Malawi students’ accommodation project commences using PPPs

Minister of Education Agnes NyaLonje has launched an accommodation project for public universities which she said will end accommodation woes the university faces due to government’s policy to increase intake in recent years without supporting infrastructure.

Speaking during the launch of the first construction phase at the University of Malawi’s  College of Medicine Lilongwe campus on Wednesday, NyaLonje  said with more students enrolled into the public universities, the country is assured of increased human capital and improved social-economic development.

She said students should expect  “high-quality accommodation of international standards that will gradually extend to all public universities.”

The investors—Old Mutual Investment Group  (Omig) and other investors—have atleast two and six years, respectively to complete construction of the hostels, which has been framed on a Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) arrangement for 35 years.

Old Mutual plc group chief executive officer Edith Jiya said they will construct hostels for College of Medicine Lilongwe and Blantyre campuses as well as for the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Luanar).

She said the first phase at College of Medicine Lilongwe campus will be completed by December 2021 while the Blantyre campus project will begin towards the end of the year. The Luanar project is scheduled to start early next year.

Old Mutual is expected to invest $25 million (K18.3 billion) for the hostels with a bed capacity of 4 700.

The other investor was M&M Developments and Infrastructure, which had  plans to invest $425 million (K311.5 billion) for the construction of 20 280-bed capacity hostels at The Polytechnic, Luanar-Natural Resources College (NRC) Campus, Unima’s Chancellor College in Zomba, Malawi University of Science and Technology (Must) in Thyolo and Mzuzu University (Mzuni).

The public universities accommodation project is being implemented under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement.

PPP Commission acting chief executive officer Audrey Mwala said Old Mutual plc have started implementing the projects while M & M Consortium failed to fulfill some conditions.

“We advertised for new applications for the project to fill the space that was left,” said Mwala.