Muli bwanji from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Malawi Update from the 5th of August twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Malawi.

Vice President Michael Usi was criticized heavily for taking a delegation of forty-three people to Turkmenistan for the UN Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries, which will run from Tuesday the 5th to Friday the 8th.

On Monday the 4th, anonymous sources within the Office of the President and Cabinet told local news that the government spent billions of kwacha on air tickets, accommodation, and allowances.

To make matters worse, Malawi had the biggest delegation of all the other participating countries. For instance, Botswana had twelve delegates. The staggering difference raised eyebrows, with some accusing Usi of being too excessive, given the country’s economic struggles.

Among the country’s pressing troubles is the current fuel scarcity, which was supposed to be sorted out by last weekend. However, on Tuesday the 5th, the National Oil Company of Malawi said that the situation will normalize between this weekend and Thursday the 14th.

Many vehicles and fuel-trading businesses have come to a standstill as Malawi is waiting for its first consignment of fifty million liters of fuel, which has been bought under the Government-to-Government arrangement.

Local news said some trucks have been bringing fuel into Malawi, but the supply isn’t enough to meet the current demand and ease the nationwide fuel queues.

Meanwhile, an article published on Wednesday the 30th by the Platform of Investigative Journalism said Esther Sagawa, the Mayor of Lilongwe in the Central Region, allegedly threatened members of the Plot Allocation Committee to allocate seventy of 300 plots to her. The plots belong to the government and are meant for different development initiatives.

The Anti-Corruption Bureau was investigating Sagawa for alleged abuse of office, but recently shut down the months-long investigation despite an interim report recommending her arrest and the cancellation of all plots tied to her case. This raised concerns that the move was intended to shield a key political figure.

When queried, the Bureau said its findings did not indicate any abuse of office, clearing Sagawa.

While Sagawa’s case came to a shocking end, the Anti-Corruption Bureau opened a new investigation and arrested Shadric Namalomba, the Spokesperson of the Democratic Progressive Party (or DPP). They took him in for allegedly facilitating the illegal transfer and warehousing of banned logs and other forestry products around twenty fifteen when he worked as a Commissioner of Customs and Excise at the Malawi Revenue Authority.

On Thursday the 31st, local news said the alleged crimes were committed when the Ministry of Trade had banned the export of this hardwood.

However, this raised questions about the possibility of the Bureau being used to tarnish the image of the opposing DPP, which recently came out on top during a recent voters’ choice survey.

Speaking of the DPP, the party unveiled its manifesto and launched its campaign on Sunday the 3rd in Blantyre in the Southern Region.

However, there were concerns for the health of Peter Mutharika, the DPP President, because he only attended one of the two rallies held on the launch day. During that rally, Mutharika did not stand up at all; he spoke while seated in an open vehicle, although his colleagues spoke from a podium.

A DPP official speaking at the rally said that Mutharika could not leave his vehicle for security reasons because there was an alleged plot to attack him. Still, social media comments indicate people’s doubts about voting for an eighty-five-year-old.

There is a sense of calm among the public because the Parliament passed the Presidential, Parliamentary, and Local Government Elections Amendment Bill on Tuesday the 5th.

In our last episode, we mentioned that President Chakwera had recalled the dissolved Parliament to discuss the bill to change some laws that would stop some voters from participating in the upcoming elections.

Now that it has been amended, registered voters will be able to vote at any polling station, as opposed to voting where they registered to vote, as was the case before. This means people who have left the areas where they registered to vote, such as those who traveled for work or school, will be able to participate in the elections.

In trending news, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church told the government to reconsider holding job interviews on Saturdays, which is their Sabbath day, as it forces members of their congregation to choose between their faith and employment.

On Friday the 1st, Pastor Luke Limbithu, the Church’s Director of Religious Liberty and Public Affairs, complained that most job interviews and exams take place on Saturdays, despite the church’s ongoing talks with authorities. He described this as a violation of their religious rights.

The Local Government Service Commission said they stopped weekend interviews after other affected groups complained of the same, but the Malawi Electoral Commission conducted some on Saturday the 2nd.

A new survey revealed that half of young Malawians are unemployed.

On Thursday the 31st, local news shared a study by Afrobarometer, which said that fifty-three percent of Malawians aged between eighteen and thirty-five are actively looking for jobs. Meanwhile, only three percent are employed full-time, and five percent are working part-time jobs.

The findings also revealed that fifty-six percent of young Malawians want to leave the country to look for better job opportunities, while thirty-three percent want to leave to escape poverty amidst the growing economic pressures.

Unfortunately, the number of employed people in Malawi has increased following the suspension of over ten thousand estate workers and farmers who worked at the Lujeri Tea Estate, one of Malawi’s leading tea producers, located in Mulanje District in the Southern Region.

Two weeks ago, the company announced that it would halt all its tea production and that it would no longer buy tea from the thousands of smallholder farmers who sold their tea to them. They did not say why, but on Saturday the 2nd, local news said the move would have devastating effects, especially since Lujeri contributes twenty-two percent of Malawi’s tea exports.

According to the media, because tea is one of Malawi’s major forex earners, the suspension of Lujeri will have serious implications for the national economy, especially in light of the current forex shortage.

This news came days after Shoprite, a major retailer, revealed its plans to close up shop in Malawi. According to local news, Karson Investment Trust wants to buy the South African brand and rebrand it to Shopwise Trading Limited.

On Monday the 4th, the Competition and Fair Trading Commission said it will assess the impact of the proposed sale, but the Malawi Congress of Trade Unions described the news as a painful one that will lead to a loss of jobs across the country.

Malawi might join countries that Shoprite has also dumped, including Tanzania, Nigeria and Kenya. The retailer has been pulling out of several African markets due to financial losses and their desire to focus on its primary market in South Africa.

The Ministry of Higher Education has entered into a formal partnership with India’s Noida International University, which includes the launch of a scholarship program for Malawian students.

Under the Chairman’s Ambassador Scholarship, successful applicants will have their tuition fees reduced by fifty percent for both undergraduate and postgraduate studies. The University will also help its students book their hostels and get picked up from the airport upon arrival in India. However, the students will have to cover other necessary expenses, including their visa, registration, and accommodation fees.

Noida will stop receiving applications on the 15th of September.

Finally, President Lazarus Chakwera hosted artists in a dinner event called the Chakwera Arts Stars at the Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe. The event also doubled as a platform for the Copyright Society of Malawi to distribute Blank Media Levy royalties to artists who received the biggest payouts.

Even though Chakwera presented awards, certificates, and dummy cheques to the artists, saying his administration is committed to positioning the creative economy and tourism at the core of Malawi’s development agenda, there were concerns that he had hijacked what is typically an event hosted by the Society to try and push his own agenda and reel in more votes for himself.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

Did you know that we do lots of other updates? We’ve got three non-country updates: The Arctic, Ocean and Multilateral Updates, and country updates, with a selection of nations from across the world.

Check the full list with the link in the show notes.

Pitani bwino!