Tipu Isaac Mchimika Vareta, principal secretary of Malawi’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Tourism, is visiting NIU to get some specialized training to benefit his country.

For three weeks this summer, Vareta will be learning strategic management and human resource management from faculty members Haakon Andreasen and Gerald Gabris respectively, and domestic resource decision_making from NIU economist Martin Williams.

“We speak English and our people are a reliable, hard_working labor force,” Vareta said of his small southeastern African nation.

While in DeKalb, Vareta has also made field trips to John Deere & Co., East Moline and the Rock Island Arsenal. He also went to Chicago to visit the Board of Trade, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Institute of International Education and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs.

Vareta served as a diplomat to Belgium for a decade. He also held a diplomatic post for Malawi’s embassy in Pretoria, South Africa.

Vareta holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and English, an export promotion certificate from Malawi’s University of Manchester and a diploma in commercial policy.

Malawi has a mainly agricultural economy, exporting tobacco, tea, sugar, coffee and peanuts. Because it has no ports and is currently at war with neighboring Mazambique, Malawi is dependant upon South Africa’s Durban Port.

owever, Vareta noted that a railroad through Mozambique has recently opened and another is being developed through Tanzania.

Malawi is about the size of Pennslyvania and is landlocked by Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique. It earned its independence from England on July 6, 1964.