Malawi’s announcement that it had foiled a fourth coup attempt in four years is fuelling suspicions of growing government paranoia and doubts over chances for a political deal crucial to donor funding. The arrest of senior opposition figures over the latest suspected plot has left crisis talks between the government and opposition near collapse.
Malawi’s tobacco industry has been in turmoil after wildly fluctuating prices led protesting farmers to force the closure of the auction floors. This year’s tobacco sales started on a very high note with prices reaching the phenomenal price of $11 per kilogramme. The high prices did not last, however.
Malawi has arrested two senior army officers for plotting to overthrow the government, police said on Wednesday, a day after the arrest of two opposition leaders on the same charges. The detentions have left crisis talks between the government and the opposition on the brink of collapse, which threatens to derail vital international donor programmes.
A court in Malawi handed down a six-year prison sentence on Tuesday to a former minister over corruption charges dating back 14 years, officials said. Former education minister Sam Mpasu stood accused of having received kickbacks for awarding a British company a deal to provide Malawi with millions of notebooks and pencils.
Police in Malawi have arrested two sisters who allegedly torched to death two children — aged three and seven — to exorcise them of witchcraft, a police spokesperson said on Monday. Police spokesperson Chifundo Chibweza said two other children — aged nine years and eight months — were rescued by villagers.
Malawi lawmakers on Tuesday began examining draft legislation aimed at ridding the HIV/Aids-plagued country of quacks claiming to cure the pandemic through such remedies as sex with virgins, health authorities said. "When it passes into law, all traditional healers claiming to cure Aids will be dealt with," Mary Shaba, head of HIV/Aids issues for Malawi’s Health Ministry, said.
No image available
/ 28 February 2008
Low prices continue to haunt Malawian tea on the auction floors, a bitter irony for some producers as the country is regarded as the pioneer of tea-growing in Africa. Commercial production started way back in the 1880s during the British colonial era. Large tea estates have since then been a feature of the southern region of the country.
No image available
/ 3 February 2008
Malawi’s president flew over the flood-stricken Shire Valley on Sunday where nearly 50 000 people have lost their homes and crops to raging waters that have wreaked havoc in many parts of Southern Africa. Nationally, more than 70 000 have been displaced in Malawi.
No image available
/ 30 January 2008
Rising flood waters devastating crops, livestock and infrastructure across half the coutry and menacing more than 73 000 Malawians are going to get worse, government officials said on Wednesday. ”It’s getting worse in Malawi because it is raining every day,” said Lilian Ng’oma, a senior official in the Disaster Management Ministry.
No image available
/ 24 January 2008
Malawi is to probe claims that Indian-made manual irrigation pumps used by the country’s poor farmers kill their sexual desire at night, a senior government official said on Thursday. ”We are going to do a thorough study to determine the problem,” said the irrigation officer, who identified himself as S Maweru.
No image available
/ 14 January 2008
Malawi has cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan after 41 years and established links with China, which has become a major economic power in Africa. ”We have decided to switch from Taiwan to mainland China after careful consideration of the benefits that we will be getting from mainland China,” Foreign Affairs Minister Joyce Banda told a press conference on Monday.
No image available
/ 14 January 2008
Tobacco production in Malawi is expected to rise to 150-million kilograms this season, encouraged by higher prices and good rains, the Tobacco Association of Malawi said on Monday. The expected increase in prices follows a slump in production last year, when growers only managed to produce 140-million kilograms.
No image available
/ 11 January 2008
A uranium mining project by an Australian firm due to begin in northern Malawi next year will boost the country’s exports by 25%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In a new country report released this week, the IMF said the -million project by mining firm Paladin could add up to 10% of the Southern African country’s overall GDP and 25% to exports.
No image available
/ 24 December 2007
Nadège Shabani, a refugee from Burundi, is a successful businesswoman plying her trade in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. She owns a thriving beauty salon, restaurant and a clothes shop. She is an example of the foreigners who are being accused of ”taking away” business opportunities from locals.
No image available
/ 20 November 2007
Education authorities in Malawi on Tuesday voided the results of examinations sat by 80 000 students after it emerged that copies of the papers were leaked and sold beforehand to some pupils. Education Secretary Anthony Livuza said fresh senior secondary-school certificate examinations will now be drawn up.
No image available
/ 14 November 2007
Malawi, which is severely affected by corruption, has appointed a seasoned anti-graft lawyer as its new Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), a parliamentary spokesperson said on Wednesday. The spokesperson of Parliament’s public appointments committee said that Alexious Nampota has been confirmed as the new DPP.
No image available
/ 25 October 2007
Malawi’s anti-corruption agency has arrested the head of the country’s electricity-generating company over allegations of graft, officials said on Thursday. A spokesperson for the Anti-Corruption Bureau said Kandi Padambo was arrested late on Wednesday in the commercial capital, Blantyre.
No image available
/ 20 October 2007
Twenty-six Malawi opposition supporters died on Friday night when the vehicle they were travelling in to a party conference overturned, police said on Saturday. The Alliance for Democracy members were travelling to Lilongwe from Blantyre for a meeting to elect a new leadership ahead of Malawi’s 2009 presidential elections.
For Malawian nurse Hilda Maganga, the financial pull of a spell in a ward in Britain is close to overwhelming her desire to tend to patients in her Aids-stricken and impoverished homeland. ”I would like to do a two-year stint in the United Kingdom, make my money and come back to retire for good,” says the 54-year-old.
Malawi, one of Africa’s poorest nations, said on Monday that despite recent efforts to grow the economy, it would be unable to meet the United Nations target date of halving poverty by 2015. A welfare-monitoring survey conducted by the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development indicated that poverty dropped to 45% in Malawi in 2006, from 53,9% in 1998.
No image available
/ 5 September 2007
Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame said on Wednesday that his country was no longer interested in joining the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in order to avoid ”overlapping” roles with other blocs. ”As a country we need to rationalise on which organisations to join in order to avoid overlaps,” he told journalists.
No image available
/ 4 September 2007
The senior Malawian child welfare official who was to go to London to assess whether Madonna could adopt a little boy from the Southern African country has been removed from the high-profile case following allegations he solicited money from the singer for the trip.
Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika threatened on Tuesday to close Parliament if a budget crisis threatening to cut off services in the impoverished nation was not resolved within two days. The 2007/08 budget debate, which should have been concluded by June 30, was suspended last month because the opposition first wanted a dispute settled.
Malawi’s Parliament reconvenes next week to debate and pass the impoverished African nation’s already delayed budget after the Supreme Court ordered the opposition to end a boycott, an official said on Friday. Malawi’s opposition, which holds 105 of the Parliament’s 193 seats, had earlier obtained a court injuction barring debate on the country’s budget.
Malawi police and anti-corruption authorities have raided the house of a judge who ruled against President Bingu wa Mutharika in a row with the opposition over the country’s budget. Fahad Assani, a lawyer for High Court Judge Joseph Mwanyungwe, told Reuters police and members of the Anti-Corruption Bureau raided the judge’s house on Monday night.
Malawi will have its first-ever modern mining project located in the northern town of Kayelekera in Karonga by early next year if plans by an Australian mining company, Paladin (Africa), are successful. However, controversy has been dogging the project since its hatching stages.
Malawi’s Supreme Court granted powers on Friday to the speaker of Parliament to fire defecting MPs in a move likely to lead to the collapse of President Bingu wa Mutharika’s minority government. Chief Justice Leonard Unyolo determined that the speaker could use a controversial constitutional provision to expel any lawmaker who had changed party affiliation.
Ethel Mutharika, wife of Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika, will be buried next week, as the country started a month of mourning for the first lady. Mutharika, a Zimbabwean national who was married to Malawi’s president for 37 years, died in the capital, Lilongwe, on Monday after a long battle with cancer.
Small Aids organisations in Malawi are being monitored after a recent move by the National Aids Commission to suspend financial aid.
Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika, who has pledged to bring economic stability to the impoverished nation, announced a Cabinet reshuffle on Thursday. The president created two new ministries and appointed 11 lawmakers as deputies, chief secretary to the government Bright Msaka said in a statement.
Chaos erupted in a small village in rural Malawi on Tuesday when Madonna and the one-year-old boy she hopes to adopt arrived at the orphanage where she found him. Scores of international and local journalists tried to force their way into the orphanage to get closer to Madonna, and were confronted by about 500 angry orphans.
The head of a Malawian orphanage refuted reports on Monday that Madonna was to adopt a young girl from her children’s home as the United States pop diva flew into the Southern African country. British newspaper the Sun reported that the London-based singer wanted to adopt a three-year-old girl called Grace from the Consol Home.