Miss Malawi stuns skills contest crowd with passionate plea: ‘A degree won’t save you — learn a trade’

• Thandi Chisi tells hundreds of young Malawians that artificial intelligence cannot replace human creativity — and that the country’s future depends on practical expertise, not degrees alone

When Thandi Chisi took to the stage at Gateway Mall in Lilongwe on Thursday, she was not there simply to smile and wave. The Miss Malawi 2025 titleholder used the closing ceremony of the country’s premier skills competition to deliver a pointed argument about economic development, the limits of artificial intelligence, and what she called the transformative power of practical expertise.

“Artificial intelligence may be advancing at an extraordinary pace,” she told an audience of hundreds of young competitors, industry leaders, educators and government officials, “but it cannot replace the human ability to create, innovate, solve problems, and connect with communities.”

The three-day National Skills Competition, held under the theme Showcasing Talent and Skills, Fostering National Growth, brought together trainees, institutions and policymakers to demonstrate competencies across a range of vocational and technical disciplines. It concluded with the address by Chisi, whose remarks many in attendance described as both timely and unexpectedly substantive.

Beyond the crown
Chisi is not solely a beauty queen. She is also the founder of the Sustainable Fashion and Women Empowerment Initiative, a project that has trained more than 600 women in tailoring, fashion and design across Malawi.

She drew on that experience to make an argument that cut against the grain of a culture that has long privileged academic credentials over vocational training.

“The future will not belong to those who merely consume opportunities,” she said. “It will belong to those who can create them. And skills are the tools that make that possible.”

Her framing of skills development was deliberately economic as well as personal. Using what economists describe as the multiplier effect, she argued that a single woman trained in tailoring does not simply transform her own circumstances — she feeds her family, educates her children, and generates opportunity for those around her.

“A skill is more than a way to earn a living. A skill is dignity. A skill is independence. A skill is the difference between surviving and thriving.”

A political moment
The competition arrives at a moment of acute economic pressure in Malawi, where youth unemployment remains high and the government is attempting to reorient its development strategy around industrialisation and domestic productivity.

Minister of Labour, Skills and Innovation Joel Chigona, who attended as guest of honour, commended participants and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to strengthening vocational education systems — though he offered few specifics about how that commitment would be resourced.

The broader context loomed over the event. As foreign aid contracts and the promise of economic migration dims — Malawian workers abroad have faced increasing hostility in recent months — the pressure to build sustainable livelihoods at home has never felt more urgent.

Chisi addressed that reality directly, if obliquely.

“JThe strongest economies are not built by resources alone. They are built by skilled people. Every skill learned today becomes a building block for the Malawi we want tomorrow.”

What the competition revealed
Over three days, participants showcased technical competencies spanning a wide range of trades — a display that organisers said underscored the depth of vocational talent in a country that has not always known how to value it.

For many of those competitors, Chisi’s presence on the closing stage carried its own significance. That the most visible young woman in Malawi chose to spend her platform making the case for tailors, mechanics and technicians — rather than the more photogenic causes that beauty titleholders often favour — did not go unnoticed.

Whether the government follows the rhetoric with investment will determine whether the competition’s theme — fostering national growth — amounts to anything more than an aspiration.