Sugar Crisis Turns Desperate as Traders Sleep Outside Nkhotakota Depot
The sugar shortage in Malawi has now reached breaking point, and nowhere is the crisis more visible than in Nkhotakota, where desperate traders are sleeping outside the district’s main distributor just to secure a few bales of the scarce commodity.
When Times 360 Malawi arrived at the scene around 12:10 a.m., the sight was shocking: men and women wrapped in blankets, some on their fourth night in the open, waiting for a chance to buy sugar. What they face is not only hunger for the commodity, but also a system hijacked by cartels.
Local trader Emmanuel Phiri accused some businesspeople—mostly outsiders—of buying sugar in bulk only to resell it at exorbitant prices. Inside the depot, sugar sells at K69,500 per bale, but the same bale is pushed to consumers at up to K100,000 on the black market. Another trader, Ester Kapanga, said some small traders are being intimidated or pushed out entirely. She pleaded with government to intervene before the crisis spirals further.
Our investigations revealed an even darker twist: many of the people sleeping outside the depot are not small traders at all. They are hired agents for powerful businessmen. These agents, after securing the sugar, receive K10,000 per bale before the stock is whisked away and resold at inflated prices.
What makes the situation even more puzzling—and frustrating for Malawians—is that this dramatic struggle for sugar is happening barely 60 kilometres from Dwangwa, where the sugar is produced.
Many Malawians have begun to recall a time when this crisis was brought under control. They credit former Minister of Trade and Industry Vitumbiko Mumba, who confronted and dismantled the very cartels now resurfacing. Mumba exposed syndicates that hoarded sugar to artificially raise prices and smuggled it out of the country for illegal export. His aggressive approach briefly restored sanity in the market.
Now, with traders sleeping on pavements, families losing access to basic goods, and prices running wild, more and more Malawians are urging the Mutharika administration to revive Mumba’s tough strategy. They argue that unless government confronts these cartels head-on—just as Mumba did—the crisis will only deepen.
For now, the lines grow longer, the nights colder, and the sugar bags fewer. What began as a shortage has now become a full-scale national emergency.