The K100 billion standoff holding up Mombera University

Eleven years after its foundation stone was laid, Mombera University remains unbuilt — the latest casualty of a procurement dispute between Malawi’s spending watchdog and the Ministry of Education over how a K100 billion contract should be awarded.

The Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Authority (PPDA) took 95 days to reject the ministry’s bid to fast-track construction through a single-source deal with Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Company, rather than the standard 21 days such decisions are meant to take.

The ministry says the delay has now forced it into a lengthy competitive bidding process unlikely to conclude before April 2027.

PPDA insists it was simply awaiting “additional information and clarifications” from the ministry, and argues the proposed contractor could not legally be treated as the sole capable supplier, given that comparable projects have been built by other firms in Malawi and the region.

The ministry counters that the contractor in question already built the Malawi University of Science and Technology and Parliament’s Lilongwe building — and that it already has a separate, unresolved contract with the same firm, making a switch potentially costly.

A civil society observer struck a middle note: PPDA’s underlying caution may be reasonable, but a request made in May had no business waiting until August for an answer on something so fundamental to whether building work could begin.

Second Vice-President Enock Chihana, who oversees the project, told a Mzimba gathering on August 8 that contractors would move onto the site as soon as PPDA responded.

The K100 billion phase in question covers a School of Animal Sciences, an administration block, two hostels, 30 staff houses, a cafeteria, sports facilities, a clinic and waste management works — pieces of a university first launched back in 2015 under the Peter Mutharika government, and still, more than a decade on, waiting to be built.