-James Woods-Nkhutabasa
When Lazarus Chakwera swept to power in 2020, Malawians hoped for a clean break, an end to corruption and a revival of the economy.
Instead, four and half years later the country is mired in a crisis of governance and credibility. Chakwera’s administration, once buoyed by the Tonse Alliance coalition, has been rocked by scandal and dysfunction.
The President’s vaunted anti-graft campaign has floundered, his hand-picked Anti-Corruption Bureau chief, Martha Chizuma, investigated a record number of high-profile bribery and fraud cases but faced relentless obstruction. Starved of funding and political support, Chizuma resigned in 2024, a damning symbol of Chakwera’s faltering commitment to clean government.
Meanwhile, Chakwera’s own inner circle has not been immune to graft allegations. Even Vice-President Saulos Chilima, once a partner in reform, was charged with taking bribes in the Zuneth Sattar procurement scandal.
Chakwera suspended Chilima and even dissolved his entire cabinet in early 2022 amid multiple corruption charges but these dramatic gestures have not translated into lasting change. Instead, the government appears adrift, cracking down on some corrupt officials while tolerating or mishandling others, sending mixed signals that have eroded public trust.
Public sentiment has soured dramatically. Malawians who cheered Chakwera’s promises of a “new dawn” now seethe at what they see as incompetence and betrayal.
Nepotism and cronyism, sins Chakwera once accused his predecessor of, have crept back into government appointments, according to critics, undermining meritocracy.
More visibly, the grand pledge to create one million jobs has become a national punchline as unemployment and underemployment remain rampant.
Demonstrations and civil society outrage have flared over the government’s failures; the administration that rode in on a platform of hope now finds itself the target of citizens’ anger.
In short, Malawi’s governance under Chakwera is in disarray, major policy initiatives stalled, corruption fighting units demoralised, and an electorate that feels deceived and fed up.
Economic Freefall, Inflation, Debt, and the Kwacha Collapse
Compounding the leadership vacuum is an economy in tailspin. Malawi is suffering its worst economic crisis in decades. Inflation has surged into double digits, gutting household incomes. By late 2023, consumer prices were rising about 28% annually, a devastating rate for a country where even before the crisis over 70% of people lived on less than $2.15 a day. Basic commodities have become unaffordable luxuries for many.
The Malawian kwacha has been in freefall, losing more than half its value since 2022 after a series of sharp devaluations (25% in 2022, then a whopping 44% in late 2023).
Even after these adjustments, the currency remains under intense pressure, with a persistent black-market premium signaling that forex remains scarce. For a net-importing country, the collapse of the kwacha has been catastrophic, fueling import costs and further stoking inflation in a vicious cycle.
At the root of this turmoil is a biting foreign exchange shortage that has left Malawi unable to pay for essential imports. Official foreign reserves dropped below one month’s import cover in 2023, effectively empty coffers. The result has been acute shortages of fuel, medicines, fertilizer and other basics. Motorists now endure 1970s-style fuel queues stretching for hours, if not days, across the country.
By late 2024, Malawi had only 5 days of petrol and 15 days of diesel supply in stock, perilously short of the 90-day requirement.
The inevitable happened: pumps ran dry. Cars lined up by the dozens outside gas stations became the new normal.
Public transport fares have spiked, goods shipments stalled as trucks sat empty, and even ambulances in some hospitals were grounded for lack of fuel. This is not a minor inconvenience – it is a national economic paralysis.
Factories and businesses cannot operate reliably, farmers can’t get goods to market, and daily life is disrupted at every level by the energy emergency.
Malawi’s debt situation has deteriorated into a full-blown debt crisis.
The government’s chronic budget deficits – reaching over 10% of GDP in 2023 and heavy borrowing have pushed public debt above 80% of GDP. By 2022, Malawi effectively defaulted on its external debt, and it has been in default ever since. Debt servicing became impossible amid the forex crunch, forcing the country to seek relief.
An emergency IMF package of $88 million in late 2022 provided only a temporary Band-Aid. By 2023, the situation was so dire that Malawi had to beg its major bilateral creditors, notably China and India to agree to restructure loans in order to unlock an IMF lifeline.
With Beijing and New Delhi finally signaling assent, the IMF approved a 4-year $175 million Extended Credit Facility in November 2023. This has thrown Malawi a financial lifeline – a first tranche of $35 million arrived to shore up the treasury, but the conditions are steep. The government in Lilongwe must enforce austerity and reforms to regain macro stability, a bitter pill that thus far it has struggled to swallow.
Even with the IMF program, two-thirds of Malawi’s external debt (mostly to multilateral lenders) isn’t covered by relief and continues to drain the public purse. In short, Malawi remains in debt distress, lurching from one bailout to the next, its economic sovereignty severely compromised.
Years of fiscal mismanagement and external shocks have left the economy anaemic, GDP grew a mere 1.5% last year, basically stagnation.
The government’s inability to stimulate growth or even meet basic obligations (like paying fuel suppliers on time) has shredded its credibility. Businesses face not only power outages and fuel scarcity but also a collapse in consumer demand as inflation eats incomes.
The private sector, starved of forex for inputs, has cut back or closed, driving unemployment higher. Malawi’s youthful population (median age 18) finds itself with few prospects at home, job creation has been essentially zero while the labour force grows each year. Chakwera’s economic stewardship can only be described as calamitous.
As one columnist quipped, Malawi is experiencing a “cashgate without the cash” a reference to the infamous 2013 corruption scandal, but now the looting is replaced by sheer economic collapse. Confidence in government finances has collapsed, and with it, the hope that the current administration can right the ship.
Lights Out, No Medicine, and Empty Stomachs
The true cost of Malawi’s crisis is measured in human welfare, the breakdown of essential public services. Electricity has become a rarity for many.
A series of climate disasters, notably Cyclone Ana in 2022 and Cyclone Freddy in 2023, knocked out major power infrastructure, including a loss of 130 MW at Kapichira hydro dam and other facilities.
This amounts to a significant share of Malawi’s already meagre 400-500 MW generation capacity. The result: interminable load shedding. Through 2023 and 2024, blackouts of 8-12 hours a day became routine in both cities and villages.
At one point after Cyclone Freddy, parts of the country had as little as one hour of electricity per day. Imagine running a business, a hospital, or a school under such conditions. Even as engineers hustled to restore some capacity, supply remains far short of demand.
Over 89% of Malawians have no access to electricity at alland rely on firewood and charcoal, a figure that underscores both the developmental failure and the environmental strain (deforestation is accelerating as people hack down trees for fuel).
The national utility is cash-strapped and unable to invest, while promised new solar and thermal projects have stalled. “Darkness” has become both a literal and metaphorical descriptor of Malawi’s direction.
Then there is the healthcare system, now on life support.
Hospitals and clinics are overwhelmed and under-resourced. Critical drug shortages are pervasive, over 70% of health facilities have repeatedly run out of essential medicines in recent months. Doctors report telling patients to “bring your own” perishables / supplies for treatment, a grim indicator of collapse.
In parts of the country, health centres have temporarily closed because they simply have nothing to treat patients with. This healthcare breakdown has had deadly consequences.
Malawi endured its worst cholera outbreak in decades in 2022-2023 amid poor sanitation and lacking medical supplies, killing over a thousand people.
Now, with the fuel shortage, some hospitals can’t even operate ambulances or generators. Patients are turned away or forced to pay exorbitant prices for drugs in the private market. The poor, as always, suffer the most, for them, even a basic antibiotic has become a luxury beyond reach.
Frontline health workers are demoralised, some leaving the country, others striking intermittently for better pay and supplies. The fabric of a functioning public health system is coming undone, raising the spectre of preventable deaths and a reversal of hard-won gains in child survival and disease control.
Perhaps most viscerally, hunger is stalking the population. Malawi is no stranger to food insecurity, droughts and floods often threaten harvests, but the current situation is especially severe.
A combination of climate shocks (a fierce El Niño-related drought in 2024) and the economic crunch have left an estimated 25% of the population facing acute food insecurity.
That is about 5 to 6 million Malawians struggling to meet daily food needs. In rural areas, many families’ crops withered in the drought or washed away in floods, while fertiliser was either unavailable or priced out of reach due to the forex crisis. Urban households, on the other hand, are hammered by soaring food prices, inflation on staples like maize, cooking oil, and bread well above 20%.
The World Food Programme and other agencies have sounded alarm bells that Malawi faces its worst hunger in over a decade, appealing for emergency aid. Tragically, the government’s own Affordable Inputs Program (AIP), which is supposed to provide subsidised fertiliser and seed to poor farmers, has been a shambles, marred by procurement scandals and delays.
In one notorious incident, the agriculture ministry paid a UK-based dodgy broker (purportedly a fertiliser supplier) that turned out to be a small-time furniture and sausage company, wasting millions of dollars and delaying inputs. Such blunders mean that many farmers didn’t get fertiliser at all this season, virtually guaranteeing poor yields.
As a result, Malawi’s vaunted food security net has frayed. Malnutrition is rising; stunting in children, already around 37%, is feared to climb.
Food rations have been cut for refugees and the ultra-poor due to lack of funding. In the countryside, some desperate families are surviving on one meal a day, foraging for wild yams or banana stems, a throwback to the famines of the past.
It is a humanitarian crisis unfolding in slow motion, under the watch of a government seemingly paralysed by the enormity of the problem.
The Rise of the Opposition – Old Faces, New Hope?
In this context of collapse, Malawians are looking for salvation, and increasingly, many are looking to the opposition for answers.
The political winds have shifted dramatically since 2020. Chakwera’s Malawi Congress Party (MCP), once in a broad alliance, is now largely isolated and on the defensive, while opposition forces are regrouping. Perhaps most striking is the comeback of Peter Mutharika, the very man Chakwera defeated in the court-ordered 2020 election re-run.
Mutharika, now 84, was president from 2014 to 2020 and leads the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Initially written off after his 2020 loss, APM (as he’s known) has sensed the public mood and positioned himself as the elder statesman who can “rescue” Malawi from Chakwera’s misrule.
In August 2024, the DPP emphatically endorsed Mutharika as its presidential candidate for the 2025 elections. In his acceptance speech, the octogenarian did not mince words about the state of the nation: he blasted the “anaemic” economy and promised to fix the foreign exchange shortages that have led to lack of fuel and medicines.
“We are coming to fix the economy,” Mutharika declared, evoking his administration’s record of lower inflation and infrastructure projects.
It was a clear signal that the 2025 race will be a referendum on economic management and Chakwera’s abysmal record has given the opposition its opening.
But Mutharika is not the only opposition figure eyeing the presidency. In a remarkable twist, Malawi could see a contest of three presidents, the incumbent and two former presidents.
Aside from Mutharika, Joyce Banda (who ruled 2012-2014) has also re-emerged, hinting at a run or at least leveraging her People’s Party as a kingmaker. Banda has been reminding voters that during her brief tenure a decade ago, Malawi had adequate fuel, forex and electricity a pointed contrast to today’s shortages.
While Banda’s electoral viability is questionable (her party lacks the nationwide support of MCP or DPP), her presence underscores a broader point: the opposition lacks a fresh face, and so the country’s disillusionment is channeling toward familiar figures who themselves once fell short.
This raises a troubling question, are Malawians simply caught in a revolving door of disillusionment? Banda’s administration was tainted by the massive “Cashgate” corruption scandal;
Mutharika’s by allegations of nepotism. Yet such is the desperation in Malawi today that many seem willing to give the old guard another chance, if only to stave off the current disaster.
The primary challenger remains Mutharika. His DPP base in the populous Southern region, which felt marginalised under the Central-dominated MCP government, is fired up and eager to return to power. Importantly, Mutharika is working to broaden his appeal beyond his traditional stronghold. He has openly courted the United Transformation Movement (UTM), the party of the late VP Chilima – to form an opposition alliance.
This is a strategic masterstroke: Chilima (before his untimely death in a plane crash in 2024) had a strong following among urban youth and in parts of the Central region.
UTM was a key partner in Chakwera’s 2020 victory, but after feeling betrayed and then losing Chilima, the party has bolted from the ruling coalition.
If Mutharika can seal a deal to bring UTM into the fold, perhaps by offering its new leaders a prominent role or running mate slot, it could dramatically reshape the electoral landscape.
Also in play is the United Democratic Front (UDF), another opposition party with roots in the Eastern region, which allied with DPP in the past. Coalition politics will be crucial because Malawi now requires a 50%+1 majority to elect a president, making a runoff likely if three heavyweights run.
Every alliance and vote transfer agreement will count.
Crucially, public opinion appears to be swinging to “anyone but Chakwera.” Independent surveys and by-election results in late 2024 show the MCP losing ground even in areas it once dominated. Citizens across Malawi consistently cite the economy, jobs, and corruption as their top concerns, and on each, the perception is that Chakwera has failed to deliver.
“Life has never been this hard,” is a common refrain from market traders in Blantyre and farmers in Dedza alike.
This despair is the opposition’s fuel. In rallies and local meetings, DPP and other opposition politicians hammer home stories of governance failure: the mother who died in childbirth because the hospital had no blood or gas for an ambulance; the college graduate riding a motorcycle taxi to survive because there are no jobs; the small business owner who closed shop because she couldn’t get forex to import spare parts.
These real-life examples hit home far more than abstract GDP numbers. The mood in Malawi today is one of anguished reflection: we removed the old government for these new guys, but are worse off than before.
That sentiment is Chakwera’s greatest vulnerability, and it’s one the opposition is keen to exploit fully.
Voters’ Priorities and the Battle Ahead
As Malawi marches towards the September 2025 elections, voters are galvanised by bread-and-butter issues. For the first time in recent memory, the economy is absolutely front and centre of a Malawian election. All across this nation of 19 million, from the cities to the villages, people are asking which candidate can stabilise prices, restore fuel and electricity, and put food back on the table. Traditional political loyalties in Malawi, often tied to ethnicity or region, may blur in this election as hardship levels the differences.
A hungry, jobless young man in the north and a struggling market woman in the south share the same immediate need: economic relief. Jobs for the youth is a particularly acute issue. Malawi’s youth (over half the electorate) face an unemployment crisis so severe that many have given up hope of formal employment entirely.
These young voters were a key constituency for the Tonse Alliance in 2020 after Chakwera and Chilima promised job creation; feeling betrayed, they may swing to whoever convinces them of a real plan for livelihoods.
We may witness an unprecedented youth surge at the polls, a phenomenon seen in nearby Zambia, where youth turnout was decisive in unseating a failed incumbent in 2021. Key electoral battlegrounds will likely be urban centres and swing districts. Cities like Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu are melting pots where party strongholds overlap, and the youth vote is concentrated. In 2020, the opposition alliance swept urban votes by promising change.
In 2025, the opposition (now DPP/UTM/UDF alliance possibly) will aim to do the same by pointing to the urban chaos under MCP, the fuel queues, blackouts, and high cost of living that city dwellers know all too well. Rural areas, traditionally MCP’s heartland in the Central region, cannot be taken for granted by Chakwera either.
Farmers are furious about the fertiliser program failures and poor crop yields; they too feel the sting of inflation when buying soap or maize flour. Regions like the North, which have swung between parties in the past, are up for grabs and may go to the candidate who best addresses national (versus regional) issues.
The battle for narrative is also underway: Chakwera will attempt to convince voters that the hardships were unavoidable, a result of global factors (like COVID-19 and the Ukraine war’s impact on fuel) and natural disasters, essentially pleading for more time to fulfil promises.
The opposition will retort that while shocks are real, it was leadership incompetence and corruption that turned challenges into catastrophe. That argument has resonance given neighbours like Zambia or Tanzania faced the same global turbulences but did not descend into this level of crisis.
Ultimately, Malawians head into this election season with sombre determination. They know the stakes: this vote could decide whether Malawi remains stuck in a downward spiral or has a chance to reset.
The collective priority of the electorate is clear, rescue the economy, save the country from collapse. The question is which political force can credibly offer that rescue.
As things stand, President Chakwera is limping into the campaign with a track record that is indefensible on many counts.
The opposition, though not without blemishes, is seizing the moment to present itself as the lesser evil and the only viable path to recovery. In the coming months, expect to see this clash intensify: rallies filled with fiery rhetoric about “saving Malawi”, manifestos heavy on economic fixes, and likely a healthy dose of mudslinging over who is more corrupt than whom.
But strip away the political theatre, and one finds a citizenry that has been pushed to the brink and will no longer settle for excuses.
Come September, Malawian voters seem poised to prioritise performance over party, a welcome maturation of democracy forged in the crucible of hardship. If that indeed happens, it could mark the beginning of Malawi’s long climb out of the abyss.
*James Woods-Nkhutabasa is a former Malawian diplomat with a commendable record of service for Malawi in various European nations, including Belgium, Andorra, France, the Principality of Monaco, the Netherlands, Italy, Luxembourg, and the European Union.
Complementing his practical experience, James is an MBA holder from the University of Oxford. He is also an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellow.
