MALAWI: Kwacha Stabilizes & more – 28th May 2024

Muli bwanji from BA! This is the Rorshok Malawi Update from the 28th of May twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Malawi.

According to statistics from the Foreign Exchange Auction held on Wednesday, the 22nd, The Kwacha is starting to stabilize against the US dollar. The stability is largely due to the tobacco season, which is now in its sixth week. Tobacco has since contributed 108 million dollars in revenue, which is much higher than last year’s sixty-four million dollars generated during the same period.

Currently, one dollar is trading at 1,751 Kwacha from about 1,200 three months ago.

The country’s economy might recover smoothly due to other factors like donor support. For instance, the World Bank granted Malawi eighty million dollars. The funds are meant to support the country’s implementation of the Malawi Public Finance Management Strategy, which dictates how the government will generate its funds and systems for transparency to the public.

A press statement released on Friday the 24th said the grant would support resource mobilization, budget execution, and transparency of public finances. However, there is a catch; Malawi will only receive the grant after passing indicators such as an increase in revenue collected from domestic value-added tax and a decrease in the differences between approved budgets and expenditures, among others.

Nathan Belete, the World Bank Country Director, said the grant will help resolve local fiscal challenges such as low forex.

Citizens will be voting for a new president next year, but the Malawi Electoral Commission (or MEC) said that 95% of the required election devices haven’t been delivered to the country.

Emmanuel Fabiano, the MEC Commissioner, said they have received nearly 300 of the 6,500 required election management devices (or EMDs), even though locals are expected to start registering to vote this September. The EMDs will help conduct voter registration, inspect the voter’s register, and also help manage the results once they’re out.

On Friday the 24th, Fabiano said the EMDs they have now are enough to conduct initial training for over fifteen thousand people who will be registering voters. He said that the rest of the EMDs would be in the country before September. He also told the media that there aren’t any issues in preparing for next year’s elections.

The MEC isn’t the only company whose operations are in question. A new study by the Kamuzu University of Health Sciences (or Kuhes) revealed that about fourteen percent of the medicines commonly used in Malawi are either substandard or falsified. This means that the medication locals are receiving might make them sicker or lead them to an early grave.

However, the study said this problem isn’t only prevalent in Malawi; over fifty percent of the prescriptions in low and medium-income countries are of low quality.

Felix Khuluza, the Associate Professor at the Kuhes Department of Pharmacy, said local manufacturers – who take up to thirty percent of substandard medicinal products – take advantage of Malawi’s inability to assess the medicines they produce. However, Khuluza said they are yet to find explicit figures that connect deaths to the substandard medicines.

Telekom Networks Malawi (or TNM), a telecommunications company, also fell into its customers’ bad books after failing to offer internet services for nearly two days, starting from Tuesday the 21st.

When queried by the media, Michael Herbert, the Chief Executive Officer for TNM, said cuts to two undersea cables that they use to provide internet services caused the disruption. He also explained that the failure also affected other telecommunications companies in other countries like Tanzania and South Africa, since they all use the same cables.

Herbert further explained that they lost revenue worth approximately one billion Kwacha or nearly 580 thousand dollars.

TNM made up for the inconvenience by gifting one million of its customers with various gifts, such as free internet bundles. However, a few days later, TNM got in people’s bad books yet again on Africa Day…

Many African countries observe Africa Day on the 25th of May. In Malawi, many companies took this as an opportunity to show up to work in different tribal outfits, and took to social media to share pictures of their employees in their colorful clothes.

TNM did the same, but locals didn’t receive it very well. In the picture, Michael Herbert was dressed in a Ngoni chief’s attire and seated on a chief’s chair, with women and men kneeling at his feet. Even though it was a perfect depiction of the Ngoni tribe, the picture was put into question because of its racist connotations, since Herbert is white and was surrounded by black people who looked like his subordinates. TNM faced accusations of being insensitive, and ended up deleting the image off their social media pages and replacing it with others where Herbert was not depicted as a superior.

On Tuesday the 21st, locals in Lilongwe started panicking, thinking that the country had run out of fuel because several gas stations across the city had queues - a very common trend when fuel reserves are low or out of stock.

On Wednesday the 22nd, the Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority released a statement assuring the public that the country had enough fuel to meet the demand. They said they have ongoing fuel imports to ensure the country doesn't run out.

Luckily, the queues disappeared a few days later.

In other news, Malawi is currently hosting its 34th edition of the International Trade Fair in Blantyre at the Chichiri Trade Fair Grounds. President Chakwera presided over the official opening on Thursday the 23rd.

The fair’s theme is Boosting Malawi's Export Capacity Through Enhanced Production. Over 170 exhibitors are participating. It will run until Thursday the 29th.

Orama Chiphwanya, the Communications Executive at the Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said the fair is an excellent platform for local and international delegates and exhibitors to showcase their work and explore business opportunities.

The fair’s opening day was colorful and upbeat as locals sang and chanted as they awaited the president’s arrival. After the president was seated, people saw performances of traditional dances and a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the official opening.

The Catholic Church also had an upbeat weekend, following the ordination of twenty-four seminarians to become deacons in the church. The ordination ceremony took place at Saint Peter’s Major Seminary in Zomba city.

The newly ordained deacons will serve at the Zomba Diocese, the Blantyre and Lilongwe Archdiocese, as well as the Chikwawa, Mzuzu, Mangochi and Karonga dioceses.

Oer 250 patients requiring dental surgery will be receiving treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre. The patients were in Queens’ backlog as Malawi only has one specialist who handles such cases.

However, a team of fourteen specialized surgeons from the US flew into the country on Saturday the 25th and will be performing surgeries over the next two weeks.

Dr Tania Nkungula, the team leader, said some of the cases included removing oral tumors.

Meanwhile, Martha Chizuma, the Director of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (or ACB) will be stepping down from her position on Friday the 31st. A few weeks ago, local media interviewed officials from the ACB to ask if they would renew Chizuma's contract, but the officials said the Bureau is facing challenges such as huge debts and staff shortages.

However, the ACB’s remarks were put into question. Chizuma wrote to the Office of the President and Cabinet to renew her contract but they denied her request.

No one knows why, but they suspect it's because of Chizuma's twenty twenty-two blunder: she was arrested because of a leaked audio where she was telling her friend details about corruption involving government officials.

More public officers might lose their jobs. On Friday the 24th, the Public Appointments Committee of Parliament (or PAC) said they would push for the dismissal of over 1,700 public officers who haven't declared their assets, businesses, and liabilities. Public offices should declare their assets in the first three months of the year. However, PAC wants to take it a step further by naming and shaming all the public offices that did not comply with the law.

On Wednesday the 22nd, Joyce Chitsulo, the Chairperson of the PAC, told local media that it would release the Public Officers' Declarations Report next month.

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

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Pitani bwino!