MALAWI: Independence Day & more – 2nd July 2024

Muli bwanji from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Malawi Update from the 2nd of July twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Malawi.

Malawi will be commemorating sixty years of independence on Saturday the 6th. However, locals won’t enjoy the usual traditional dances, music performances, military displays, and football matches. Instead, President Chakwera said prayers will mark this year’s Independence Day as the country is still mourning the death of Saulos Chilima, the former Vice President, who died in a plane crash early this month.

As we talked about in previous shows, after the accident, President Chakwera declared a twenty-one-day national mourning period from Thursday the 11th of June to Monday the 1st of July. However, since the country is still in a sad mood, the government canceled the celebrations.

However, not all independence day celebrations are canceled. The Ufulu Festival announced that they will be commemorating the day on Saturday the 20th, instead of Saturday the 6th. They postponed the festival because of the mourning period.

They have announced a lineup of different artists, including the Kings of the Night, Praise Umali and Lawi. The event is free, and will be taking place at the Grand Business Park in Lilongwe.

Unfortunately, the people also had to mourn the death of Lucius Banda. He was a legendary musician with a career that lasted over twenty years. He was the founder of the annual Sand Music Festival and used his music as a tool for political activism. He was involved in politics as well, as he served under the United Transformation Movement, which is one of the country’s political parties.

Unfortunately, Banda died on Sunday the 30th while receiving treatment in South Africa. He had been sick for a while, but the disease was not disclosed.

Social media has since been flooded with tributes to him, and has been playing his music ever since the news broke.

The country was hit with a similar, untimely death, last Tuesday the 25th. Kennedy Mwenya, an award-winning musician and graphic designer popularly known as Spyral, died at Mzuzu Central Hospital. He had been involved in an accident while coming from a relative’s funeral in Rumphi District.

Tsar Leo, a close friend and fellow musician, told local news that Spyral had been recovering well, and so the news of his death was a shock.

Perhaps some locals will be given a reason to smile since the government keeps increasing the number of beneficiaries for its Social Cash Transfer Program (or SCTP). Under this program, the government gives poor households cash to help them meet their needs.

On Sunday the 28th, the German government gave Malawi a nineteen-million-euro grant to help the SCTP, which supports over ninety-three thousand poor households in seven districts, including Chitipa, Salima, and Mangochi.

According to Ute König, the German Ambassador, Germany has granted Malawi over 122 million euros since two thousand nine in development aid.

In trending news, it turns out a popular twenty-three-year-old TikTok influencer is an alleged thief. On Thursday the 27th, police at Area 3 in Lilongwe arrested Innocent Sengimana, who is known under his TikTok names iPhone Daddy and innocentjumajayi. They said he allegedly duped people of five million Kwacha (or nearly three thousand dollars). He asked for cash from individuals, saying he would give them iPhones. He collected the cash upfront, and then ghosted the victims. He also didn’t pay fees for some cars he rented for his social media posts. He instead used the rented cars as collateral to get loans from loan sharks. These people illegally lend money with high interest.

Hastings Chigalu, the Public Relations Officer for the Lilongwe Police, said that, on the day of his arrest, they had to rescue Innocent from an angry mob who caught him while he was on the run from the police.

Moving on, on Tuesday the 2nd, the Financial Intelligence Authority launched the National Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Financing of Terrorism and Proliferation Policy in Lilongwe. It aims to combat fiscal crimes by helping different frameworks – such as legal, institutional, regulatory, and operational ones.

Jean Priminta, the Director General of the Financial Intelligence Authority, said the policy addresses key weaknesses that the Authority identified in their assessments. She did not say what these weaknesses are, but she mentioned that they are currently assessing the levels of money laundering in different sectors, so perhaps that is one of their biggest concerns.

Vincent Nundwe, the former Commander of the Malawi Defense Force (or MDF), was appointed as the Malawi Ambassador to Morocco. However, this was called into question as Nundwe might not be qualified for this role. He served in the MDF for over forty-five years and has no experience in any other companies outside the army.

Up next, Sunbird Hotels and Resort, the country’s hotel conglomerate, has unveiled a new company called Sunbird Tours and Travel, which will offer travel agency services to help promote Malawi as a tourist destination.

Travel agency will also be available to other hotels, tour operators and airlines, including those that aren’t in Malawi, to help ease travel within and outside of the country.

Unfortunately, not all companies are doing well. A few weeks ago, local news reported that the Times Group wanted to pull its investment from Malawi Telecommunications Limited (or MTL) because it hadn’t been performing well for years. If this happens, MTL might close down, as the Times Group is one of its biggest investors.

Bengolnet, an international telecommunications company, may bail MTL out. Dixon Daelo, Bengolnet’s Project Manager, said they are planning to invest a minimum of fifty-one million dollars in MTL to help boost internet connectivity in Malawi and bridge the digital gap.

This could be a much-needed save for MTL.

While MTL tries to find a safety net, another company, Malawi Posts Corporation (or MPC), has suspended its bus services until further notice. The buses stopped operating on Sunday ,the 30th.

A statement by MPC released on Tuesday the 25th said the company had been struggling to satisfy its customers because its fleet of buses was very old, leading to high maintenance costs, which eventually led to persistent losses for the company.

Despite this harsh reality, the management of MPC said they are optimistic about the future. They said they would change their strategy and make a comeback soon.

More companies may face a similar fate if rumors that the Reserve Bank has devalued the Kwacha by 33 percent turn out to be true. The central bank did not announce the devaluation, but some people said their go-to forex traders are selling the Kwacha at a higher rate.

For instance, on Friday the 28th, one business owner posted on their Twitter account that the Kwacha is now selling at nearly 2,700 per dollar on Yellow Card, which is an international forex trader. That same day, the Reserve Bank held a foreign exchange auction with local banks, and they said the Kwacha was still selling at 1,751 per dollar. The Reserve Bank released a statement which said that the news about the devaluation is fake, but comments on their Facebook post show that locals don’t believe them.

The Reserve Bank started auctioning the Kwacha to help align it with the black market last January. When forex became scarce in local markets, the government devised methods to find it, such as getting loans from fiscal authorities like the African Development Bank. However, locals looked to the black market to get forex. The black market rates were much cheaper, and locals could get all the forex they wanted, compared to authorized forex traders, who set up limits for forex transactions.

When forex started stabilizing, there was a huge difference in forex rates between the black market and authorized dealers. That’s why the Reserve Bank started auctioning the Kwacha, and then followed that up with the 44 percent devaluation last November. Since the black market is unregulated, when the Reserve Bank has an auction, the Kwacha depreciates, and companies raise the cost of their goods.

To read more about this, follow the link in the show notes!

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

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Pitani bwino!