Chithyola Banda: Malawi is ‘in darkness, drowning in debt and running out of medicine’
Malawi’s Leader of the Opposition, Simplex Chithyola Banda, has delivered a scathing verdict on the ruling DPP government’s first year in office, accusing ministers of presiding over a foreign exchange crisis so severe that mothers cannot find medicine, businesses cannot import spare parts, and students cannot pay exam fees.
Speaking as parliament rose sine die on Friday, the opposition leader said that with the DPP set to mark one full year in government by September, his party now had a duty to hold ministers to account after initially giving them the benefit of the doubt.
“By September 16, the DPP government will have clocked 1 full year in office, and this gives my office an obligation to test their governance approaches on very important policy matters,” he told the House, insisting the scrutiny was rooted in “a duty to provide checks and balances” rather than political hostility.
Chithyola Banda painted a grim picture of an economy still “passing through troubled waters,” pointing to business confidence surveys showing foreign exchange scarcity as the single most-cited challenge facing Malawian companies – a crisis he said had forced government to sell off gold reserves simply to keep fuel flowing into the country.
“Forex shortage means a mother in Nthalire is unable to find medicine at a district hospital, a business owner in Limbe Township is unable to do business because he can’t import spares,” he said.
“And a student in Mzuzu sitting for international examinations can’t pay for examination fees because forex is not available.”
While acknowledging that global shocks – including conflict in the Middle East and tightening international credit conditions – had made the year harder for governments across the region, the opposition leader was unequivocal that this could not excuse every domestic failure.
“A global shock is not a permission slip,” he said. “It cannot be the excuse for every local failure, every delayed decision, every unexplained scandal.”
He also turned his fire on the country’s crumbling electricity supply, describing state power utility ESCOM as “back on its knees” and warning that load-shedding had become so routine that Malawians were simply “getting used to it” – a normalisation he said should alarm rather than reassure the nation.
“Electricity is not a luxury,” he said. “It is part of life for students studying for exams, it is part of work for a hospital that needs to refrigerate the vaccines, and it is part of the life for a barber who gets his income through cutting people’s hair.”
The opposition leader closed his economic critique with a pointed warning over ongoing talks between government and the International Monetary Fund on a new support programme, demanding transparency over any conditions attached before they are imposed on ordinary Malawians.
“Malawians would appreciate to know the conditions that come with that programme, in advance, to avoid discovering the structure and conditions of the Programme later,” he said.
Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV :