No longer the preserve of salty pub snacks, the humble peanut is enjoying a moment in the culinary limelight, says Allegra McEvedy.
National budget becomes a political football in party squabble, putting vital foreign aid payments at risk.
Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika has suspended the opposition-dominated Parliament over its failure to pass the budget.
Bakili Muluzi, the former Malawian head of state, faces an uphill battle in his bid to become the country’s president for the third time in next year’s presidential election.
Ellen Machemba has a mop of curly hair and vivacious eyes, though at the moment they are troubled. She is talking about sex work.
Former Malawian president Bakili Muluzi, who had been under house arrest over an alleged coup plot, was freed on bail on Friday after a judge said there was no reason to fear he would try to flee justice. Muluzi was ordered to post bail of 000 and report to police once a month as well as inform them of any plans to travel outside Blantyre.
Former Malawi president Bakili Muluzi has accused the government of fabricating a treason case against him for political reasons and demanded that a court give him bail unconditionally. Muluzi made the charge in a court filing on Tuesday, two days after he was arrested on suspicion of being involved in a plot to overthrow the government.
Malawi’s former president Bakili Muluzi on Tuesday laughed off accusations that he was trying to topple his successor as his lawyers launched a high court bid to end his house arrest. Muluzi has denied any knowledge of documents which purportedly linked him to a coup against President Bingu wa Mutharika.
Former Malawian president Bakili Muluzi was arrested in connection with an alleged coup plot as he returned home from Britain on Sunday, his lawyer said. Five members of Muluzi’s United Democratic Front and three army generals were arrested last week on suspicion of being part of a plot to bring him to power, and an arrest warrant was issued for Muluzi.
Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika on Saturday said that Africa was able to feed itself, suggesting other African nations should learn farming lessons from his country. ”We believe in Malawi that Africa can feed itself,” Mutharika told reporters before he departed for Japan to attend a meeting of African leaders.
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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.