But there is another form of infrastructure that determines whether these systems actually work for the people they are meant to serve. 

That infrastructure is empathy. 

I do not mean empathy as sentiment, sympathy or simply being nice. In the context of nation-building, empathy is the disciplined ability to understand how different people experience a policy, service or physical environment—and to use that understanding to design something that works in real life. Applying it does not mean lowering standards or diluting the hard KPIs by which public sector performance is measured. It means adding a second, equally rigorous question alongside them: not only was this delivered, but can the person in front of it actually use it. 

A nation can have world-class infrastructure on paper and still fail the person standing three feet in front of it. 

A railway station may be modern, but can a blind commuter navigate it independently? Can an older passenger hear the announcements clearly? Can someone recovering from knee surgery reach the platform without climbing a long flight of stairs? 

A government service may be fully digital, but what happens to the citizen with limited digital literacy, an unreliable internet connection or difficulty understanding the language used? 

A school may apply the same attendance and assessment rules to every student. But do those rules recognise the child grieving the death of a parent, moving between foster homes or living with a learning disability that has never been diagnosed? 

These are not marginal scenarios. They test whether our systems understand the society they are intended to serve. 

We are designing for a diversity that already exists 

Too often, policies and infrastructure are designed around an imagined “average person”: physically able, digitally connected, emotionally stable, financially secure and capable of navigating administrative complexity. That person does not represent the full population—and the gap is neither small nor temporary. 

The World Health Organisation estimates that 1.3 billion people—approximately one in six people worldwide—experience a significant disability. Crucially, the WHO explains that disability results from the interaction between a person’s health condition and environmental or social barriers, including inaccessible transportation, public buildings and limited support (WHO). A person’s condition may create a limitation, but the way we design the environment can either reduce or magnify it. Disability is also not a fixed category separating one group from everybody else: any of us may experience reduced mobility after an accident or surgery, lose some vision or hearing as we age, or need to push a pram or help an elderly parent through a crowded station. 

That population is also growing. Malaysia’s population is ageing: in 2026, people aged 65 and above comprised 8.4% of the population, up from 8.0% in 2025, and the country’s old-age dependency ratio rose from 11.4 to 11.9 older persons for every 100 people of working age (Department of Statistics Malaysia). Designing for people with limited mobility, then, is not about accommodating a small minority. It is about preparing for the society we already have—and the society we are becoming. 

Public transport must be measured through the complete journey 

Transport is one of the clearest examples of why empathy must be treated as infrastructure. 

We usually assess transport systems through technical performance: passenger capacity, service frequency, kilometres completed, travel time and cost. These indicators matter, but they do not tell us whether every passenger can complete the journey safely and with dignity. As of December 2025, Rapid Rail was carrying more than 1.03 million commuters every day (Prasarana). At that scale, accessibility cannot be treated as a supplementary feature—a lift that is out of service, an announcement that cannot be heard or a connection requiring passengers to cross an unsafe road can affect thousands of journeys in a single day. 

A tactile pathway that leads into an obstruction does not serve the blind passenger who depends on it. Priority seating means little if there isn’t enough time for someone using a walking aid to sit before the bus moves. And a station lift is no use if the pavement leading to the station is broken, obstructed or disconnected from a safe crossing. 

True accessibility must be measured from door to destination. It includes the pavement leading to the stop, the reliability of lifts and escalators, the clarity of information during disruptions and the availability of human assistance when technology is insufficient. Empathy changes the question from “Was the infrastructure delivered?” to “Can people actually use it?” That is not a softer measure. It is a more complete one. 

The worker’s journey does not end at the factory gate 

That same door-to-destination thinking applies just as urgently once the commute becomes a matter of livelihood—and PERKESO’s own data shows why. 

In 2023, PERKESO recorded 82,876 employment-related accidents. Of these, 38,454—or 46.4%—were commuting accidents. More strikingly, commuting accidents accounted for 750 of the 1,060 fatal cases recorded that year: 70.8% of worker fatalities, or approximately two deaths every day (PERKESO). 

These numbers challenge the assumption that responsibility for worker safety begins and ends at the workplace gate. A worker who travels by motorcycle because no affordable or reliable public transport serves an early-morning shift is not simply making an individual transport choice. A poorly lit walk from a railway station to an industrial area, or a shift schedule that requires travel when public transport is unavailable, are not incidents that happen to the system—they are conditions the system has set. An empathetic system does not immediately assign blame; it first seeks to understand the circumstances shaping behaviour. In practice, that can mean employers mapping how their workers travel, aligning shifts with public transport schedules, providing safe transport for late-night employees, or working with local authorities to fix dangerous first- and last-mile connections. It can also mean connecting PERKESO’s accident data with transport, location and working-hour information, so prevention addresses the conditions behind recurring incidents rather than the incidents alone. 

The same principle should follow the worker past the point of injury. PERKESO’s policies must remain consistent, accountable, and protected from abuse—but consistency is not the same as rigidity, and rules designed only for standard cases can leave people facing the most difficult circumstances least able to access the support built for them. A person coping with a serious injury may have to navigate forms, medical reports, appointments and deadlines precisely when their physical and emotional capacity is at its lowest. A family that has lost its principal income earner may struggle to determine which benefits apply, what evidence is required and which institution to approach first. 

Empathy here does not mean abandoning rules or approving every application. It means designing rules around the realities of the people expected to comply with them: simpler language, assisted application channels, clear case tracking, institutions that share verified information so the same documents are not submitted repeatedly, case-management support for complex circumstances, and clearly governed exceptions where a standard process would otherwise produce an unjust outcome. 

PERKESO’s Return to Work approach already demonstrates this kind of institutional empathy in practice. Its biopsychosocial model recognises that recovery is not only medical—it can involve physical rehabilitation, psychological adjustment, vocational support, workplace accommodation and the ability to regain a sustainable income (PERKESO). The opportunity is to extend that same human-centred thinking across the citizen’s entire journey, from prevention and application through to rehabilitation, employment and sustained independence. 

Equal treatment does not always produce equal opportunity 

The same distinction between standard and barrier holds in education. 

UNICEF estimates that nearly 240 million children worldwide have some form of disability. These children are more likely to have never attended school or to drop out, facing barriers that include stigma, inaccessible facilities, inadequate learning materials and a lack of appropriately trained teachers (UNICEF). In Malaysia, UNICEF previously found that 43% of surveyed Malaysians believed children with disabilities would be disruptive in a mainstream classroom—a figure that points to a barrier deeper than school facilities: the assumptions through which we judge who belongs in a conventional learning environment (UNICEF Malaysia). 

Children do not arrive at school carrying equal circumstances. One may have a quiet home, private tuition and parents who can advocate for them. Another may have lost a parent, taken on additional responsibilities at home or begun moving through a care system. A child with dyslexia, attention difficulties or another learning difference may be intelligent and capable, yet repeatedly treated as careless because the system recognises only one way of learning. 

Applying empathy does not mean lowering educational standards. It means distinguishing between the standard we want a child to achieve and the unnecessary barriers preventing that child from reaching it. Flexible teaching methods, early identification, counselling after bereavement, reasonable accommodations and better communication with caregivers do not compromise excellence—they allow more children to demonstrate their potential. 

Exclusion carries a national cost 

Transport, work and education are not separate case studies—they are the same person’s journey at three different stages of life, and the cost of getting any one of them wrong compounds across the other two. 

The International Labour Organisation reports that only three in ten persons with disabilities are active in the labour market, and that when persons with disabilities are employed, they tend to earn less than workers without disabilities (ILO). A child excluded from mainstream schooling, an adult who cannot safely reach a workplace, a worker who cannot access support after an injury: each is a point at which a capable person is pushed out of participation—not for lack of ability, but because the system made participation unnecessarily difficult. The result is potential workers, entrepreneurs, taxpayers, caregivers and community leaders a nation simply does not get to use. 

This is why empathy is not separate from productivity. It is one of the conditions required to unlock it. It also shapes something harder to measure but just as material: whether people trust the institutions serving them enough to participate, comply and stay engaged through reform. Every interaction with a public institution tells a citizen something—whether the system sees them, understands their circumstances and considers their participation worth designing for. 

Empathy must be converted into a method 

The danger is that organisations speak about empathy but leave it as an aspiration. For it to become infrastructure, it must be built into how policies and services are designed, implemented and measured. 

First, listen before designing. Engage the people who will use a service, especially those most likely to encounter barriers. Representation at the end of a process is consultation. Representation at the beginning is co-design. 

Second, test the real journey. Do not assess only whether each component exists. Follow the citizen’s entire experience—from finding information and reaching a facility to completing an application, receiving a decision and resolving a problem. 

Third, design for different circumstances. A strong system can maintain clear standards while providing more than one way to meet them. 

Fourth, measure exclusion as a delivery failure. Track who cannot access a service, who abandons the process, whose applications are repeatedly rejected and which communities remain absent from the intended outcomes. 

Finally, close the feedback loop. People must be able to see that their experience has led to an action, a design improvement or at least a clear explanation. 

Building nations that work for real people 

At PEMANDU Associates, we often speak about translating ambitious strategies into results at the three-feet level—the point at which a plan meets the person it is supposed to help. 

Empathy belongs at that level. It asks policymakers to move beyond the meeting-room view, engineers to experience the journey, educators to understand the child, and institutions to see the human being behind the application number. 

No system can anticipate every possible circumstance. But we can build institutions capable of listening, learning and responding when reality does not fit neatly into a standard category. 

The fullest potential of a nation is not found only in the strength of its economy or the sophistication of its infrastructure. It is found in how many people are genuinely able to participate in, contribute to and benefit from its progress. 

Empathy does not weaken systems, nor does it soften the KPIs used to judge them. Properly applied, it is one of the conditions those KPIs depend on. 

Author: 

Hilyah Raffick

Vice President

——- 

Let’s transform together. Contact us at: https://pemandu.org/contact-us/  

The post The Hard Case for a Soft Word: Empathy as National Infrastructure appeared first on PEMANDU Associates.

——-

With the recent release of the Tabung Haji RCI report, Malaysians were once again reminded of the consequences of corporate mismanagement and governance failures. The report speaks for itself in highlighting the governance gaps, issues and lessons that organisations should reflect upon.

However, there are a few takeaways that I believe are worth sharing.

1. The system shapes the operating environment.

It is great that the report highlights the importance of having a strong regulatory and governance framework. Just as water takes the shape of the container it is placed in, organisations operate within the boundaries, incentives and constraints created by the environment around them. Strong governance starts with strong foundations.

2. The third line of defence must have the courage to challenge.

An effective system of checks and balances is only as strong as the voice willing to call out what is wrong and calling as they are. Whether it is independent assurance or oversight bodies such as Jabatan Audit Negara (JAN), the third line of defence goes beyond identifying issues. It is about providing an independent view of reality, challenging where necessary, and making sure risks are clearly heard. Non negotiables, are truly not negotiable.

3. Trust is an organisational asset that must be protected.

Given what Tabung Haji represents to the Malaysian public, it is unsurprising that the findings have attracted significant scrutiny. It serves as an important reminder that organisations must manage more than just financial and operational risks. Trust, reputation and public confidence are equally valuable assets that take years to build but can be damaged overnight. Take years to build, but a moment to destroy.

——-

But above all, one observation stands out.

We continue to see governance failures and corporate scandals emerge across industries and jurisdictions, globally. This is despite increasingly sophisticated governance frameworks, tighter regulations, stronger oversight mechanisms and continuous efforts by organisations and regulators alike to stay ahead of evolving risks.

The reality is that frameworks have limits.

Culture is the control behind every control.

I have sat in boardrooms where directors asked: “How can fraud still happen when there are two approval points designed as controls?” The answer is simple: because two people can collude. 

Controls are necessary, but they are not sufficient. You can have the best policies, strongest governance frameworks and most sophisticated risk management processes, but if the culture allows people to bypass them, everything becomes fragile.

At the end of the day, it is about what leaders demonstrate, what behaviours organisations reward, and what people do when no one is watching. That is what makes or breaks organisations.

This is also consistent with how we think about transformation at PEMANDU Associates. While frameworks, structures and processes provide an important foundation, lasting change also depends on the behaviours and discipline that bring them to life. Ultimately, it is about creating an environment where accountability, problem-solving and continuous improvement become part of how an organisation operates every day.

The true measure of transformation is not what happens while we are there. It is what happens after we leave.

Author:

Aidil Aizzuddin

Manager

——-

Let’s transform together. Contact us at: https://pemandu.org/contact-us/

The post Beyond Governance: The Culture That Makes It Work appeared first on PEMANDU Associates.

The Moment Has Arrived

When the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed in early 2026, and remained under heavy restriction thereafter, the consequences arrived without ceremony. Brent crude breached USD 100 a barrel. Across Southeast Asia, fuel queues formed, subsidies strained, and governments scrambled to release emergency reserves. The Philippines declared a national energy emergency. Myanmar restricted private vehicle use to alternate days. Indonesia, despite being an oil producer itself, found itself managing a 22-day fuel reserve with increasing anxiety. The International Energy Agency described it as the greatest global energy security challenge in modern history [1].

Malaysia, as both an oil and gas producer, was comparatively cushioned. The government moved quickly to maintain RON95 at RM1.99 per litre under the BUDI95 scheme, absorbing the cost differential as global prices surged [2]. It was the right call for the short term. But it also illuminated a deeper problem – Malaysia’s instinctive response to an energy shock is to protect the conditions that make car ownership the only viable option for most of its people.

This is the moment to ask a harder question — not how Malaysia weathers this energy shock, but whether the country is prepared to use it as the catalyst to rethink, fundamentally, how its people move, and what it would take to build a mobility ecosystem that is less exposed to the next one.

How Malaysia Got Here

The story of how Malaysia became one of the most car-dependent nations in Asia is a story of decisions that made sense in their time, whose cumulative weight is now a structural liability.

Post-independence development required mobility. Connecting peninsular towns, opening economic corridors, enabling a growing population to reach jobs, education, and markets. Private vehicle was the instrument of that access, and policy followed accordingly. Proton was established to make car ownership a national project, fuel subsidies kept running costs low and roads and highways absorbed the majority of infrastructure spending. The logic was coherent – a developing economy needed its people to move, and the car was the fastest way to enable that.

What was not built, in parallel, was a credible alternative. Public transport was never designed to compete with private vehicles; it was designed to serve those who could not afford one. Urban planning followed road infrastructure rather than shaping it. Residential development sprawled outward from city centres in patterns that made walking impractical and transit uneconomical to serve. Over decades, the built environment became structurally aligned with the private vehicle and hostile to everything else.

The numbers reflect this plainly. Malaysia has approximately 17.2 million registered cars and 16.8 million motorcycles [3]. In the Klang Valley, only around 20% of daily trips are made by public transport — compared with 57% in Singapore, 72% in Seoul, and 87% in Hong Kong [4]. In Kuala Lumpur, car ownership has been estimated at roughly two vehicles per person [5]. Transportation costs such as vehicle ownership, fuel, and maintenance, consume an estimated 20% to 30% of monthly household expenditure for Klang Valley residents [5]. This burden falls hardest on lower-income households. The World Bank’s 2024 report on inequality and mobility in Malaysia finds that fuel subsidies have historically benefited better-off households disproportionately, and that better-targeted reform could reduce inequality while generating fiscal savings [6].

The environmental cost is equally clear. Malaysia’s Low Carbon Mobility Blueprint 2021–2030 documents that the transport sector accounts for 20% of Malaysia’s total GHG emissions, with road transport alone responsible for 18%; the second-largest GHG-emitting sector in the country [7]. Transport is also the second-fastest growing energy consumer, driven almost entirely by private vehicle use. The Blueprint sets an explicit target of 40% public transport modal share which is a target Malaysia has aspired to for over a decade without achieving [7].

These numbers reflect a country that was designed around cars and an energy system left increasingly fragile by that design.

What the Research Tells Us About Why People Don’t Switch

One of the most instructive findings in recent Malaysian transport research is that the problem is not that Malaysians are unwilling to consider public transport in principle. It is that the system has never offered them a compelling enough reason to switch in practice.

A 2023 study by the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS), examining willingness to shift among 512 road users across Peninsular Malaysia, found an average willingness-to-shift score of just 2.67 out of 10 [8]. The most commonly cited barriers were comfort and convenience of the private vehicle (38.8% of respondents) and dissatisfaction with the current public transport system (34.8%). Long travel times, family logistics and the perceived inflexibility of fixed schedules were also significant deterrents.

The same study reveals when specific improvements are introduced, willingness shifts dramatically. Regular and predictable public transport schedules produced the highest response (mean score of 6.76 out of 10), followed closely by a 20% reduction in fares (6.71) and increased park-and-ride parking at stations (6.69) [8]. This suggests Malaysians value reliability and predictability more than they value the car itself — qualities the current system does not consistently deliver.

Importantly, “push” measures such as fuel price increases, toll hikes, and higher parking fees received significantly lower willingness scores, suggesting that financial disincentives alone will not shift behaviour if the alternative remains unpredictable and incomplete [8]. Mode shift requires pull measures — making public transport genuinely better — alongside demand-side incentives.

The MIROS research also surfaces a regional dimension that deserves sustained policy attention. The central region showed the highest willingness to shift (3.14 out of 10), while the northern (2.05) and eastern (2.19) regions showed the lowest [8]. This reflects infrastructure availability, not cultural attitudes. Where public transport does not exist as a credible option, willingness to use it is predictably low. This makes the case for network extension beyond the Klang Valley a behavioural argument as much as an infrastructure one.

What is Keeping People in Their Cars

Understanding why Malaysians continue to drive despite the cumulative costs comes down to system design, not attitude. As Wan Agyl Wan Hassan, founder of transport think tank MY Mobility Vision, has argued, Malaysia has largely delivered on infrastructure expansion, while key outcome indicators — public transport modal share, emissions, affordability — have stagnated or moved the wrong way [9]. Malaysia has built much of the hardware it needs; what it has not built is the system around that hardware. Public transport in Malaysia fails quietly at every seam, and those accumulated failures add up to a journey most rational commuters will not choose.

The last mile remains the first failure. Malaysia has spent more than RM120 billion building rail infrastructure in the Klang Valley, creating one of the most extensive urban rail systems in Southeast Asia [10]. Yet for thousands of commuters, the most stressful part of the journey is simply getting to the station. Feeder buses remain unreliable and infrequent, some arriving every 30 to 60 minutes, many delayed by the very congestion the rail system is supposed to alleviate [10]. The MRT Kajang and Putrajaya Lines, the three LRT corridors, KTM Komuter, and the LRT Shah Alam Line, which began operations at the end of June 2026 after multiple delays, collectively cover significant ground. The MRT3 Circle Line has received final approval, with construction expected from 2027. But a rail network is only as useful as the journey it completes, and that journey ends not at the station but at the destination. Research consistently identifies first- and last-mile connectivity as a decisive barrier: inconvenient or unsafe access to stations can undermine perceived accessibility and deter mode shift even when the main transit service itself is functional [8].

This points to a distinction the governance argument above does not fully make. Institutional reform and rail investment can deliver the trunk network and the intercity story — the ECRL corridor, the Klang Valley’s rail spine, a future Trans-Borneo line. They cannot retrofit density onto suburbs that have already been built the way Malaysia’s have. Four decades of car-first planning will not be undone by better feeder bus schedules, however well the schedules are governed.

For the Klang Valley’s existing low-density suburbs, then, the answer is not a smaller version of the trunk network. It is a different mode, treated as permanent rather than as a stopgap. Arlington, Texas — a city of 400,000 people that has had no fixed-route bus network since 1934 — replaced the idea of a bus route with citywide, on-demand microtransit, on the reasoning that no fixed schedule makes sense at that density regardless of how well it is run [23]. Innisfil, a similarly sprawled town in Ontario, calculated that a single bus route would serve roughly a fifth of residents at a cost the town could not justify, and instead subsidises on-demand ride-hailing as its public transit system [24]. Malaysia already has an equivalent in Kumpool’s on-demand shuttle model; the open question is whether it becomes a permanent layer of national transport policy or remains a pilot.

This changes what a mobility commission should be asked to build. Along new corridors — Kuantan, Kota Kinabalu, the ECRL stations — its job is to shape density around rail as it is laid down. In the Klang Valley’s existing suburbs, its job is to commission flexible, on-demand transit as the permanent first- and last-mile layer for a geography that is not going to change, rather than waiting for fixed routes to eventually catch up.

Reliability is a prerequisite. A commuter who has been stranded twice does not merely complain — they revert to the car, often permanently. The MIROS study found that regular and predictable schedules were the single most powerful intervention for improving willingness to shift [8]. People will accept a longer journey if it is dependable, but not a shorter one that carries genuine uncertainty. Addressing reliability is an operational and governance challenge more than a capital one, which means it can be fixed faster than a new rail line is built, if institutional will exists.

Walkability is infrastructure. For decades, Malaysia has been trapped in car-centric urban planning, turning cities into sprawling, traffic-clogged landscapes where pedestrians are overlooked and cyclists are nearly invisible [11]. As one commentator has put it, walking is treated in Malaysian policy as a beautification project – the responsibility of local councils, something for tourists in Bukit Bintang — rather than as a national economic strategy or a key pillar of mobility [12]. Singapore’s underground pedestrian networks connect major transit hubs and commercial zones, making the walk between modes feasible regardless of weather. Tokyo’s neighbourhood design ensures that daily needs are walkable from transit stations, with continuous, shaded footpaths as a baseline expectation. Malaysia’s Low Carbon Mobility Blueprint explicitly identifies the promotion of active and micro-mobility (walking and cycling as one of its ten core strategies for GHG and energy reduction) [7]. Walkability is embedded in the decarbonisation agenda, and yet it remains chronically underfunded.

Integration is the missing governance layer. One agency expands highways while another tries to increase public transport ridership. One authority approves sprawling developments while another talks about sustainability. Local councils neglect pavements, cycle paths, and pedestrian crossings. The result is a country where driving becomes the only practical option, even for short trips [13]. Seoul’s T-money card and Tokyo’s Suica have made the multi-modal journey — plan once, pay once, travel across every mode — the default experience for decades. In the Klang Valley, the handoff between rail, bus, and e-hailing remains fragmented. Different payment systems, different apps, no single view of the complete journey. The Low Carbon Mobility Blueprint identifies Mobility as a Service (MaaS) as one of the key areas for green technology mainstreaming [7]. The concept exists in policy. The delivery remains some distance away.

The Governance Gap at the Centre of It All

Underlying all four gaps is a more fundamental problem: Malaysia’s transport system is institutionally leaderless.

When SPAD was abolished in 2018, its functions were distributed across APAD, Prasarana, local councils, and PLANMalaysia. Today, when an MRT station lacks a walkway, everyone blames someone else. No single body is accountable for the complete journey [14]. The government’s own National Transport Policy 2019–2030 and Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan 2040 promise a shift toward public transport and active mobility — better buses, safer walking and cycling, transit-oriented development. However, without a unified institution to plan, regulate, and enforce across all modes, these commitments remain difficult to deliver coherently [15].

The case for a dedicated mobility commission — a Suruhanjaya Mobiliti Malaysia — has been gaining traction in policy circles. Rather than reinstating SPAD as it was, what is needed is a new institution for a new era: one that plans, regulates, and is accountable for all forms of movement including trains, buses, walking, cycling, and micro-mobility, with mode-share targets, safety benchmarks, and equity indicators as its core performance framework [14]. Its goal should be clear – to lift public and active transport modal share to at least 40% the target Malaysia has been missing for a generation [7].

Where Singapore’s Land Transport Authority made the city-state move efficiently, Malaysia’s equivalent could be designed to make it move fairly with direct planning powers, local representation, and a mission centred on equity and access, not just throughput [14]. Budget 2026 allocated over RM12 billion for transport and road-related projects, with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim describing mobility as “the lifeblood of the economy and the people’s livelihoods” [16]. 

The Pipeline That Cannot Be Wasted

Malaysia is not standing still on transport infrastructure. A significant pipeline of rail investment is either under construction or in active planning and this represents both a genuine opportunity and a serious obligation to get the ecosystem right around these assets.

The ECRL is the most immediate and substantial. The 665-kilometre line connecting Kota Bharu to Gombak, and eventually Port Klang, has reached over 90% construction and operations expected to begin in January 2027 [17]. It will reduce travel time from Kota Bharu to KL from seven hours by road to approximately four hours by rail, connecting the East Coast states of Kelantan, Terengganu, and Pahang to the Klang Valley for the first time by rail. Thailand has indicated interest in extending the line to the Sungai Golok border under Pan-Asia Railway Network aspirations [18]. Its potential as an economic equaliser for historically underserved East Coast communities is real but its value will be determined by what is built around its stations, not just along the tracks. These stations are opportunities for transit-oriented development that, if not deliberately seized through land use planning and first-and-last-mile investment, will yield underutilised assets in areas that remain car-dependent by design.

In the Klang Valley, the Kita Selangor Rail positions itself as the missing link in the state’s connectivity picture. Described by the Selangor MB as “the final piece of the puzzle that would connect industry, people, and major transport infrastructure in Selangor and the Klang Valley” [19], the proposed 200-kilometre network which is currently in feasibility study, would run from Labu in Negeri Sembilan northward through Shah Alam, Klang, and up the Selangor coast to Sabak Bernam, connecting Port Klang, KLIA, and Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang with planned integration points with the ECRL [20]. It is a ten-year commitment minimum, with financing and phasing still to be resolved.

In Penang, construction of the 29-kilometre Mutiara Line LRT is confirmed. It is targeted for completion in December 2031 and represents the island state’s first rail transit system — a structural shift in how Penang manages its growing mobility pressure. Budget 2026 confirmed that construction of the Mutiara Line has commenced, expected to benefit 1.8 million residents and 3.5 million tourists annually [16].

In Borneo, a 12-month feasibility study for the Trans-Borneo Railway linking Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei, and Kalimantan, funded at RM7 million under the 12th Malaysia Plan began in June 2025, with results expected by the third quarter of 2026 [21]. If implemented, this would be among Southeast Asia’s most ambitious cross-border infrastructure projects, transforming East Malaysia from a region connected almost entirely by road and air to one with a rail backbone spanning the island of Borneo. 

The Gemas–Johor Bahru electrified double track, completed and handed to the government in December 2025, has strengthened the southern rail spine. Johor is pressing for federal approval of a domestic rail system ahead of the JB-Singapore Rapid Transit System link opening in 2027, a 4-kilometre shuttle designed to carry up to 10,000 passengers per hour, which will funnel significant volumes into Bukit Chagar station that road infrastructure alone cannot absorb [18].

To support Malaysia’s low-carbon mobility goals alongside this rail expansion, Budget 2026 committed to 300 Demand Responsive Transit vans for first- and last-mile access, and 1,450 electric buses to be procured in phases until 2030 [16]. The MY50 travel pass, which recorded 2.6 million sales and helped users save up to 67% on monthly travel costs, shows that demand-side incentives for public transport do work when the offer is compelling [22].

This pipeline is impressive in its ambition but has to be connected into a system that serves the complete journey. 

The Transformation Malaysia Can Choose

Twenty years from now, Malaysia’s cities will be home to significantly more people, more economic activity, and more daily journeys than they manage today. The question is what system those journeys will move through.

One version of that future is a scaled-up version of the present: more vehicles on wider roads, somewhat electrified, served by a rail network that has grown but remains underutilised because the ecosystem around it was never properly addressed. Congestion remains the tax on daily life. Household transport costs remain a persistent drain on B40 and M40 families. The option to live without a car remains unavailable to most.

Another version looks genuinely different. The energy crisis of 2026 proves to be the inflection point when Malaysia chose to act on a systemic vulnerability rather than simply absorb it. The ECRL’s twenty stations become anchors of walkable, mixed-use development. The Kita Selangor Rail, the Penang Mutiara Line, and the MRT3 Circle Line are built not just as assets but as systems, with last-mile connections, reliable feeders, and integrated ticketing designed alongside the tracks. An empowered, centralised mobility agency gives the transport system someone accountable for the whole journey. The Trans-Borneo Railway feasibility study leads to implementation, giving Sabahans and Sarawakians a surface transport option that no generation before them has had. Over two decades, the Klang Valley’s public transport modal share moves meaningfully toward the 40% target that has been aspirational for a generation and that Malaysia’s own Blueprint has already enshrined [7].

The measure of success in that second future is concrete and human: a middle-income family in Petaling Jaya makes an unforced, practical choice not to own a second car. Not because they cannot afford one but because, finally, they do not need one. A commuter in Kuantan boards the ECRL to KL and arrives confident the journey will take four hours and that the last kilometre will work as well as the first. A young professional in Kota Kinabalu travels between Sabah and Sarawak by rail for the first time in history.

These outcomes are not guaranteed by the infrastructure being built. They become possible only if decisions about governance, land use, reliability, and integration are made alongside the construction.

Malaysia has built hard things before. Building a mobility system that genuinely serves its people rather than merely providing infrastructure for their vehicles is the next one worth committing to.

That work begins now.

Author:

Atiqah Shazlin

Senior Manager

——-

Let’s transform together. Contact us at: https://pemandu.org/contact-us/ 

References

[1] Wikipedia. (2026). 2026 Iran war fuel crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war_fuel_crisis

[2] Ministry of Finance Malaysia. (2026, March 11). Govt Maintains Targeted Fuel Subsidies, RON95 Remains At RM1.99 Per Litre. Bernama. https://www.mof.gov.my/portal/en/news/press-citations/govt-maintains-targeted-fuel-subsidies-ron95-remains-at-rm1-99-per-litre-mof

[3] ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute. (2025). Economics and Politics of Malaysia’s Petrol Subsidy Reform (ISEAS Perspective 2025/68). https://www.iseas.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ISEAS_Perspective_2025_68.pdf

[4] SC-Abeam. (2020). Comparisons of Cities’ Transportation Modal Shares and Post-Coronavirus Prospects. https://www.sc-abeam.com/and_mobility/en/article/20201203-01/

[5] The Centre. (n.d.). Getting Around: Towards a Decent Daily Commute. https://www.centre.my/post/getting-around-towards-decent-daily-commute

[6] World Bank. (2024). A Fresh Take on Reducing Inequality and Enhancing Mobility in Malaysia. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org

[7] Ministry of Environment and Water Malaysia (KASA). (2021). Low Carbon Mobility Blueprint 2021–2030: Decarbonizing Land Transportation. Putrajaya: KASA. http://mgtc.gov.my/storage/2021/11/Low-Carbon-Mobility-Blueprint-2021-2030.pdf

[8] Shabadin, A., Mohamed Jamil, H., Nemmang, M. S., & Ishak, S. Z. (2025). Towards Sustainable Mobility: Willingness to shift to public transport in Peninsular Malaysia. Environment-Behaviour Proceedings Journal, 10(SI41), 115–121. https://doi.org/10.21834/e-bpj.v10iSI41.7737

[9] Wan Agyl Wan Hassan. (2025, December 17). It’s an unfinished system, not infrastructure, that fails Malaysian commuters. Free Malaysia Today. https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2025/12/17/its-an-unfinished-system-not-infrastructure-that-fails-malaysian-commuters

[10] Wan Agyl Wan Hassan. (2025, December 6). When transport policies are a walking contradiction. Free Malaysia Today. https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2025/12/06/when-transport-policies-are-a-walking-contradiction

[11] Free Malaysia Today. (2025, March 27). How to get Malaysians walking and cycling. https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2025/03/27/how-to-get-malaysians-walking-and-cycling

[12] Free Malaysia Today. (2025, November 27). Walking — the RM300bil answer Malaysia keeps ignoring. https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2025/11/27/walking-the-rm300bil-answer-malaysia-keeps-ignoring

[13] Boo Jia Cher. (2026, May 13). To beat the fuel problem, free people from having to drive everywhere. Free Malaysia Today. https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2026/05/13/to-beat-the-fuel-problem-free-people-from-having-to-drive-everywhere

[14] Boo Jia Cher. (2025, October 15). Malaysia needs a mobility commission, not just another transport agency. Free Malaysia Today. https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2025/10/15/malaysia-needs-a-mobility-commission-not-just-another-transport-agency

[15] Free Malaysia Today. (2025, November 15). The NPE2: Yet another billion-ringgit mistake. https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2025/11/15/the-npe-2-yet-another-billion-ringgit-mistake

[16] The Malaysian Reserve. (2025, October 10). Malaysia expands public mobility, rail connectivity with RM8.1b for road safety, low-carbon transport. https://themalaysianreserve.com/2025/10/10/malaysia-expands-public-mobility-rail-connectivity-with-rm8-1b-for-road-safety-low-carbon-transport

[17] Malay Mail. (2026, February 11). ECRL project moves into operations prep after hitting 91.7% construction progress, says Anthony Loke. https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2026/02/11/ecrl-project-moves-into-operations-prep-after-hitting-917pc-construction-progress-says-anthony-loke/208864

[18] Bernama. (2025, December 21). Key Rail Infrastructure Projects Advance Across Malaysia In 2025. https://www.bernama.com/en/news.php/?id=2504974

[19] Selangor Journal. (2025, June 5). Kita Selangor Rail final piece of Klang Valley transport puzzle, says MB. https://selangorjournal.my/2025/06/kita-selangor-rail-final-piece-of-klang-valley-transport-puzzle-says-mb/

[20] Selangor Journal. (2025, July 10). Kita Selangor Rail feasibility study underway, state assembly hears. https://selangorjournal.my/2025/07/kita-selangor-rail-feasibility-study-underway-state-assembly-hears/

[21] The Edge Malaysia. (2025, August 14). Trans-Borneo Railway feasibility study to conclude by 3Q2026 — Loke. https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/766494

[22] The Star. (2026, January 6). Transport Ministry committed to strengthening sustainable mobility, service quality by 2026. https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2026/01/06/transport-ministry-committed-to-strengthening-sustainable-mobility-service-quality-by-2026

[23] Government Technology. (2021, May 4). Arlington, Texas, Expands On-Demand Micro-Transit Citywide. https://www.govtech.com/fs/arlington-texas-expands-on-demand-micro-transit-citywide.html

[24] Municipal World. (2018, April 23). Innisfil, Ontario earns international recognition for its transit initiative, powered by Uber. https://www.municipalworld.com/feature-story/innisfil-ontario-earns-international-recognition-transit-initiative-powered-uber/

The post Shaping the Future of Malaysia’s Mobility appeared first on PEMANDU Associates.

Only 27 percent of surveyed public servants in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 29 percent in Kosovo, and 43 percent in Ethiopia reported receiving government-funded training during the preceding 12 months.

The problem is not only that too few public servants are being trained. Even when training happens, it is frequently disconnected from what institutions and officials actually need. These findings come from the World Bank’s 2026 Public Workforce Performance and Prosperity report. Its evidence base includes 67 million observations across 151 countries and surveys of more than 200,000 public-sector employees in 30 countries. The report concludes that government training is often not anchored in organisational needs or connected to the competencies required for different jobs.

That is a serious problem when the world depends on approximately 400 million public-sector workers to administer public resources, regulate markets, deliver essential services and implement government priorities. Training public servants is therefore not a peripheral human-resources activity. It is part of the operating infrastructure of the state.

Yet much of what is called capacity building still measures attendance, hours completed and participant satisfaction. Those measures tell us whether a programme took place. They do not tell us whether government became more capable of delivering.

The data shows an access problem and a relevance problem

The World Bank’s public-workforce surveys reveal significant differences in access to training.

Source: World Bank, Public Workforce Performance and Prosperity, 2026. Bureaucracy Lab survey periods vary between 2016 and 2025.

These figures should not be interpreted as a league table. The surveys cover different parts of government and were conducted at different times. However, they expose a common structural weakness: many public servants receive little formal development, while others receive training that may not address the problems they face at work.

The World Bank also found that civil servants often need training on specific technical subjects and digital technologies but instead receive training concentrated on laws, regulations and administrative processes.

This is not an argument against understanding government procedures. Those procedures matter. The concern is that administrative knowledge alone does not prepare a public servant to coordinate several ministries, resolve an implementation bottleneck, challenge weak data or turn a political commitment into a funded programme.

Knowledge is not the same as delivery capability

Across government transformation work in Malaysia, the Middle East and Africa, I have seen the same pattern in different forms. A policy can be technically sound but institutionally unowned. A minister may announce a target before the baseline has been agreed. Several agencies may be working on the same issue without sharing one implementation plan. A dashboard may display dozens of indicators but still fail to trigger a decision. These are not problems that can be solved by providing another presentation.

Delivery capability is the ability to operate when the answer is incomplete, authority is dispersed and progress depends on several institutions moving together.

• translate a political or strategic priority into measurable outcomes;
• separate symptoms from the underlying delivery problem;
• establish accountable ownership across institutional boundaries;
• connect initiatives to budgets and other required resources;
• determine which data can be trusted;
• identify dependencies before they become delays;
• run a performance discussion that produces decisions;
• resolve problems at the lowest practical level; and
• escalate only when an issue genuinely requires higher authority.

A participant may understand all these concepts in theory and still be unable to apply them under pressure. This is why public-sector delivery training must be designed as professional practice, not simply knowledge transfer.

What the original PEMANDU experience teaches us

Malaysia’s Performance Management and Delivery Unit, PEMANDU, was established in 2009 to drive implementation of the National Transformation Programme. The operating model concentrated attention on a limited number of national priorities. Those priorities were translated into granular projects with responsible ministries, timelines and key performance indicators.

The World Bank describes PEMANDU’s signature transformation Labs as six-to-nine-week stakeholder workshops that broke each priority into concrete projects. Once implementation began, progress was monitored regularly. Where indicators slipped, implementing agencies were expected to identify the reason, agree corrective action and escalate unresolved problems through the leadership chain.

The World Bank’s independent review found that this combination of prioritisation, granular planning, coordination, monitoring and escalation contributed to PEMANDU’s effectiveness. It also identified important limitations, including data quality, the risk of hitting a target while missing the underlying purpose, and the need for stronger impact evaluation. Read the World Bank assessment of Malaysia’s PEMANDU experience.

Those qualifications are important. A mature PEMANDU training programme teaches the limitations of the model alongside its strengths. Participants need to understand why a methodology worked under particular political, institutional and economic conditions. They also need to recognise when a tool should be adapted, strengthened or abandoned.

The objective is not to produce people who can recite the 8-Step Big Fast Results methodology. It is to develop people who can exercise delivery judgement.

The strongest evidence supports learning through practice

The World Bank’s 2026 report recommends that public-sector training combine classroom and on-the-job learning. It cites rigorous evaluations showing that hybrid programmes using reflective learning-by-doing and team-based learning are more effective than classroom instruction alone.

This aligns with the OECD’s finding that learning and development is a core part of public-sector capability, not merely a product supplied by human-resource departments. Its review also explains how transversal career structures can widen learning opportunities, break institutional silos and create networks that support cross-organisational projects. Read the OECD public-service capability review.

The measurement problem is equally significant.

In February 2026, the Governance Innovation Unit of Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser’s Office published, with technical assistance from UNDP and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, an evaluation framework for government training institutions. Piloted across five apex institutions, it found comparatively strong infrastructure and training delivery but persistent gaps in outcome measurement, research and evidence of learning impact. It recommended competency-based training, stronger monitoring and evaluation, faculty development and phased institutional reform. Read the government training-institution evaluation framework hosted by UNDP. These findings point in one direction: government training must be designed around work, assessed through application and connected to institutional outcomes.

What PEMANDU-style delivery training looks like

A PEMANDU delivery programme begins with a real implementation problem. Participants arrive with a priority from their own institution: youth employment, investment conversion, hospital waiting times, agricultural productivity, project delays, digital-service adoption or another issue that has resisted ordinary administrative action.

The programme forces that problem through the realities of delivery:

• What is the measurable True North?
• What is the baseline, target and date?
• Which part of the problem can government genuinely influence?
• Who owns each intervention?
• What must be funded?
• Which institution controls the critical decision?
• What data can be trusted?
• Which dependencies could stop implementation?
• What can be resolved operationally?
• What genuinely requires political or executive escalation?

Participants leave with a working delivery product, not only course notes. That product contains an implementation plan, named owners, measurable milestones, funding requirements, dependencies, decision rights, performance measures, reporting cadence and escalation pathway.

Simulation is part of the experience. Participants are placed in realistic situations involving incomplete data, institutional resistance, funding constraints, changing instructions and pressure from senior leadership.

This is where trainers must be distinguished from speakers. A strong speaker can explain a transformation story. A competent trainer must be able to diagnose a participant’s problem, challenge the logic, expose missing assumptions and guide the participant towards a usable solution. A delivery coach then supports application after the classroom. An assessor judges whether the person can perform the work independently. These are different professional roles. Treating them as interchangeable weakens training quality.

The PEMANDU Global Delivery Network connects training to professional practice

PEMANDU brings these elements together through the Global Delivery Network. It is not an alumni group, a list of trainers or a catalogue of courses. It is a structured professional pathway that develops government delivery capability from civil-service induction through advanced practice, while connecting practitioners across countries.

The Network operates at three connected levels.

1. Civil Service Induction

The first level introduces new public servants to how government priorities move through Cabinet, ministries, agencies, budgets and frontline institutions. The programme establishes a common language of outcomes, evidence, accountability and implementation. It is adapted to the laws, administrative culture and institutional structure of each country.

A generic international curriculum cannot adequately address local decision rights, political incentives, trust, culture or the relationship between national and subnational government.

2. Delivery Masterclass

The second level is an intensive five-day Delivery Masterclass for delivery-unit personnel, programme managers, senior civil servants and officials responsible for priority initiatives. It is the practical entry point into the Global Delivery Network.

Participants work on live government problems through delivery clinics, simulations, peer challenge and facilitated decision sessions. Their output is assessed against professional standards.

By the end of the programme, our participants have been able to translate a priority into a three-foot implementation plan, construct meaningful KPIs, establish an operating cadence, identify funding and dependencies, and defend the plan under scrutiny.

3. Global Delivery Fellowship

The third level is PEMANDU’s Global Delivery Fellowship for senior practitioners and future government delivery leaders. The fellowship combines taught modules, professional coaching, cross-country peer review and deployment in live delivery environments. Qualification requires evidence of application, not merely the completion of an examination.

A fellow qualifies by demonstrating how they influenced a decision, improved an implementation system, resolved a bottleneck, strengthened institutional ownership or transferred capability to other officials. This creates a pathway from exposure, to application, to professional practice.

The network itself becomes part of the capability

The most useful knowledge in transformation work rarely appears in the final presentation. It sits in the decisions that were made under pressure. It includes rejected options, disputed assumptions, stakeholder resistance, failed interventions and adaptations made when a sound plan encountered political or institutional reality. Most organisations preserve the final report and lose the reasoning behind it.

The PEMANDU Global Delivery Network captures this knowledge while delivery work is happening. Practitioners record:

• the original problem and baseline;
• the assumptions used;
• the options considered and rejected;
• the stakeholders and decision rights involved;
• the evidence supporting the chosen approach;
• the implementation results;
• what failed or changed; and
• the conditions under which the lesson could be transferred elsewhere.

This creates institutional memory without turning the past into doctrine. A lesson from Malaysia, Rwanda, Oman or Russia is not copied mechanically into another country. It is examined for the political authority, institutional capability, financing, incentives and timing that made it work.

A 2024 World Bank practice note, drawing on a convening of representatives from 15 African delivery units, reaches a similar conclusion. Delivery units can create pockets of effectiveness, improve monitoring and strengthen cross-government coordination, but their institutional form must be adapted to local conditions. Political backing, leadership routines, credible data and ownership by ministries remain essential. Read the World Bank note on African delivery units.

The Inter-American Development Bank examined how delivery units were adapted across 14 Latin American and Caribbean governments and whether they contributed to priority goals between 2007 and 2018. Its research reinforces the point that a delivery unit is an institutional innovation whose performance must be assessed, not an imported template that automatically produces results. Read the IDB technical note.

A data-driven training model measures application

Attendance, completion and participant satisfaction are recorded. They are useful operating measures. They are not sufficient evidence of impact. The Network’s evaluation model covers four levels.

Each participant begins with a documented baseline. The programme then conducts 30-day, 90-day and 180-day follow-ups. Not every national outcome can be attributed to training. Economic conditions, political decisions, institutional changes and external events also affect performance. The evaluation therefore distinguishes between direct outputs, plausible contributions and outcomes that cannot be confidently attributed. Credibility depends on that honesty.

AI strengthens evidence, not manufactured confidence

Within the Global Delivery Network, governed AI helps practitioners retrieve comparable cases, identify inconsistencies in implementation plans, generate realistic simulations and compare a participant’s proposed delivery structure against professional standards.

The governed AI layer connects:

• programme documents;
• decision logs;
• delivery dashboards;
• approved case studies;
• participant assessments;
• trainer feedback; and
• post-training implementation evidence.

It retrieves relevant lessons with source citations, flags missing ownership or funding, stress-tests assumptions and suggests questions for the practitioner to investigate. It is not allowed to invent evidence, conceal weak data or make unreviewed policy decisions. Human practitioners remain accountable for judgement, political interpretation and final recommendations. The purpose of AI is to help a delivery professional see more, test faster and remember better. 

It does not remove professional responsibility.

The real test begins on Monday morning

The purpose of public-sector delivery training is not to make officials sound more sophisticated. It is to make them more capable when implementation becomes difficult.

Can the participant turn an ambiguous priority into measurable outcomes? Can they establish ownership without creating another committee? Can they identify weak data? Can they connect an initiative to funding? Can they run a performance conversation that produces a decision? Can they escalate an issue without surrendering responsibility? Can they adapt a global lesson to local political and institutional reality?

That is the test.

The PEMANDU Global Delivery Network is not built to sell more training days. It develops a recognised profession of government delivery, connects capable practitioners across countries and reduces the long-term dependence of institutions on outside consultants.

Training creates exposure. Practice develops judgement. Professional standards create trust. The network keeps the capability alive.

Author:

Sean Ong

Executive Vice President

——-

Let’s transform together. Contact us at: https://pemandu.org/contact-us/ 

References:

1. World Bank, Public Workforce Performance and Prosperity, 2026

2. World Bank, Driving Performance from the Center: Malaysia’s Experience with PEMANDU

3. World Bank, Four Ways Delivery Units in Africa Can Drive Change, 2024

4. OECD, Public Employment and Management 2023

5. Government of Bangladesh, Governance Innovation Unit, Evaluation Framework of Government Training Institutes, with technical assistance from UNDP and SDC, 2026

6. Inter-American Development Bank, Do Delivery Units Deliver?, 2018

7. PEMANDU Associates, Leadership and Management Training

The post Public-Sector Delivery Training Must Move Beyond the Classroom appeared first on PEMANDU Associates.

Every mineral economy carries two stories. One is the story written underground, in seams, grades, reserves and assays. The other is written above ground, in towns, power lines, workshops, invoices, classrooms, rivers and families. For too long, African countries have been asked to celebrate the first story while losing the second. The ore leaves. The numbers appear in export data. The mine creates a few jobs, a road to the pit, and a fiscal argument in the national budget. But the deeper question remains unanswered: what did the country actually build because the mineral was there?

This is the real processing gap. It is not only the difference between raw ore and refined metal. It is the difference between owning a resource and converting that resource into national capability. A country can own the ground and still import the machinery. It can renegotiate the royalty and still export the concentrate. It can nationalise the licence and still depend on foreign refineries, foreign offtake, foreign finance and foreign buyers. That is why the next phase of Africa’s mineral strategy should not be reduced to a slogan about ownership. Ownership matters, but ownership alone does not build an industry.

Africa’s position in the global critical mineral economy has long been defined by what lies in the ground rather than by what the continent earns from it. The continent supplies important inputs for the energy transition, including manganese, cobalt, copper, graphite and lithium, yet the larger value often appears after the mineral has been crushed, concentrated, refined, chemically converted or built into components elsewhere. The original draft correctly identifies this gap as the central policy problem facing mineral-rich states across the continent.

[Fig 1: Africa’s Share of Global Reserves vs Share of Global Processing (%) / Sources: USGS (2025); IEA (2024); PACT Africa (2025)]

A changed external environment

What has changed is the external context. Critical minerals now sit at the centre of industrial policy, national security planning and geopolitical competition. The United States Inflation Reduction Act links clean vehicle tax credit rules to critical minerals extracted or processed in the United States or in free trade agreement partner countries or recycled in North America. The European Union Critical Raw Materials Act sets 2030 benchmarks for the EU to reach at least 10 percent of annual consumption from extraction, 40 percent from processing and 25 percent from recycling, while also reducing over-dependence on any single third country. China has used export controls on materials such as gallium, germanium, graphite and rare earth-related products to demonstrate how powerful processing control can be.¹²³

The world is not simply looking for minerals anymore. It is looking for secure supply, trusted jurisdictions, traceable products, resilient logistics and credible environmental standards. That shift creates opportunity for Africa, but it is a conditional opportunity. The premium is no longer attached to geology alone. It is attached to the ability to turn geology into an investable, reliable and responsibly processed product.

The ownership trap

The recent African record shows that governments are trying to correct old imbalances. The instinct is understandable. Many countries have watched minerals leave their soil for decades while the larger value was captured elsewhere. In that context, demands for better royalties, local equity, state participation, contract renegotiation and domestic processing are not irrational. They are a response to a history in which the bargain was often too thin for the country that carried the resource.

But there is a trap. Resource nationalism can change who captures the rent without changing what the economy is capable of producing. A government may seize an asset, renegotiate a licence or increase state equity, but none of those actions automatically builds a refinery, trains metallurgists, lowers power tariffs, secures water, finances tailings management, signs offtake agreements or creates a local supplier base. Political control and industrial capability are related, but they are not the same thing.

That distinction is visible across the continent. In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, transitional governments have renegotiated or revoked mining arrangements under nationalist mandates. The grievances behind those actions are often rooted in real public frustration. Yet the instrument is blunt. Forced renegotiation can redistribute extraction rents, but it can also raise investor risk and make it harder to attract the patient capital that processing requires. The difficult truth is that downstream industrialisation needs both sovereignty and credibility. Without sovereignty, the country captures too little. Without credibility, serious capital will not stay long enough to build.

Zimbabwe’s lithium lesson: processing can move, but the value chain may not

Zimbabwe offers one of the clearest current examples of both the promise and the risk of processing mandates. In February 2026, the government suspended exports of raw minerals and lithium concentrates, citing malpractices and leakages. Reuters reported that the ministry later set conditions for the resumption of lithium concentrate exports, including export quotas, a 10 percent export tax until a planned January 2027 concentrate ban, publication of annual financial statements, compliance with labour, safety and environmental standards, and written commitments to establish lithium sulphate plants before January 2027.^{4 5}

The policy has produced a visible result. Huayou Cobalt announced in April 2026 the first export of lithium sulphate from its Zimbabwe operation. The product is not yet a finished battery chemical, but it is an intermediate step beyond raw concentrate. It shows that a processing mandate, when backed by pressure and existing investment, can move some value addition into the country. ⁶

The harder question is who controls the chain after that step. Chinese firms dominate Zimbabwe’s lithium mining sector, and the processed intermediate product still sits within a supply chain that largely points towards Chinese downstream manufacturers. For Zimbabwe, this is better than exporting only concentrate, but it may still fall short of structural transformation if the country remains dependent on foreign technology, foreign capital, foreign offtake and foreign industrial demand. The story is therefore not a simple success or failure. It is a warning that processing can move geographically without value-chain power moving politically or economically.

[Fig 2: the lithium value ladder and where Zimbabwe currently sits / Source: IEA Critical Minerals Market Review]

Botswana’s diamond warning: a better deal is not the same as a new economy

Botswana tells a different and equally important story. It is one of Africa’s strongest examples of mineral governance and long-term state capacity. Diamonds helped finance schools, roads, health services and public administration. That is why the current pressure on the diamond market feels larger than a commodity cycle. It touches the social contract. When a country has used one mineral to build national stability, disruption to that mineral is not only a market issue. It is a national planning issue.

In February 2025, Botswana and De Beers signed a long-delayed agreement that extended Debswana mining licences to 2054 and increased Botswana’s selling rights through the state-owned Okavango Diamond Company. Reuters reported that the agreement was reached after Botswana’s economy had contracted amid a prolonged downturn in the global diamond market. ⁷

This was a real commercial achievement. It improved Botswana’s position in the diamond value chain and gave the state greater access to rough diamond sales. But it did not by itself solve the industrial question. Selling a larger share of rough diamonds is still different from building a diversified manufacturing base. The pressure is sharpened by the rise of lab-grown diamonds. Industry data cited by the World Diamond Council reported that 45.3 percent of engagement rings sold in the United States in 2024 were set with lab-grown diamonds, while Rapaport reported that The Knot’s data showed lab-grown centre stones passed 50 percent in 2024. ^{8 9}

The lesson from Botswana is not that the country failed. It is the opposite. Botswana shows that even good governance and better bargaining power are not enough when the underlying market changes. A better deal can buy time. It cannot replace the need to build new capabilities. For countries dependent on a narrow mineral base, the most important question may not be how to capture a larger share of today’s mineral rent, but how to use that rent before the market moves away.

Guinea’s Simandou programme: vision at scale, delivery still to prove

Guinea presents the most explicit articulation of the processing sovereignty argument currently underway on the continent. President Doumbouya’s stated position that minerals will no longer exit as raw assets but as industrialised national value chains is not merely political rhetoric. It is anchored in the Simandou 2040 Sustainable and Responsible Socio-Economic Development Programme, a fifteen-year framework comprising 122 projects and over $200 billion in planned investment, structured around infrastructure, industrialisation and human capital development. ¹⁰

The programme’s ambition is deliberately integrated. The Simandou corridor, over 650 kilometres of railway and new deep-water port capacity, is designed not only to move iron ore to market, but to anchor the logistics infrastructure on which processing industries depend. A target of approximately 4,000 MW of installed power capacity by 2030, combined with planned special economic zones along the corridor, reflects an understanding that the industrial zone is as important as the mine. Guinea has also established a Delivery Unit at the highest level of the state to coordinate execution, a governance mechanism that distinguishes the Simandou 2040 programme from the announcement-without-implementation cycle that has characterised beneficiation policy elsewhere.

Whether this translates into structural transformation will depend on execution. Guinea’s sovereign rating was upgraded by S&P to B+ with a positive outlook in March 2026, a signal of improved institutional credibility, but also a reminder of how recently that credibility was established. The investment environment remains early-stage, and approximately 40 percent of the programme’s financing is expected from the private sector – capital that will make its own assessment of regulatory stability, contract enforceability and the consistency between policy announcement and implementation. Guinea is, in this sense, the clearest current test of whether the processing sovereignty argument can be converted from political vision into industrial reality.

[Chart X: Simandous promise: scale of transformation vs current baseline / Simandou 2040 Programme (2025); IMF cited in Mongabay (2026); EITI Guinea fiscal modelling study (June 2025); S&P Global (2025). Projections are government targets, not verified forecasts]

What should mineral-rich countries actually sell 

Governments often begin with the mineral, asking how much copper, cobalt, lithium or gold they have. That is necessary but not sufficient. The sharper question is what the country can sell in a way that customers will pay for, financiers will back, communities will accept and the economy can sustain. 

The answer will not be the same for every mineral. Where domestic processing is uneconomic, because of energy, water, logistics or scale, selling ore or concentrate is not failure. It is discipline. Beneficiation becomes dangerous when treated as a blanket instruction rather than a commercial choice. 

Where the economics are viable, countries should aim to sell more than concentrate: intermediate processed products, certified responsible supply, stable offtake platforms and the credibility that comes from transparent contracts. In battery minerals, that may mean moving from ore to lithium sulphate before attempting battery-grade chemicals. In copper and cobalt, it may mean linking extraction to refining through corridor and energy planning. 

Countries should not try to sell the world a political slogan. They should sell an investable value chain, one that answers six questions before a minister signs a mandate or an investor signs a term sheet: Is the resource base sufficient? Is processing viable at local energy, water and logistics costs? Who buys the processed product? Who owns the licence, the plant and the offtake? What environmental obligations are enforceable? What capabilities remain in the country after the first shipment leaves?

A processing-first framework

The choice facing mineral-rich governments is not between resource nationalism and open-door investment. It is between two models of sovereignty: one that controls ownership, and one that builds capability. The first is easier to legislate. The second is the only one that produces structural transformation. 

Processing sovereignty means the state uses licensing, infrastructure, environmental governance and investor conditionality to maximise domestic industrial capability, not ownership for its own sake. It requires one prior commitment: to know the value chain as precisely as the geology. A geological survey tells a country what is in the ground. A value-chain map tells it what is worth doing with it, at which processing stage, under what conditions, for which buyers, and with what capability left behind when the contract expires. 

The framework operates across six dimensions:

The framework does not prescribe universal processing. It prescribes universal rigour. Some minerals will not be worth processing domestically in the near term. Acknowledging that is not a concession, it is the analytical foundation on which viable processing strategy is built.

Conclusion: the mineral is only the beginning

The next mineral race will not be won by the countries with the loudest ownership claims. It will be won by the countries that can turn ownership into capability. That requires a harder kind of politics than nationalisation rhetoric. It requires disciplined choices, patient institution-building, credible contracts, environmental honesty and the humility to process only where processing makes economic sense.

There is a human reason to get this right. Behind every mine is a community that wants more than compensation. Behind every export figure is a worker who wants a skill that still matters after the pit closes. Behind every mineral agreement is a child whose school, road, clinic or future may depend on whether the country negotiated for a shipment or for an industry.

Africa’s endowment is already settled by geology. Its transformation is not. That will be decided in investment codes, mining agreements, power plans, environmental permits, industrial zones, training institutions and the courage to ask a better question. Not simply, “Who owns the mine?” but, “What will this mineral leave behind?”

Authors:

Sean Ong

Executive Vice President

Vyshnav Menon

Senior Associate

——-

Let’s transform together. Contact us at: https://pemandu.org/contact-us/ 

References:

[1] U.S. Department of the Treasury and IRS guidance on clean vehicle credits and critical mineral requirements under the Inflation Reduction Act, including rules relating to extraction or processing in the United States or free trade agreement partners, recycling in North America, and foreign entity of concern restrictions.

[2] European Commission, European Critical Raw Materials Act, including 2030 benchmarks for extraction, processing, recycling and reduced single-country dependency.

[3] Reuters reporting on China export controls on gallium, germanium, graphite and rare earth-related products between 2023 and 2025.

[4] Reuters, “Zimbabwe bans exports of all raw minerals and lithium concentrates, cites malpractices,” 25 February 2026.

[5] Reuters, “Zimbabwe to introduce lithium export quotas, sets conditions for resumption of shipments,” 8 April 2026.

[6] Reuters, “China’s Huayou reports first lithium salt exports from Zimbabwe,” 28 April 2026.

[7] Reuters, “Botswana, De Beers sign long-delayed diamonds deal,” 25 February 2025.

[8] World Diamond Council, “Nature versus nurture,” citing industry data on lab-grown diamonds in U.S. engagement rings in 2024.

[9] Rapaport, “Lab-Grown Taking Over Engagement-Ring Spending,” 19 February 2026, citing The Knot data that lab-grown centre stones passed 50 percent in 2024.

[10] Simandou 2040 Sustainable and Responsible Socio-Economic Development Programme (2025). Investment Brochure. Republic of Guinea: Simandou Strategic Committee. The programme targets GDP growth from approximately $25 billion in 2025 to over $110 billion by 2040, with more than 5 million additional jobs. Note: GDP figure reflects the rebasing exercise completed in October 2025

The post The Processing Gap appeared first on PEMANDU Associates.

Artificial intelligence is no longer confined to labs, strategy papers, or technology discussions. It is becoming part of everyday life; in meeting rooms, educational institutions, cafes and households. What started out as a tool to help with discovery, analysis, and decision-making is now becoming something that can work on its own, talk to other software, organise tasks, and act as an intelligent assistant. This development is commonly referred to as agentic AI. 

This evolution is beginning to take shape in Malaysia’s own digital and financial ecosystem. In March 2026, Mastercard’s pilot with CIMB and RHB demonstrated that AI agents can already initiate and complete authenticated transactions within Malaysia’s financial ecosystem. The pilot involved an AI agent arranging a ride from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to KL Sentral. The transaction was facilitated through CardInfoLink’s AI agent platform using Mastercard Agent Pay, with tokenised credentials authenticated via Mastercard Payment Passkeys to ensure security, transparency, strong customer verification, and consumer control. While the pilot was conducted in a controlled environment, with commercial rollout to follow in phases, and the use case may appear simple on the surface, it signals a much larger shift where autonomous systems are capable of executing real transactions within existing digital and financial ecosystems.

The new phase of digital commerce is called agentic commerce. These systems can autonomously research, compare, find the best price, and complete purchases.! Unlike traditional e-commerce, these systems operate across multiple platforms, executing transactions without direct human intervention and fundamentally streamlining the buying journey.

This phase is not taking place in isolation. Instead, it is unfolding within a digital ecosystem that is already operating at scale. Approximately 74% of the world’s population is connected to the internet, forming the foundation of today’s digital commerce ecosystem. At the same time, the global e-commerce market is valued at more than USD6 trillion, reflecting the extent to which digital transactions have become embedded in daily life.

This trend is just as strong in Malaysia. The Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) reported that e-commerce revenue reached RM937.5 billion in the first nine months of 2025, up 1.9% year-on-year. ICT and e-commerce together contributed 23.4% (RM451.3 billion) of the economy in 2024.

It means agentic commerce is not being introduced into a small or controlled environment. It is emerging within systems that are already operating at very high volumes.

When Transactions Are No Longer Initiated by Users

In a conventional digital journey, users search, compare, decide, and transact. Now, we see these activities are being delegated to autonomous agents that can act on behalf of users.

On the surface, the experience feels seamless. At scale, this improves efficiency, reduces friction, and optimises decision-making across sectors. But it also changes something more fundamental. The decision is no longer made at the point of action. It is made earlier and executed later.

Suppose you have a smart refrigerator that automatically tracks your consumption and replenishes essential items on a weekly basis. It is connected to your digital calendar, and it shows an upcoming “open house” for 50 people this Saturday. 

You have been watching Khairul Aming’s YouTube videos and going through recipes for rendang, nasi minyak, kuah kurma, acar, and sirap bandung, indicating that a larger-than-usual meal is being planned. 

It is Tuesday, your usual replenishment day. Based on these inputs, your smart refrigerator picks up on the need for additional ingredients and proceeds to place an order in advance. 

However, the event has since been cancelled, and you did not remove it from your calendar.

The transaction proceeds. No more confirmation is needed.

The event is no longer happening, but the order shows up as expected.

The decision has been correctly executed from a system perspective based on the information available.

In a practical sense, the outcome does not reflect the intended situation.

This is not a tech failure, but it is context mismatch.

This is where the gap becomes more apparent.

The issue is no longer how the system works, but how the surrounding structures can manage how decisions are made, executed and corrected, when systems operate based on prior inputs without real time validation.

The Shift from Capability to Control

The key challenge is no longer whether agentic systems can function. It is whether policy, security, and governance frameworks are evolving fast enough to manage how these systems make decisions, execute actions, and are held accountable.

Most existing digital systems were designed around a simple assumption that users remain present throughout the transaction process to initiate, review, and approve actions. Agentic commerce operates differently. Decisions may increasingly be initiated, evaluated, and executed with limited direct human visibility.

As a result, the focus of security can no longer rely solely on authenticating users through passwords, one-time codes, or biometric verification. It must evolve towards understanding and monitoring system behaviour, decision logic, and transaction accountability.

In many ways, this also reflects a broader evolution in digital trust models. For decades, financial systems focused heavily on “Know Your Customer” (KYC) frameworks designed to verify human identity and legitimacy. As autonomous systems act on behalf of users, institutions also need to develop stronger capabilities to understand, monitor, and govern the behaviour, authority, and decision boundaries of the agents operating within digital ecosystems. In time, this may gradually introduce the need for a “Know Your Agent” mindset alongside existing customer verification approaches.

This shift is important in Malaysia’s context. According to the Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM), cybercrime and online financial scam cases continue to rise annually, involving billions of ringgits in losses. At the same time, global organisations such as the World Economic Forum and IBM have highlighted growing concerns around AI governance, transparency, explainability, and liability.

Ultimately, the defining issue is no longer technology capability alone, but control and trust within an ecosystem where systems are increasingly able to act on behalf of users.

What This Means for Government, Financial Institutions, Businesses and Users

Malaysia is not starting from zero. Current initiatives and regulatory frameworks such as Bank Negara Malaysia’s Risk Management in Technology (RMiT), the Cyber Security Act 2024, AI governance initiatives, and broader digital trust efforts have already enhanced governance, cybersecurity, operational resilience, and technology risk management across the digital and financial ecosystem.

Agentic commerce, however, adds a different level of complexity. As autonomous systems become more common across platforms to make decisions and conduct transactions on behalf of users, the focus will shift from traditional transaction oversight and technology risk management towards broader issues of system behaviour, delegated decision making, accountability, interoperability, and consumer trust across interconnected digital ecosystems.

Against this backdrop, several strategic implications are beginning to emerge for governments, financial institutions, businesses and users. The rapid pace of development in agentic AI also highlights that governance frameworks can no longer remain static documents. In January 2026, Singapore introduced the world’s first Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI and described it as a “living document” that will continue to evolve alongside emerging technologies. This reflects a growing recognition that governance approaches for autonomous systems need to evolve continuously alongside the technology itself.

As autonomous systems become more embedded into everyday transactions and decision-making processes, different stakeholders will face various challenges that would require closer attention. 

Government

Financial Institutions

Businesses

Users

Translating Readiness into Implementation

Recognising the shift towards agentic commerce is only one part of the challenge. The greater challenge lies in translating readiness into coordinated implementation across policies, systems, institutions, and users.

For governments, this means ensuring that governance frameworks, regulatory positions, and oversight mechanisms are consistently operationalised across agencies and sectors.

For financial institutions, it requires aligning systems, processes, risk management, and operational capabilities to support autonomous and high-frequency decision-making environments.

For businesses, readiness will depend on how quickly they can adapt their digital capabilities, operational processes, and customer engagement models to AI-driven commerce ecosystems.

For users, trust will depend not only on system capability, but also on how clearly decisions can be understood, monitored, and corrected when necessary.

In this context, implementation capability becomes important. Successfully operationalising agentic commerce will require strong coordination across stakeholders, clear accountability, measurable outcomes, and continuous monitoring as the ecosystem evolves.

This is precisely where delivery discipline becomes the deciding factor. PEMANDU Associates has spent over a decade operationalising exactly this kind of complex, cross-agency transformation, turning ambition into measurable outcomes through clear accountability, rigorous monitoring, and the coordination structures that hold implementation together. As agentic commerce moves from capability to control, that same execution discipline, the ability to align government, institutions, businesses, and users around a common delivery roadmap, will determine whether Malaysia leads this shift or merely absorbs it.

The Next Phase of the Conversation

The foundations for agentic commerce are already in place. Connectivity, digital payment infrastructure, AI capabilities, and interconnected ecosystems are no longer operating at experimental scale but have already become embedded into everyday life and digital transactions.

As such, the question is no longer whether this shift towards more autonomous commerce will happen. The more important question is whether governance, policy, security, and oversight mechanisms are evolving fast enough to support it in a controlled and trusted manner.

This becomes important because as systems begin acting on behalf of users, the issue is no longer only about technological capability. It is also about accountability, visibility, and ultimately, control.

At a policy or system level, these discussions may still appear conceptual. However, their implications are often most visible through everyday situations and consumer behaviour.

Remember the groceries that your refrigerator ordered?

Your groceries arrive before you even realise the order has been executed. Your kitchen is now stocked with ingredients for rendang, nasi minyak, kuah kurma, acar and sirap bandung, enough to feed 50 people who are no longer coming because the event was cancelled earlier in the day.

Perhaps the next evolution is a robotic assistant capable of preparing the meals using what has already been purchased. With advances in robotics becoming accessible, what once felt futuristic no longer seems entirely impossible.

However, this introduces a different set of questions. If systems can decide what to buy, and how to act on those decisions, where does oversight sit as decisions begin compounding across interconnected systems? At what point does convenience begin moving faster than the ability to monitor, intervene, or maintain meaningful human control?

These may be questions for the next phase of the conversation, perhaps over coffee before the systems order it for us. 

Several perspectives within this article were informed through engagements with industry practitioners and technology experts.

Author:

Jezamin Razak

Associate Vice President

——-

Let’s transform together. Contact us at: https://pemandu.org/contact-us/ 

References

1. Mastercard conducts first live agentic transaction in Malaysia with CIMB and RHB Pilot, Mastercard, 4 March 2026
2. Global number of Internet users increases, but disparities deepen key digital divides, ITU, 17 November 2025
3. Malaysia Digital Economy 2025 (e-commerce revenue RM937.5 billion, 9M2025), Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), 26 November 2025
4. AI Governance Alliance Briefing Paper, World Economic Forum, 2025
5. Research reveals 9 essential plays to govern AI responsibly in a multipolar world, WEF, 23 September 2025
6. Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025, IBM Security
7. Commercial Crime Investigation Department Annual Statistics, Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM), BERNAMA 2025
8. Singapore Launches New Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI, 22 January 2026
9. Model AI Framework for Agentic AI, INFOCOMM Media Development Authority
10. Mastercard Sees Data Moving Payments from KYC to KYA

The post Imagine This: Your Fridge Just Bought Groceries for a Party You Cancelled. Welcome to Agentic Commerce. appeared first on PEMANDU Associates.

———-

In one year, Malaysia’s EV market doubled. According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia, EV registrations rose from 21,789 units in 2024 to 44,813 in 2025, as cheaper imported models finally made EVs affordable for middle-income Malaysians. 

Then, in five months, the policy landscape shifted. 

The new rule now requires any fully imported EV (Completely Built Up – CBU) must carry a minimum declared cost of RM200,000 and produce at least 180kW of power. In practical terms, this pushes the minimum retail price to at least RM300,000 after duties, taxes, and margins. 

Separately, new conditions on locally assembled EVs (Completely Knocked Down – CKD) introduced an 80 percent export requirement, a mandatory paint shop, and a cap on domestic sales volume for any manufacturer setting up a new plant after September 2025, unless they choose to assemble through existing facilities via local partners.

Malaysia’s Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI) frames this as developmental rather than protectionist, intended to move Malaysia up the EV automotive value chain. The question is whether this is an industrial strategy disguised as protection.

A policy at war with Malaysia’s own net-zero roadmap

Malaysia’s premise is reasonable: a country serious about building an automotive industry cannot simply remain a destination for other people’s exports indefinitely. 

What it does not fully account for is who bears the cost of the transition, especially for the B40 and M40 households.

Malaysia’s National Energy Transition Roadmap (NETR) sets a target of 20 percent EV share of total industry volume by 2030, rising to 80 percent by 2050. 

In 2025, EV penetration sat at roughly 5.5 percent. Reaching 20 percent in five years requires roughly quadrupling the current rate of adoption. This, however, is a steep ask given that the affordable import segment that drove the recent growth has now largely been removed, and where the CKD supply chain needed to replace it will take years to reach comparable scale and price.

The NETR target and the import policy were produced by overlapping agencies, and they are now pulling in opposite directions. A transformation effort cannot succeed when its policies are misaligned with its True North. If Malaysia’s True North is simultaneously to build a globally competitive EV industry and accelerate transport decarbonisation, then the current policy architecture appears to be optimising for one objective while slowing progress on the other. 

For comparison, Vietnam tripled its EV market share to 28 percent within four years by keeping affordable options in the market while simultaneously building a domestic champion, which is proof that industrial ambition and climate trajectory do not have to be traded against each other.

The cars most Malaysians can afford just disappeared from the market.

Malaysia’s median household income is RM7,017 per month. Using the common rule that a car should cost no more than one year of household income, the “comfortable” price range for most Malaysians is around RM84,000. 

The minimum price at which any foreign brand may sell a locally assembled EV is RM100,000. Proton and Perodua have never been subjected to that floor, which means the only players permitted to compete in the segment that most Malaysian households can actually afford are the two national car makers. 

With limited competition, this market structure is unlikely to produce competitive pricing or rapid product development. This is especially concerning at a time when households are adapting to rising costs as the result of fuel subsidy rationalisation. 

The households most exposed are the bottom 40 percent by income (B40) and lower half of the middle 40 percent (M40); groups for whom housing, utilities, food, and transport already account for more than two-thirds of monthly expenditure, according to DOSM’s Household Expenditure Survey 2024, leaving limited room to absorb any further cost pressures. For many of them, an affordable EV would have provided meaningful long-term savings.

Elsewhere, the contrast is stark. In Thailand in 2024, the average price of a Chinese EV fell below the average price of a conventional petrol car, with entry models starting at approximately USD 12,500 (~ MYR 50,000), against RM100,000 floor in Malaysia.  

This does not serve the nation, especially when Malaysia’s urban development model was built around cars. Shah Alam, Putrajaya, and Cyberjaya are some examples where private vehicle use is a structural necessity, and most commuter corridors where Malaysian households live and work remain beyond the reach of the light rail transit (LRT) network. 

The practical consequence is that reducing EV affordability does not shift people onto trains. It simply prolongs petrol vehicle dependency at a time when maintaining fuel subsidies is becoming increasingly challenging.

For investors, this reinforces the importance of stable and predictable policy environments. Factory commitments, component localisation, and workforce development take years, not months. As a result, manufacturers choose investment locations based not only on current policies, but on whether those policies are likely to remain stable. 

Malaysia’s incentive framework for EVs has moved in either short cycles, renewed late, or with conditions shifting between announcement and implementation. The CBU duty exemption alone was extended twice before lapsing without a replacement framework in place, leaving distributors and consumers to plan around a deadline that had moved before finally holding. But the kind of transformation Malaysia claims to be pursuing, such as moving up the value chain and building sovereign industrial capability, requires a policy environment that does not surprise its intended beneficiaries.

Protectionism as a tool, not a verdict

These costs do not, by themselves, settle the argument. Protectionism is undoubtedly a legitimate tool, but what matters more is its design, and whether Malaysia’s design matches the transformation ambition it claims.

South Korea built its automotive industry behind protective walls in the 1970s and 1980s, but the protection was structured around a specific condition: that the beneficiaries would eventually have to compete without it. 

Hyundai was not simply shielded from foreign competition. It was also pushed, through deliberate policy pressure, to invest in engineering capability, to develop its own platforms, and to prove itself in export markets where no protection applied. 

The domestic market was the training ground, not the destination. Today, Hyundai-Kia is the world’s third largest automaker by sales, and South Korea is sufficiently confident in the competitiveness of its domestic industry that it has allowed Chinese EVs to enter as standard imports, with no special conditions and no price floors. BYD entered the Korean market in 2025 and has been gaining share, and yet, Hyundai has not collapsed.

Malaysia’s experience with the same protectionist tool produced a different outcome. Proton, through import duties and approved permit restrictions imposed upon foreign car brands for decades, was insulated from the competitive pressure that the South Korean policy had deliberately applied to its own champions. The protection then worked in the narrow sense that Proton survived. The current policy is closer in character to that experience than to South Korea’s. The CBU floor and the greenfield CKD conditions preserve the domestic market for national brands but contain no visible mechanism requiring Proton and Perodua to become competitive enough to not need that preservation.

The conditions that make protection work

The argument here is not that Malaysia should have simply opened its market and absorbed whatever followed. Thailand and Indonesia arrived at broadly similar industrial objectives through mechanisms that kept consumer access intact while still compelling manufacturers to invest locally.

Thailand, which has no domestic brand to protect, introduced a production ratio requirement: manufacturers wishing to sell competitively priced imports were required to produce locally at two units assembled for every one imported, rising to three to one by 2027. BYD responded by building a 150,000-unit factory in Rayong, employing over 6,000 people and exporting across ASEAN and beyond. 

Indonesia on the other hand, required manufacturers to post a bank guarantee equivalent to the duties they would have owed, redeemable only upon meeting production commitments. Nine global brands committed, approximately USD 950 million was pledged, and 281,000 units of annual capacity are coming online. 

In both cases, the industrial outcome was achieved without a price floor and without conditions that varied depending on when an agreement was signed.

A commitment-based structure, whether through production ratios or financial guarantees, creates the same investment incentive as a market restriction, while leaving the price environment intact for buyers. 

If Malaysia is serious about a genuine industrial transition, alternative pathways do exist. A foreign brand opting for contract assembly instead of building its own plant does not produce local long-term talent capability and technology knowledge transfer. While Malaysian content does sit at around 76 percent, that figure refers mostly to body panels, seats, wiring and final assembly, not to the parts that define the car as an EV — the software stack, the battery management system, as well as its platform architecture, all of which remain the IP of the original manufacturer. 

The result? Malaysia’s role in the value chain remains what it was before: screwdriver integration at the end of someone else’s supply chain.

The cost that does not show up as failure

Protectionism is not, in itself, the problem. Every country in this comparison protects its automotive interests in some form. In fact, the United States has effectively closed its market to Chinese manufacturers entirely. The European Union applies tiered tariffs calibrated by manufacturer. The tool is not the issue.

What distinguishes successful protectionism from unsuccessful protectionism is whether it was designed with an exit condition, a point at which firms are eventually expected to compete on their own after developing the capabilities the protection was meant to build.

The CBU price floor and the CKD own-plant conditions preserve market space for national champions but contain no mechanism that requires those champions to earn it. While the intention may be genuine, the cost is larger than it appears — one that a transformational industrial policy cannot afford, because the deep capability transfer Malaysia is pursuing is unlikely to materialise any time soon.

Nevertheless, foreign car makers will continue to adapt, and Malaysia will likely progress, albeit it being business as usual, much as it has before. 

The industry will survive, and the market will grow, slowly. Slowly is the operative word. Against peers who have moved faster. The true cost is not failure, but the non-arrival of the industrial objectives. The ambition is transformation. The current policy, however, still looks more like preservation.

Author:

Nazirul Ibrahim

Senior Manager

——-

Let’s transform together. Contact us at: https://pemandu.org/contact-us/

The post Designed to Protect, Not to Transform: What Malaysia’s New EV Rules Reveal About Industrial Policy appeared first on PEMANDU Associates.

Held at the edge of the Amazon rainforest, one of the planet’s most vital carbon sinks, last year’s COP carried an unmistakable sense of urgency. The setting itself shaped the negotiations: biodiversity, adaptation, and forest protection were not side events; they were the main stage. As Brazil’s President declared in the Opening Plenary, “This is the COP of the Amazon,” placing nature-based solutions and climate resilience at the heart of global climate diplomacy.

This uniqueness was further amplified by geopolitical uncertainty, particularly the political instability in the United States. Its absence from negotiation tables raised concerns among the remaining 196 signatories of the Paris Agreement about the credibility of global commitments to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. 

The summit also unfolded amid heightened social tension. Protests led by indigenous communities punctuated the official programme, reinforcing a central theme of COP30: Just Transition must be more than rhetoric. It must reflect lived realities, particularly for communities who have contributed the least to emissions, yet bear the greatest burden of climate disruption.

In the final days, a fire incident within the Pavilion halls became an unsettling metaphor for the wider moment: climate negotiations are increasingly taking place in a world already destabilised by climate impacts. in this complex and evolving global landscape, one question became increasingly clear: What role should Malaysia play, not only for itself, but for ASEAN and the Global South?

Malaysia and Belém: A Shared Climate Identity

COP30’s location was deliberate. Belém sits at the gateway of the Amazon, 2,800km from São Paulo, and its geography influenced the tone of the summit: a reckoning with nature, indigenous rights, and the limits of mitigation-only thinking.

In many ways, Malaysia mirrors Belém. Both are equatorial nations with deep biodiversity, forest ecosystems, and indigenous communities whose stewardship has protected nature for generations. Malaysia is home to one of the world’s three major tropical rainforest regions, alongside the Amazon and the Congo Basin, collectively storing an estimated 250 billion tonnes of carbon. In a negotiating environment where nature-based solutions are increasingly valued as hard infrastructure for climate stability, Malaysia’s forests represent leverage.

But leverage only translates into influence when it is actively deployed. Malaysia’s credibility on the world stage extends beyond emissions reduction to include the stewardship of natural capital and the ability to articulate a climate agenda that reflects the realities of emerging economies. 

Malaysia at a Turning Point: Leadership Beyond Emissions

Despite contributing only 0.77% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Malaysia’s climate decisions carry consequences far beyond its carbon footprint. Collectively, ASEAN accounts for approximately 3.5% to 4.75% of global emissions, a share that is rising as the region industrialises. More critically, ASEAN is among the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions, exposed to rising sea levels, intensifying monsoons, heat stress, and food insecurity. 

However, the instinct to frame Malaysia’s climate challenge primarily as an emissions problem misses the deeper question: can Malaysia build a development model that is both growth-enabling and climate-resilient, without forcing a choice between the two? That is the real leadership challenge, and it is one that has implications not just domestically, but for the credibility of the Global South’s climate agenda more broadly.

Malaysia’s recent ASEAN Chairmanship gives it a platform to shape this narrative in practice. NDC 3.0 sharpens this ambition, marking a decisive shift to an economy-wide absolute emissions target — aiming to peak emissions by around 2030 and achieve an absolute reduction of 15–30 MtCO₂e by 2035. This is significant technically and politically, signalling that Malaysia is prepared to be held to account in absolute terms.

But targets are only as credible as the governance built to enforce them. That is where RUUPIN, the forthcoming National Climate Change Bill, becomes critical. The bill proposes to legally anchor Malaysia’s climate commitments through national emissions target-setting, a regulatory oversight body, mandatory emissions reporting, a centralised climate data platform (NICDR), and the foundations of a domestic carbon market. On paper, it is a solid framework.

In practice, its credibility rests on questions the current draft have not fully answered. RUUPIN as proposed gives the Minister discretion to set or not set carbon budgets, with no binding obligation to do so. Without a binding national carbon budget, there is no legal mechanism to compel government action or enable meaningful climate litigation. A climate law that is flexible by design risks being toothless by default. RUUPIN’s value will be determined not by whether it passes, but by whether it passes with enough institutional substance to outlast political cycles and compel real action.

What COP30 Revealed: The Emerging Climate Reality for Malaysia

COP30 was defined by a dual reality. On one hand, negotiations remain slow, technical, and politically constrained. On the other, climate impacts are accelerating, and countries are increasingly forced to respond under pressure rather than through planned transitions. For Malaysia, the gap between these two realities is already visible and at risk of widening:

1) Mitigation Must Be Regional, Not Isolated

Malaysia’s emissions profile is driven heavily by energy. The Long-Term Low Emissions Development Strategy (LT-LEDS) sets the direction for the next five years to focus on execution. With an emissions peak targeted around 2030, the margin for delay is narrow.

The most consequential lever here is ASEAN cooperation, particularly through the ASEAN Power Grid. Cross-border renewable energy flows would fundamentally change the economics of decarbonisation for the region, allowing countries to draw on each other’s renewable capacity rather than each building and financing their own. Malaysia’s role in advancing this architecture, including ongoing discussions on regional grid connectivity with Vietnam and Singapore, is a tangible test of whether the ASEAN Chairmanship produces durable infrastructure or statements.

The National Energy Transition Roadmap (NETR), currently under review, needs to move beyond ambition into implementation: clearer action plans, enabling regulations, and investment mechanisms that can crowd in private capital. The carbon tax confirmed in Budget 2026, targeting the iron, steel, and energy sectors, is a necessary complement. Its introduction is now explicitly linked to the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which will begin imposing carbon costs on Malaysian exporters from 2026. 

2) Adaptation Must Become a Core Economic Strategy

The 2024 floods made clear that adaptation is not a future planning exercise. Flood-related losses reached RM933.4 million, a 23% increase from the previous year, with Kelantan, Terengganu, and Kedah bearing the heaviest burden. The December 2024 monsoon surge displaced over 137,000 people across nine states, with floodwaters covering approximately 11,000 km² in Terengganu and Kelantan alone. These are not one-off events. The 2024–25 Northeast Monsoon season saw multiple successive flood waves; METMalaysia projected five to seven major rainfall episodes for the season.

The economic trajectory is equally sobering. A 2024 joint report by the World Bank and Bank Negara Malaysia estimated that floods could cost up to 4.1% of economic output by 2030, with smaller firms among the most vulnerable. Yet Malaysia does not currently integrate climate projections and risk quantification into its national budgetary process, a gap that countries like France, which has budgeted €1.6 billion for its third national adaptation plan, have already moved to close. 

The institutional response, while growing, remains mostly reactive and fragmented. Selangor’s establishment of the Selangor Climate Adaptation Centre (SCAC) in May 2025 is telling: a state government building its own climate coordination body because federal mechanisms were not filling the gap. SCAC is a step forward, but a state-level initiative cannot substitute for national coherence. The forthcoming National Adaptation Plan (myNAP) must address this directly. Streamlining NADMA’s mandate, aligning local council planning with climate risk data, and building shared early-warning infrastructure across agencies are not administrative niceties. They are the difference between a plan and a response.

The Cost of Waiting Is Rising

The window for voluntary, self-paced action is closing as the regulatory environment tightens simultaneously from multiple directions.

Domestically, the carbon tax arriving in 2026 will directly increase operating costs for energy-intensive industries, with rates expected to start at RM45 per tonne of CO₂e and escalate over time. For large emitters, this is material exposure. But the more immediate pressure may be external. For Malaysian exporters of steel, aluminium, cement, and related goods, CBAM charges from the EU starting in 2026 requires accurate embedded carbon data and compliance documentation. 

The split between large corporates and SMEs also matters. Organisations like PETRONAS have the resources, sustainability teams, and regulatory relationships to navigate this transition. SMEs which form the backbone of Malaysia’s economy often do not. Supply chain pressure will cascade downward, as large corporations impose stricter emissions requirements on their suppliers. The companies best placed are not those waiting for rules to be finalised, but those who have already embedded climate risk into their strategy, operations, and capital allocation. Decarbonisation is no longer a compliance burden. For the companies that treat it as one, it will become an existential one.

Multilateralism and Malaysia’s Role in the Global South

COP30 reaffirmed something that geopolitics keeps trying to obscure: no single country solves climate change alone. Yet within that constraint lies Malaysia’s relevance. With its standing as one of the world’s three great tropical forest nations, and its credibility across the Global South, Malaysia enters this next phase of global climate diplomacy with more leverage than its emissions share suggests. NDC 3.0 and RUUPIN signal that the domestic foundations are being laid. The Malaysia Pavilion at COP30 curated by PEMANDU Associates demonstrated that the appetite for leadership is real. What remains is the harder work of turning commitment into delivery and positioning it into action. 

The Malaysian delegation at COP30 in Belém, Brazil

Authors: 

Abdulmuiz Aziz

Senior Vice President

Wan Hidayat

Senior Associate

———-  

Let’s transform together. Contact us at: https://pemandu.org/contact-us/ 

The post Climate Action Now: Reflections from COP30 and Malaysia’s Climate Governance appeared first on PEMANDU Associates.

Malaysia’s Direct Investment Abroad (DIA) totaled RM622.1 billion at the end of 2024, with RM349.7 billion concentrated in Asia. This highlights our regional strength but also underscores the limited diversity of our outward investment base in relation to upcoming global demand. 

Africa should now be regarded as part of Malaysia’s diversification strategy. 

Malaysia is underinvested.  

While Malaysian companies have a presence in Africa—particularly in oil and gas, commodities, infrastructure, hospitality, and selected services—many overlook Africa’s diversity and the wide range of growth opportunities it offers. Much of this involvement remains ad hoc, but this must change as we create a platform for long-term growth. 

Africa accounts for a very small share of Malaysia’s outward investment, remaining below 2 percent despite the continent’s vast market and the alignment between Malaysia’s capabilities and Africa’s development needs. The goal is not to abandon mature markets but to build a more balanced outward strategy.  

If Malaysia continues to invest only where others are already present, growth will be incremental. Africa presents a different proposition: higher growth potential, diverse sectors, younger demographics, and underdeveloped industries—providing Malaysian firms with opportunities to introduce tested, practical solutions suited to emerging markets. 

Where Malaysia can win 

Malaysia doesn’t need to compete with China, the United States, or Europe on scale. Our strength lies in our unique position—the “missing middle.’  

We understand emerging market realities because we have lived them. Malaysia industrialized, urbanized, and diversified its economy within a single generation. We transitioned from heavy reliance on commodities and oil and gas to thriving sectors like manufacturing, services, Islamic finance, tourism, healthcare, digital systems, and value-added industries. This experience is highly relevant and offers lessons for Africa. 

There are five key areas where Malaysia can be especially competitive: 

First, the halal ecosystem. In 2025, Malaysia’s halal exports reached RM68.52 billion, backed by strong governance, credible certification, and thriving sectors like food and beverages, halal ingredients, palm derivatives, and pharmaceuticals. This is more than just a product focus—it’s a comprehensive system involving standards, certification, SME development, logistics, branding, and building trust. 

Second, palm downstream and agro-processing. Africa boasts 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, and global food demand is set to increase significantly. Malaysia’s palm oil exports reached 16.9 million tonnes in 2024, with downstream segments like oleochemicals and finished products playing a vital role. The opportunity for Africa isn’t just exporting raw products—it’s about developing processing capabilities, standards, supply chains, supporting smallholders, and adding value. 

Third, Islamic finance. Many African nations require long-term capital for infrastructure, agribusiness, energy, housing, and SMEs. Malaysia’s credibility in Islamic banking, sukuk structuring, takaful, and blended finance can be highly relevant, especially in markets with large Muslim populations and governments seeking alternative financing options. 

Fourth, healthcare. Malaysia has built a robust healthcare ecosystem with excellent private providers, specialized capacity, medical tourism expertise, and cost competitiveness. In 2023, healthcare tourism generated RM2.25 billion with over a million visitors, aiming for RM2.4 billion in 2024. Africa’s growing middle class, urbanization, and healthcare gaps create exciting opportunities for hospital partnerships, diagnostics, digital health, training, and medical management. 

Fifth, digital systems. Africa has already leapt ahead in mobile money, digital payments, and platform services. Malaysia’s role is not just to sell software but to bolster digital public infrastructure—identity systems, payments, service delivery, data management, and disciplined implementation. 

Let’s think beyond conventional boundaries—by embracing these opportunities, Malaysia can inspire growth and innovation not just for ourselves, but as a catalyst for others to step out of their ‘box.’ 

Returns are attractive, but not automatic 

Infrastructure investments in Africa have been cited as capable of generating low-to-mid teens US dollar returns for operational projects, and higher returns for construction-to-maturity projects. But this comes with a clear condition: investors need patience, strong local relationships, robust due diligence, and the right partner on the ground.  

This is where many companies fail. They enter based on headlines. They follow a trend. They underinvest in local understanding. They assume a Malaysian solution can be copied and pasted. They do not spend enough time on political economy, offtake, regulation, payment risk, land issues, or local partnership quality. 

Africa is often misunderstood as a single market, but this is a misconception.  

East Africa boasts some of the continent’s fastest-growing and reforming economies.  

West Africa has significant demographic weight and a large consumer base.  

Southern Africa is more familiar to many institutional investors and provides more established entry points.  

North Africa’s strategic proximity to Europe and the Middle East adds another dimension.  

Each region faces different political conditions, consumer behaviours, regulations, currencies, risks, and growth patterns. For Malaysian businesses, the question should not be “Should we enter Africa?” but rather, “Which country, sector, partner, and route to scale?” 

Today, Africa resembles early ASEAN markets; fragmented, with uneven regulations and infrastructure gaps. However, these challenges also create opportunities for first movers who understand local contexts and build patient partnerships. Such early entrants can not only follow market trends but also help shape the market’s development. 

The effective approach is clear: select countries committed to reform; focus on sectors aligned with national priorities; collaborate with credible local partners; target actual demand rather than just market size; and approach with patient capital. Localise successful strategies from Malaysia and scale carefully, debunking the misconception that Africa is a uniform, easily accessible market. 

The real opportunity is in execution 

At PEMANDU Associates, our experience in Africa has reinforced one important lesson: plans do not transform economies. Execution does. 

When PEMANDU was part of the Malaysian Government, the National Transformation Programme was built around aligning public sector priorities, citizen needs, and private-sector capital. That same principle remains relevant in Africa. Governments need growth. Citizens need jobs and better services. Investors need bankable opportunities, regulatory clarity, and confidence that decisions will move forward. 

The bridge between these needs is execution. 

This means identifying priority sectors, translating policy into implementable projects, removing bottlenecks, aligning ministries and agencies, tracking progress and solving problems continuously. It also means building local capability from day one, not creating dependency on consultants. 

Malaysia’s value to Africa should therefore go beyond trade missions and one-off investments. We should help build investable sectors, institutional capability, execution discipline and long-term partnerships. 

From ad hoc projects to a platform approach 

Malaysia’s Africa strategy must shift from opportunistic to deliberate. 

We should build a platform that brings together Malaysian companies, GLCs, SMEs, financiers, government agencies and diplomatic channels. MATRADE, MIDA, MDEC, Wisma Putra, development finance institutions, Islamic finance players and sector champions should align around a sharper Africa agenda. 

The focus should not be “Africa in general”. It should be on priority corridors, priority countries and priority sectors. 

For example, East Africa may be a natural entry point for digital systems, halal trade, agro-processing, healthcare and logistics. Botswana and Rwanda offer reform-driven environments. Kenya and Tanzania provide scale and regional access. Nigeria and other West African markets offer consumer depth but require stronger local navigation. Southern Africa offers more familiar institutional structures for infrastructure and services. 

This should be treated as a portfolio. 

Different markets will serve different purposes: some for trade, some for investment, some for partnerships, and others for long-term platform development. Not every Malaysian company needs to enter in the same way. 

Why now 

The continent is already home to more than 1.4 billion people. By 2050, the United Nations projects that Africa’s population will approach 2.5 billion, meaning more than one quarter of the world’s population will be African. At the same time, the African Continental Free Trade Area is building a single continental market of 1.4 billion people and about US$3.4 trillion in combined GDP across 55 countries. That is not a marginal opportunity. It is the next major demand centre. 

Africa is urbanising, industrialising and reforming. Its young population will drive future consumption, workforce growth and digital adoption. The IMF expects sub-Saharan Africa’s regional growth to remain around 4.3 per cent in 2026, even amid global uncertainty and significant country-level differences.  

At the same time, global supply chains are shifting. Trade tensions are rising. Companies are rethinking concentration risk. Governments are seeking new partners beyond traditional blocs. South-South cooperation is no longer a slogan. It is becoming an economic necessity. 

Malaysia should not wait until Africa becomes obvious to everyone. 

By then, the best partnerships, concessions, distribution networks, local champions and policy relationships may already be taken. 

The choice for Malaysia 

Breaking into the African region is certainly not a walk in the park. But neither was Malaysia when early investors came here decades ago. 

We were once seen as a risky emerging market. Those who entered early, understood the country, and stayed the course benefited from Malaysia’s rise. Today, Malaysian businesses have the opportunity to take the same long view elsewhere. 

There is great power in making a differentiated choice. 

We can remain comfortable in mature markets and accept slower, incremental growth. Or we can build the capability, partnerships, and courage to enter the next major demand centre early. 

Africa is not a side story. It is part of Malaysia’s next outward-growth chapter. 

The opportunity is real.  

The gap is clear.  

The timing is now. 

Lab syndication in Botswana for the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme (BETP) 

Written by: 

Aida Azmi 

Joint Managing Director and Partner, PEMANDU Associates 

Sean Ong (Co-author) 

Executive Vice President at PEMANDU Associates 

———-  

Let’s transform together. Contact us at: https://pemandu.org/contact-us/ 

The post Malaysia’s Next Trade Frontier: Why Africa Matters Now  appeared first on PEMANDU Associates.

In the overall journey of the development and writing of national policy, there are, generally speaking, three phases:

1. Phase 1: Where those with the know-how come together to form the underlying idea behind what needs to be accomplished.
2. Phase 2: Where those ideas are refined, packaged and conveyed to relevant parties in a strategy document.
3. Phase 3: Where this strategy document gets transformed into tangible policy through successful (or unsuccessful) implementation.

Phase 3 is undoubtedly the most important. Today, however, I want to focus on Phase 2. Phase 2 often gets forgotten. Without Phase 2, there is no foundation for Phase 3. So, it is worth focusing on the human effort it takes to convert seemingly disjointed pieces of policy ideation into an executable strategy document.

To set the stage for Phase 2, I need to start with a little bit of context from Phase 1. So as not to be a closed exercise among policy specialists, the Ministry sought guidance from education experts within and outside the system. It also reached beyond the usual circles, seeking input from industry leaders, parents, uncles, and aunties. Students from public and private schools, across primary, secondary and tertiary levels, added their voices. The intent was deliberate. The Blueprint has to reflect the system as people experience it, not only as Ministry officials design it. Education policy shapes the daily experience of millions of students, the careers of teachers across the country, and the expectations of families who see education as the primary driver of social mobility. On a macro scale, it influences workforce readiness, national cohesion, and long-term economic competitiveness. The choices made in its pages determine which skills are emphasised, which gaps are addressed, and which communities receive attention or neglect. Tens of thousands of these voices were heard and gathered through Sesi Libat Urus (SLU) sessions, labs, syndications and roadshows, alongside structured focus group discussions and consultations with dozens of agencies, education leaders and public servants. The outputs of these thus bring us to Phase 2. For us, this meant inheriting not just slides and reports, but expectations that the eventual Blueprint would feel coherent to those who had spoken into it.

You Cannot Write It Alone

Data and word salad alone do not make a Blueprint. We are not writers. We are not designers. We’re consultants. We are facilitators, first and foremost. We know our limitations and so the first step towards a Blueprint is to bring in and manage a team who can cover these limitations. Fortunately, the right expertise was within reach.

First, our writers. A group of seasoned experts from award-winning social enterprises, leading education non-profits, and education policy experts formerly from the civil service were asked to lend a hand. The goal was to package policy such that its form became its function. If the Blueprint groups initiatives by theme, implementers align around themes. If it sequences reforms by phase, agencies plan budgets by phase. If KPIs and non-negotiable goals sit at the front, performance becomes central. Form directs attention, and attention drives action. 

For our writers, this means translating technical policy into language the public can understand while preserving policy specificity and impact. This means mediating between divisions with competing priorities, ensuring that one unit’s ambition does not contradict another unit’s responsibility. This means arguments and evidence structured with precision and deliberate language, leaving no room for ambiguity, leaving no room for confusion in implementation and accountability. This also means navigating political considerations, unavoidable in a national project of this scale. The choice behind every single word matters.

Second, our designers. It would be a mistake to see their work as mere decoration. Presentation in a national policy document is never an afterthought. Every layout decision is consequential. Policy buried in dense pages risks neglect. What is placed in a highlight box signals priority. A cluttered page weakens confidence while clear visual language demonstrates authority. Hundreds of pages of drafts, rough charts, and rudimentary tables – these had to be translated into a document that reads with coherence from cover to cover. 

A Minister must be able to identify the direction within seconds. A district officer must be able to understand operational detail without frustration. A member of the public must not feel excluded by technical density. Yes, the  Blueprint must look pretty, but aesthetic choices go beyond ornament. The cover must deliver a thousand words in one image. The typography signals professionalism. The charts must convey clarity. The pictures must speak to the people who will be affected by the execution of the words on the page. In a document that will be debated, quoted, and scrutinised for years to come, institutional credibility is built as much through visual clarity as through content.

Coordination Is Never Just Administrative

Third, our team, the consultants. We are neither the authors of policy nor the designers responsible for visual language, but rather the keepers of time and movement. In any project – let alone one of this scale – ideas expand and multiply, stakeholders add layers, and timelines compress. Without disciplined project management, complexity morphs into blockers that stall progress. Our responsibility was to manage that complexity and keep things moving. That meant not only tracking timelines and deliverables, but ensuring that discussions converged toward action. In rooms filled with strong and well-founded views, someone has to call for resolution, to ensure that direction is agreed, progress does not stall, and that not a single minute is wasted. We set cadence for regular and timely submissions and ensured decisions were made. We managed scope, preventing suggestions from expanding into unmanageable derailments. We aligned expectations between writers, designers, and clients, escalating when necessary. Momentum is fragile and once lost, it is hard to recover. In large national projects, coordination therefore goes beyond administration. It is the difference between movement and stagnation.

Writers shaped meaning. Designers shaped form. And the consultants ensured the entire effort moved forward as one coherent whole.

A month after kickoff, we had in our hands extremely preliminary rough drafts of the core content chapters. A decision was made to hold a week-long writers’ workshop away from the usual pace of the city, meant to hold us, our writers, and their Ministry counterparts in one place, dedicated to churning out refined material while also setting time to subject the material to wider feedback. Removed from daily routines, it was expected that we would work from dusk till dawn. In a tower atop the hills, surrounded by rain and fog, one of our writers remarked on the pathetic fallacy of it all. Low visibility, an unclear path, and a steep climb ahead. The chapters we had were substantial but uneven, with some sections rich in argument but thin on evidence, while others were technically sound but inaccessible to a broader audience – clearly shaped by different hands and not yet speaking in one voice. Time did not allow for leisurely refinement. We had to circulate refined drafts to eminent voices across the system. Former senior civil servants, education leaders, non-profit figures – each carried views that added clarity, sharpened arguments, but also questioned fundamental framing. Some suggested scope expansion at the precise moment we were trying to contain it. Every endorsement was heartening, while every objection required addressing. This workshop went beyond writing. It was a sequence of snowballing decisions. What do we stand by? What do we cut? How do we manage all these tensions to produce one coherent draft? Clarity came as the week progressed. We left with better drafts, more chapters, and integrated expert feedback. The first full draft was in hand, and we had begun shipping them off for design. That week set the tone for the remaining months ahead. Alignment must be built, not assumed, decision by decision.

No Thing Too Small

If that week was about ensuring the broad strokes were sound, the next couple months were about precision. The drafts we sent to the designers returned as designed chapters awaiting review. Arguments about direction became arguments about diction. The client reviewed these, and comments returned line by line, even word by word. Often, we went to the Ministry and parsed these lines together, questioning, redlining, and replacing words and phrases. Certain terms were deemed too technical for public comprehension, while others were seen as too casual where increased specificity would be welcome. Sentences that seemed settled reopened under fresh interpretation. Paragraphs were tightened, expanded, reordered. References were checked and rechecked. Definitions were aligned across chapters to prevent contradictions. Initiative titles were changed then changed again. The work was incremental but relentless – version numbers climbed steadily, and a single chapter could go through multiple iterations in a week. Debates were convened on whether one word conveyed intent more accurately than another. Minor revisions carried larger implications for tone, authority, and implementation ownership. An adjustment of a word in a paragraph in a section of a chapter often necessitated a consistent reflection across headings, diagrams, charts, the table of contents, the glossary. Nothing existed in isolation, and a small shift in one place required ripple edits somewhere else. This stage carried with it no singular crisis, but rather an accumulation. An accumulation of edits. Of clarifications. Of expectations. There was not a single day we didn’t wake up to a flurry of messages from the clients, writers, or designers. The discipline required here was different from the early sprint in the week-long workshop. It demanded patience, it demanded endurance. The Blueprint had to be read as if it had emerged fully formed, in one coherent voice, even though it had been stretched and tested through countless rounds of scrutiny. Precision was non-negotiable.

When Authority Enters the Room

With the launch ceremony imminent, there was not much time left, with numerous attritional changes still to be made. Nevertheless, we were one with the client in pushing through these final few days. It simply had to be done. We were almost at the finish line, and while no one wanted to say it, we were waiting for the other shoe to drop. At this stage, what could go wrong?

The other shoe dropped. A decision had been made to make systematic changes to key terms across the entire document. A political decision, but a necessary one nevertheless. Words that had been debated, defended, and aligned over months had to be replaced with alternatives. These substitutions were not isolated. They appeared in body text, in the table of contents, in diagrams, in the appendix. The consultants spent those days marking these changes on the latest PDF version. The writers and their Ministry counterparts did the same while also making the accompanying changes in sentence structure, ensuring the appropriate prefixes and suffixes were used, and that context was preserved. The designers had to apply these changes in their InDesign file, reflowing layouts where longer words altered spacing. The launch date did not move. What could have unsettled the entire process instead forced clarity of roles. All involved did their part with renewed focus, without complaint, making sure nothing slipped through. This episode reinforced a simple truth – in national policy work, political judgment is inseparable from technical design. The strength of a team lies in its ability to respond with composure when that judgment asserts itself, and that clarity of roles matters most when complexity peaks. When everyone understands their responsibility, even compressed timelines are navigable. Those final days were not elegant, but we had the Blueprint finalised for the launch in good time. A few hardcover copies, to be displayed at the ceremony, were to be printed. We were now ready to launch. 

At Some Point It Leaves You

Tuesday, 20th January 2026. Finally, the Blueprint was to be unveiled to the nation. The Prime Minister gave his speech to a room of over a thousand, surrounded by ministers, senior officials, education leaders, teachers and students. As with many of these official launch events, there is a gimmick involved – in this launch, for example, there was a person dressed as a robot who ran towards the stage holding a glowing cylinder. This cylinder was passed to the Prime Minister, who placed it into a receptacle on his rostrum, and on the big screen appeared the cover of the Blueprint. Standing on stage alongside him were the Deputy Prime Ministers, the Minister of Education, and the Minister of Higher Education. Printed hardcovers of the Blueprint were distributed between them. I have never been fond of these gimmicks. But as I watched the cover flash across the screen, and the hardcovers being flipped through on stage, knowing the pages we had debated and revised and worked on for what seems like an endless period of time were now tangible, I felt simultaneously a sense of pride and relief. I know my team felt the same. At this moment, the document ceased to be a draft. It had become a national commitment.

With the launch, Phase 2 came to an end. In the weeks that followed, many voices spoke and opined on the Blueprint. Friends and family sent messages, podcasts and radio shows debated its merits. Some views I agreed with. Others I did not. What was unmistakable, however, was that people across this nation care deeply about education and its beneficiaries. As I wrote at the beginning of this essay, the true test of the Blueprint lies in its implementation, and this responsibility now rests in the hands of those who will carry it into classrooms, departments, and budgets. The Blueprint is written. The real work begins.

Written by:  

Aaron Lugun Raj, Senior Associate

———- 

Let’s transform together. Contact us at: https://pemandu.org/contact-us/  

The post Inside The Making of a National Blueprint appeared first on PEMANDU Associates.