallocating (D141). Participation norms confound it, especially for India. Adaptability reads reallocation through long-term unemployment and export diversification instead.
Fixed broadband subscriptionsWorld Bank (IT.NET.BBND.P2), 2024
0.09 per 100 people, rank 120 of 125. Fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people.
A condition, not scored: installed infrastructure is what a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D122). Penalizes mobile-first countries such as India and South Africa.
Electricity transmission lossesWorld Bank (EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS)
No value for this country. Power lost in transmission and distribution, including unbilled use.
A condition, not scored: the state of the grid, and whether its operator can bill what it delivers, is infrastructure a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D141). Read it beside broadband, the other installed network beside Adaptability.
Informal employmentILOSTAT (DF_SDG_0831_SEX_ECO_RT), 2024
92.6 % of employment, rank 91 of 102. Informal employment as a share of total employment, SDG indicator 8.3.1.
A condition, not scored: how much work carries no contract, registration or social protection describes the labor market a country reallocates through, not it reallocating (D150). Read it beside the unemployment rate: where most work is informal, a person who loses a job takes any work within weeks, so a low rate is not a fluid market. Its direction for Adaptability cannot be defended, since informal work is both the slack that absorbs a shock and the precarity that keeps a worker from moving up, so the rank orders values and is not a verdict. Comparability is weak: the European values come from an income survey (EU-SILC) with a proxy definition, and the rest from labor force or household surveys processed by the ILO. ILOSTAT has no value for the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Israel, Malaysia, China, the Philippines or Cuba, and some values are old (Haiti and Nicaragua 2012).
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Shock-responsive social cash transfers and the Cat DDO
From 2019 the Government of Malawi identified every household it registered for shock-responsive cash transfers through its Unified Beneficiary Registry. It expanded the Social Cash Transfer Programme to give drought and COVID-19 aid to more than 300,000 rural households, and it drew US$30 million of pre-arranged contingent financing on 10 April 2020, three weeks after declaring a state of disaster.
300,000 households (more than), rural households given drought and covid-19 aid through shock-responsive expansions of the social cash transfer programme, identified through the unified beneficiary registry, 2019 to 2023. 30 million USD, catastrophe deferred drawdown option disbursed after the covid-19 state of disaster, 10 April 2020. World Bank, Implementation Completion and Results Report ICR00006189, Malawi Disaster Risk Management Development Policy Financing with Cat DDO (P165056), June 2023, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: Malawi's Ministry of Finance and its social protection agencies built one registry of rural households and set protocols that every shock-response transfer must use it. They paired the registry with financing pre-arranged before a disaster (a contingent credit line, a project contingency window and sovereign drought insurance), so cash could reach households without a new appeal each time.
Limits: The source is the lender's self-evaluation of its own policy operation, and the 300,000 is a floor ('more than') summed over about four years and two kinds of shock. It is not a per-event count and has no denominator of affected households. The money behind the transfers was largely external: a World Bank project's contingency window, ARC sovereign drought insurance whose premiums donors financed in full (ICR Annex), and IDA's Cat DDO. The evidence is that the national system routed aid, not that Malawi financed it. The Cat DDO was triggered by a pandemic, not a natural hazard, and its US$30 million was budget support with no traceable link to households. The ICR says fewer than 10 percent of the households receiving transfers were registered before the protocols. It rates the operation moderately satisfactory and reports that resilient transport standards were never developed. The source is dated June 2023; the operation itself closed in 2022. Cyclone Freddy (February and March 2023) and the 2024 El Nino drought fell after the operation closed and are not assessed. 'Operating' assumes the registry and the scale-up mechanism are still in use, which this source does not confirm beyond 2023.
COVID-19 Urban Cash Intervention, and its slow payment
Malawi declared a State of Disaster over COVID-19 on 20 March 2020 and enrolled 194,762 eligible urban households in a three-month cash transfer in four cities, but first payments came only after January 2021, and by 30 June 2021 just 32,000 households, 16 percent, had received all three payments while 29 percent had received none.
16.4 %, eligible households that had received all three cuci payments by 30 june 2021, 2021-06-30. 194,762 households, eligible households enrolled, 2021-06-30. World Bank, Malawi COVID-19 Urban Cash Intervention Process Evaluation Report (2021), retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The social welfare ministry designed a new urban transfer from scratch, registering households door to door in hotspots and paying by mobile money, with no prior urban registry to draw on.
Limits: The figures are in a PDF (State of Disaster date on PDF page 19, printed page 18; Table 8 and the January 2021 payment plan on PDF page 41). The World Bank co-financed the intervention with KfW, the EU and others, and commissioned the evaluation, but its own report documents the delay rather than hiding it. The record is evidence of slow responsiveness: about ten months from the State of Disaster to the first planned payment, a span we computed from the report's dates, and 15 months later only one in six households was fully paid. The report attributes the lag to know-your-customer failures between registration data and mobile network operator records and to agent liquidity, not to political choice. The 199,000 households cited elsewhere in the report is the enrolment target; the 194,762 is the eligible count in Table 8. Payments continued after June 2021 and the final completion figure is not in this report.
Building
How capable is the country of turning plans and knowledge into functioning systems?
-0.6 over 10 years, from 2.0 in 2016 to 1.4 on 2 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 10.971% of GDP
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (NV.IND.MANF.ZS)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 1.646% of manufactured exports
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (TX.VAL.TECH.MF.ZS)
- History
Logistics infrastructure quality
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataindex 1-5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (LP.LPI.INFR.XQ)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. An LPI sub-index, so the same freight-forwarder survey as logistics performance and the same problem. Electricity connection speed stays as the observable infrastructure measure in this dimension. See D23.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 52.609score 0-100
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.ELC.TIME.DFRN)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 0.008index
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (EF.EFM.UNIV.XD)
- History
Large project delivery
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no data% overrun
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: The single best measure of execution capability and there is no comparable international dataset. Assembling one is a defensible Envisioning project. Building mixes industrial output with state delivery capacity, and this indicator carries the delivery side: the other six indicators cannot see a national programme that was delivered. Documented deliveries are recorded in data/evidence and never scored, see D20.
Firm scale-up rate
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of firms
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD DynEmp
- History
- no data
Note: OECD business dynamics work covers members irregularly. Nothing comparable for India, Brazil or South Africa.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Output per workerWorld Bank (SL.GDP.PCAP.EM.KD), 2025
4,563 constant 2021 PPP $, rank 120 of 123. GDP per person employed, constant purchasing power parity.
A condition, not scored: output per worker is income per worker, the wealth the benchmark tests capability against, so it is published beside Building as context (D122).
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Energy Sector Support Project (substations and distribution lines)
Malawi's electricity utility ESCOM completed and energised all 10 substations and seven of nine planned distribution lines under the Energy Sector Support Project approved in 2011, closing on 15 October 2018 against an original closing date of 30 October 2016, having disbursed US$72.1 million of US$84.7 million.
10 substations, substations completed, energised and loaded, 2018-10. 7 lines, distribution lines completed out of nine planned, 2018-10. World Bank, Implementation Completion and Results Report, Malawi Energy Sector Support Project (P099626), 2019, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: Malawi's state utility reinforced the grid in its load centres with a package of substations and lines on concessional credit, and finished the works itself after its supervising consultant ran out of budget.
Limits: The World Bank's completion report, which rated the outcome Satisfactory, is the source; the substation and line counts are in paras. 103 and around 583 of the text file and the dates and amounts in the data sheet. The report gives no appraisal cost per work package, so cost performance cannot be read beyond the undisbursed balance, which reflects delay and cancellation rather than savings. The two-year extension followed procurement delays the report attributes to the political situation and inexperience with Bank procedures, and the implementation consultant stopped work in December 2017 when its budget ran out, leaving ESCOM to finish alone. At US$85 million this is a modest programme of grid reinforcement, not a single major build, so it is weak evidence on major project delivery. Plain-text file, no PDF page numbers.