MALAWI: Local Languages in Parliament & more – 18th Nov 2025

Muli bwanji from BA! This is the Rorshok Malawi Update from the 18th of November twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Malawi.

The rains have been falling heavily in most parts of the country, but agricultural experts think farmers should wait to plant their crops. They want farmers to keep up with rainfall forecasts by the Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services to avoid misfortunes experienced last year, when many farmers had to replant their crops after losing them to bad weather.

This warning comes as the Ministry of Agriculture started distributing farm inputs under its Farm Input Subsidy Program, which provides subsidized agricultural inputs to smallholder farmers.

In September, the Meteorological Services said the twenty twenty-five/twenty twenty-six season could see between normal rainfall and over normal levels, so some farmers have already started planting their crops.

Some activists have petitioned for the Parliament to start speaking in local languages, especially Chichewa, which the President opened a few weeks ago.

On Thursday the 13th, the Center for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives and the Lost History Foundation delivered their petition to the Parliament.

The two groups feel that using local languages in the August House would make it easy for ordinary Malawians to follow issues raised in parliament, and promote Malawi’s culture. The argument makes sense, since research says that only twenty-five percent of Malawians can read and write English fluently.

Jomo Osman is the new Mayor of Blantyre in the Southern Region, and people are shocked because he has no formal academic qualifications and speaks poor English.

He won by fifteen votes against Eric Mofolo’s eleven and the former Mayor Joseph Makwinja’s four.

Now, Blantyre has been divided, as some people have been mocking Degree holders, saying Jomo’s win is proof that education is not the only key to success. Others said people have no right to complain that Jomo won since the educated did not stand up to compete for the Mayor's role.

However, many people have agreed that Jomo’s win raises questions about the type of leadership Malawians deserve.

The Malawi Prisons Service always complains about being overcrowded, but it turns out that a majority of its inmates are being held illegally, since most of them are kept in prison after their remand warrants have expired.

For instance, Chichiri Prison in Blantyre is keeping 630 remanded prisoners, yet the remand warrants for over 300 of them expired on Thursday the 13th.

Steven Meke, the National Spokesperson for the Malawi Prison Service, said there are nearly 3,800 inmates who are currently being held on remand across Malawi’s thirty-one prisons.

Human rights activists like the Centre for Human Rights Education, Advice, and Assistance, suggest that the remandees be released on bail.

Next up, some media houses are set to make a comeback. The government is working towards restoring the country’s media freedom by reopening radio and TV stations that the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority shut down three years ago due to unpaid broadcasting license fees.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa says that license fees are expensive and, because they are charged in US dollars, they have become even more costly. They also think some stations were closed down because they aired programs that spoke against the previous government.

The Ministry of Information said it will talk to the affected media houses and address the longstanding issues that they have been facing.

Meanwhile, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services said it will be introducing six more offices in new districts. It currently has offices in Blantyre and Mangochi in the South, Mzuzu in the North, and Lilongwe in central Malawi.

Now, they want to open district offices in Thyolo and Chikwawa in the South, in Salima and Kasungu in the Central Region, and in Mzimba and Karonga in the North. They feel this will make it easy for people to access travel documents.

People hope the new offices will reduce the long queues and passport delays that are often experienced in the regional offices.

The Blantyre City Council wants to demolish the Old Town Hall and replace it with a modern multi-storey complex because it has aged badly and is making the city look ugly. However, the Department of Antiquities says the Hall must be preserved because of its rich history, since it was built between eighteen eighty-seven and eighteen ninety-one and is one of Malawi’s first and oldest buildings.

Authorities from the City Council believe renovations will be a waste of resources, and feel a new building that includes elements of the Old Town Hall will be better. However, authorities from the Museums and Antiquities Department are afraid the Council will destroy an important aspect of Malawi’s colonial history.

Despite the differences, both parties said they’re open to discussing and meeting halfway.

You now have to submit an application to the Anti-Corruption Bureau if you want to change the ownership of your vehicle, house, or land, so that they can vet and clear it.

This process isn’t new; the Bureau stopped it in August twenty twenty-one, but decided to reintroduce it so that they can prevent criminal activities like theft of earnings that happen during such exchanges. The Bureau announced and implemented the change on Thursday the 13th.

They said they will vet and clear all processes within four days of receiving the application.

Many people are angry with Ethiopian Airlines because it stopped Ethel Kachala, a wheelchair user and Programs Manager at the Federation of Disability Organizations in Malawi, from travelling to Benin on its plane without an assistant to help her on and off the plane.

On Saturday the 15th, a trending video showed Kachala stranded at the Kamuzu International Airport in Lilongwe after the Ethiopian Airlines left her behind despite having flown with them many times before without an assistant. She said she spoke to the Airline before her flight to explain that she was disabled and would need help, and they agreed.

Ethiopian Airlines doubled down and said their policy requires that all passengers who cannot move on their own must have an assistant with them. However, disability activists still feel Kachala was discriminated against.

In trending news… Cloudfare, an internet infrastructure company, had unusually high traffic which caused its network to experience errors, which made several websites across the globe inaccessible to its users.

For instance, on Tuesday the 18th, CNBC reported that platforms like Twitter, ChatGPT, and Shopify could not be accessed. In Malawi, many major news sites like Nyasa Times, Malawi24, and Malawi Voice, and music streaming platforms like Vwaza Music, displayed error messages when visited.

Unfortunately, Cloudflare does not know why they experienced a traffic surge, but they said they are working on fixing everything.

Still on trends… Some people lost their parcels after a ten-tonne truck by Speed Courier company caught fire while moving goods from Mzuzu to Lilongwe. The incident happened on Monday the 17th around 10 PM,

The Mzuzu Fire Brigade said the truck was already engulfed in flames when they got there, so they weren’t able to save it or any of the parcels on it. Instead, they focused on putting the fire out so it would not spread to nearby bushes.

Speed Courier is yet to explain how they will move on from this accident, especially regarding compensating customers whose parcels were on the truck.

Finally, in our last episode, we mentioned that the Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (or ESCOM) is unable to generate enough electricity, meaning people should expect more blackouts.

However, an article from the Nation Newspaper says ESCOM’s excuses do not make sense since its operations were meant to improve after the company unbundled in twenty seventeen. The unbundling meant that ESCOM would focus on power transmission and distribution, the Electricity Generation Company would focus on power generation, while the Power Market Limited would handle market operations.

However, the companies still do not operate efficiently and are failing to serve Malawians properly, even though other African countries, like Kenya and Ghana, have implemented a similar model and now have fewer electricity issues.

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

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Pitani bwino!