Civil society groups accuse Malawi’s Global Fund committee of flawed selection process

A group of civil society organisations has accused the Malawi Global Fund Coordinating Committee (MGFCC) of running an “irregular, unjust, and deliberately exclusionary” process to select a Community Principal Recipient for the Global Fund’s eighth grant cycle (GC8).

In a joint statement, Allie Mwachande, executive director of MANERELA+, and Zinenani Lucy Majawa, of the Female Sex Workers Association (FSWA), argued that the process had breached core principles of transparency, accountability and inclusiveness that are meant to underpin such decisions.

The groups said Global Fund Funding Request Instructions specify that, under the Grant Ready Funding Request pathway, existing Principal Recipients are ordinarily retained unless the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) formally decides to change the application modality, in line with its own governance procedures.

According to the statement, the CCM’s Oversight Committee discussed and recommended the Grant Ready Funding Request pathway, but this recommendation was made by the Oversight Committee alone.

“Eight members attended the meeting and there is no documentary evidence that the recommendation was subsequently presented to, deliberated upon, and formally approved by the full CCM,” the statement said.

The civil society groups further alleged that a communication was sent to the Global Fund Secretariat indicating Malawi’s intention to pursue the Grant Ready Funding Request pathway, even as an advertisement was separately floated inviting institutions to express interest in the role — a discrepancy they said raised concerns about adherence to established CCM governance and representation arrangements.

“This has raised concerns regarding adherence to established CCM governance and representation arrangements,” the statement read, before the organisations demanded “immediate suspension of all GC8 processes until the concerns raised by the concerned civil society representatives who participated in the PR selection process are fully addressed.”

MGFCC Secretariat Chairperson Cliff Chiunda, who also serves as Secretary to the Treasury, could not be reached for comment. MGFCC executive secretary Cuthbert Nyirenda had not responded to queries by the time of publication.

The dispute touches on governance arrangements that carry significant financial weight for Malawi’s health sector: the Global Fund remains one of the country’s largest external sources of financing for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria programmes, and Principal Recipients play a central role in disbursing and accounting for that funding at community level.

Any procedural uncertainty over how such recipients are selected has the potential to affect both the credibility of the process and, civil society groups argue, the confidence of communities the funding is intended to serve.