Malawi: Radio Station Resumes Broadcasting Following Suspension of Its Licence

Joy Radio Station, which had its broadcasting licence suspended on 17 October 2008, has resumed broadcasting after a High Court injunction preventing the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) from revoking its licence.

MACRA had ordered the station off-air over allegations of not complying with the licence agreement and provisions of the Communications Act. Ralph Kasambara, the station's lawyer told MISA-Malawi that the High Court judge felt that closing down the station could deprive Malawians of their right to information, which the radio station, as a component of the media, champions.

"The presiding judge said that the media play a vital role in informing, educating and entertaining the public. And as such, the closure of Joy Radio could have impinged on the right to information the media champions," Kasambara said.

Following the injunction, the station resumed broadcasting at 2:30pm (local time) on 19 October. The injunction will be valid for seven days while waiting for Joy Radio's case to be reviewed. The Director of Broadcasting for MACRA, James Chimera, told a local newspaper that the station had been closed because it transferred ownership and was effectively in the hands of politicians contrary to section 48(7) of the Communications Act. According to MACRA, the station is now owned by the former president and national chairman of the United Democratic Front (UDF), Bakili Muluzi, his wife Patricia Shanil Muluzi and his son, Atupele Muluzi, and a Tanzanian investor.

Another alleged reason for the closure was the station's non-compliance with the broadcasting licence whereby it [Joy Radio Station] refused to talk to MACRA and preferred to talk through its lawyers. MACRA did not explain the difference between talking through the lawyers and *talking face-to-face with the directors of Joy Radio Station.

BACKGROUND:

A 16 October letter, signed by MACRA director general Alexxon Chiwaya, accused Joy Radio of a breaching licence conditions and failing to comply with the provisions of the Communications Act. The letter also noted that there was continued disregard by the radio station of several warnings and advice to stop programming that was deemed to contravene the licence conditions. The station stopped broadcasting on 17 October

Joy Radio was granted a licence on 1 April 2002 and has been involved in running legal battles with MACRA. At one point the station successfully challenged the composition of the MACRA board and had it nullified by the High Court on 13 July 2007. On 29 October 2007 MACRA uprooted transmission equipment of Joy TV, a sister company to Joy Radio and what would have been a second television station in Malawi, on the grounds that Joy TV's owners did not have an appropriate licence that allowed dual ownership of a radio and television station.

THE DRAW IN ZURICH HAS TAKEN PLACE

In my post dated October 14th, 2008, titled “POSSIBLE GROUPS FOR MALAWI” in Group 2 I had Egypt, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Malawi. It seems I was 75% correct. Replace Egypt with Ivory Coast (”in Ivory Coast it is illegal to call the Ivory Coast the Ivory Coast, it is called the Côte d’Ivoire”) and you have the official GROUP E. The rest of the groups are as follows:

Group A
Togo
Cameroon
Morocco
Gabon

Group B
Mozambique
Nigeria
Kenya
Tunisia

Group C
Rwanda
Algeria
Egypt
Zambia

Group D
Ghana
Benin
Sudan
Mali

There is no such thing as “an easy group”. Didn’t Egypt lose to minnows Malawi? Isn’t Zambia better off than Malawi? Egypt don’t need to under-rate Zambia. Yes they have beaten them before but that was then and this is now.

My prediction is that two or three teams from POT A are not going to make it to the World Cup. Will it be bad for African Football? I hope not.

Senegal were “new” at the World Cup but went further than most African teams that have been there almost every World Cup. Most players that play in “big” African National Teams on a club level play over-seas so it is easier to know how they play and that’s why they don’t go that far in the World Cup. Just my opinion.

MALAWI: Will the financial storm hit us?

Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries, is watching the global financial storm with a great deal of unease, uncertain what effect the credit crunch will have on a national budget that is more than 40 percent donor-funded.

The small southern African country of 13 million people - whose profile has been raised in recent years by Madonna's celebrity patronage and current messy divorce proceedings - fears its major donors will batten down their hatches and sacrifice aid budgets in the interests of their own financial health.

Governments in the US and European Union, in a bid to stave off a repeat of the 1930s Great Depression, have diverted trillions of dollars of public money into their ailing banking systems, and Malawi and other developing nations are asking the same question: will there be any money for us left in the kitty?

"The downturn in the international economy could affect future levels of development funding. However, it is too early to assess the impacts of this on countries like Malawi," David Rohrbach, the World Bank's acting country manager for Malawi, told IRIN.

"We do not see any immediate impact on funding, given that most projects and country allocations are made several years in advance, and expect that all existing commitments will be met."

Rohrbach said some donors were committed to funding special initiatives, such as those designed to help developing countries cope with sharp increases in global food and fuel prices.

"Malawi, as with many African countries, is somewhat insulated from the turmoil in international capital markets. However, international capital flows may tend toward less risky investments over the next few years," he said.

"This suggests the need for Malawi to continue to improve its business environment, while maintaining control over the level of domestic debt and the fiscal balance."

No country left unscathed

World Bank president Robert Zoellick cautioned recently that "The financial shock waves in the United States and Europe will reverberate in the global economy."

''The financial shock waves in the United States and Europe will reverberate in the global economy''
Developing world finance ministers have asked the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to draw on the "full range" of their resources to cushion the effects of any fallout from the financial crisis on their economies, but one thing is certain: a global recession or a prolonged tightening of credit will curtail gross domestic product (GDP) growth.

An IMF survey in October projected that growth rates in sub-Saharan Africa would slow to 6 percent in 2008 and 2009, down from 6.5 percent in 2007, and noted that "recent heightened turbulence raises the risks, including a decline in resource flows to Africa in the form of private capital, remittances, and even aid."

Malawi's finance ministry spokesman, Ephraim Munthali, told IRIN that donors had not given any indication that aid would be reduced as a consequence of the global financial turbulence, and that the country's economic agenda remained on track.

"Over the past four years, Malawi has sustained an average growth rate of more than 7 percent, well above the 6 percent benchmark necessary to meaningfully reduce poverty," he said.

"During the same era, the country has, for the first time ever, successfully completed an economic programme with the International Monetary Fund, stabilised the once-volatile kwacha [local currency], tamed inflation to within single digits, and slashed the benchmark bank rate to record lows."

Malawi's GDP growth forecast for 2008 has been revised upwards from 7.4 percent to 8.7 percent, attributed to robust performance by the agriculture sector, especially the tobacco industry, as well as growth in manufacturing and financial services.

Macroeconomic stability

Munthali said the Malawian government had reduced domestic debt stock from 25 percent of GDP in 2004 to 11.5 percent in 2008.

"If you add to that K10 billion of domestic arrears left behind by the previous administration, but which the current government has regularised, you will see how hard the authorities have worked to neutralise the debt problem. In fact, even the amount of money spent relative to GDP on the repayment of domestic interest from the budget has dramatically fallen," he said.

In 2004 the Government spent about 9.2 percent of GDP to repay domestic debt interest. This was more than the combined expenditure on education, health and agriculture in the 2003/04 budget. In 2007 domestic interest payments were 2.4 percent of GDP, and are projected to slide to 2.2 percent of GDP in 2008.

"These are massive savings being ploughed back into the economy, which show that the measures taken by this government as regards domestic debt, by controlling borrowing drastically, have led to a vast fiscal improvement.

"The Government is particularly happy with this performance, which is translating into better living standards for Malawians. As recent studies have revealed, Malawians are better off today than they were in 2004, or in 1994 for that matter; that is progress, that is development and that is success," he said.

Niels Buenemann, IMF's Malawi spokesman, told IRIN that the Breton Woods institution had disbursed about US$25 million in 2008 to assist the country in meeting a larger-than-expected balance of payments deficit flowing from higher fuel and fertiliser prices.

An IMF mission to Malawi in September 2008 said in a statement that the reduction in public debt, both domestic and external, since 2005 had generated savings of about 4 percent of GDP in debt-servicing costs, making more money available for poverty reduction and high-priority spending activities.

"The mission discussed with the authorities the implications of the recent sharp increases in fertiliser prices in the fertiliser subsidy programme," the IMF statement said.

"The IMF team agreed with the government's intention of meeting any spending increases in the fertiliser programme though a combination of increased support from donors, improvement in domestic revenue performance, and spending restraints elsewhere in the budget."

Malawi's ruling party endorses incumbent Mutharika for President

The National governing council of Malawi's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has endorsed President Bingu wa Mutharika as the party's presidential candidate during next May's general elections, a top presidential aide announced here Tuesday.

"The (DPP) National Governing Council made this resolution after examining all the political realities on the ground which included the fact that no other DPP member has expressed an interest to contest for the position and the fact that it will be unrealistic to expect that anyone would do so in good faith before nomination day," said DPP Secretary General Heatherwick Ntaba, in a statement monitored on national radio and television.

Ntaba, who is also Mutharika's Chief Political Advisor, said the unanimous endorsement was "in recognition of the president's excellent work during the four years he has been president".

He said the DPP believed Mutharika should be given another chance to finish the development projects he started.

Ntaba said the DPP "is confident not only DPP members will be happy to accept that His Excellency Ngwazi Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika as the presidential candidate bu tthat also all Malawians who wish this country well will gladly and wholeheartedly accept the candidacy and will vote for him in May 2009".

The 75-year-old economist-turned-politician was anointed by former president Bakili Muluzi to become a presidential candidate for the then ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) in the 2004 elections after the latter failed to change the Constitution to allow him stand for a third five-year term.

Mutharika, then seen as a Muluzi protégé, narrowly won the hotly contested poll and immediately embarked on a "zero tolerance" on corruption policy that quickly endeared him to his hitherto detractors.

Nine months after assuming office Mutharika announced he was resigning from the UDF to found his own DPP, accusing his former political buddies in the UDF of frowning upon his tough anti-corruption stand.

Several senior former government officials, including Muluzi himself, have since been arrested and are currently answering a myriad of fraud and corruption cases.

Mutharika is likely to face stiff challenge from veteran politician John Tembo, who heads the country's oldest party - the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) - which us hered Malawi to independence from British colonialists in 1964 under the leadership of the country's founding president, the late Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

Banda, who ruled Malawi with an iron fist for three uninterrupted decades, died aged around 100 in 1997, three years after losing the presidency to Muluzi, his former protégé.

Muluzi has since been endorsed by the UDF to be the party's presidential candidate during the 2009 polls although his candidature faces legal uncertainty since Malawi laws say no one can stand for election as president again after serving two consecutive five-year-terms.

His battalion of 24 lawyers argue that the word "consecutive" means if one serves as president for two consecutive terms then have a breather of say, five years, one is eligible stand again.

His detractors dispute this interpretation and a little-known UDF member has since sued Muluzi, challenging his candidature.

Muluzi has vowed to remove Mutharika from the presidency as punishment for dumping the UDF, the party that put him in power.

Malawi rights group holds national convention

Medical Rights Watch (MRW), a local group interested in promoting and protecting the rights of patients and healthcare practitioners in the country, has organised the first ever national symposium to be held on Friday (24 October) in the southern commercial city of Blantyre, APA learnt here Wednesday.

According to the group’s chair, Titus Divala, the symposium is the beginning of what would become an annual event to achieve a health system for a population that is fully aware and able to practice their health rights and responsibilities in the country.

“We would like to have a feel of the current status as far as health rights and bioethics are concerned in the country, hence the symposium,” he said.

He said there would be discussions and presentations by different stakeholders, including those from the field of or related to health, human rights and law.

The symposium’s theme is “The State of Health Rights in Malawi.”

He added that the gathering would give a chance to the participants to understand the extent of and the importance of understanding and practicing health rights and responsibilities.

Malawi's Academy boost

PUPILS, staff and teachers at Forres Academy put their back into their school work recently to help raise cash and awareness for a very good cause.
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Pupils from all the classes were given time out for lessons to take part in the "Row Lake Malawi Challenge" which was held on the last day of term at the school.

Before going off to enjoy the Tattie Holiday break, pupils and staff members put their back into the challenge to raise cash for a charity in Malawi.

They each paid £1 for the privilege of taking part in the rowing challenge which was aiming to complete a total row equal in distance to Lake Malawi.

Also taking part in the challenge to show support for the project were pupils at Mallaig High School, Moray Steiner School, Forres Mechanics, Knock Hill racing and other sporting groups.

Each person taking part had to complete about 500 metres each on rowing machines set out in the school hall, with all cash going into the school's Malawi fund.

The event was organised by teacher, Liz Drawbell who has set up a fund to support the Luchenza CDSS Orphanage and School in Malawi which she visited several years ago as part of a group of teachers sent along by the Scottish Executive.

While the youngsters and staff members, were rowing, they also got the chance to see why they were doing it, with pictures and video of Luchenza CDSS being beamed to them, along with pics of other groups taking part in the challenge, via a video link.

The students were asked to put their £1 in a big drum which was decorated with the Malawi shield and then get rowing.

The total amount raised was £1,050 between all those taking part, including the schools and local clubs and sporting groups from around the community who did their bit to help the school row the full distance of 590 Kilometres.

"Each rowing 500 metres means that it will take 1180 people to get to the end of the lake," said Mrs Drawbell. "We are helping to build a classroom for the school with the cash raised."

She said that the students in Luchenza have few classrooms and none of the computers and books that Western schools take for granted. Around one in four of the students are orphans due to the AIDS epidemic in the country. Many of the children are also trying to earn a living by working to pay to go to school.

Mrs Drawbell said the kids are keen to help themselves and have made the bricks for the classroom build, but need help to get the other things such desks, computers and books.

Although the Malawi Fund is not the Academy's nominated charity this year, Mrs Drawbell is still aiming to raise cash with the copper and brown money tubs which are located in the school.

Meantime any member of the public who wishes to help and contribute to the fund can put donations for "The Malawi Group" at Forres Academy to the school.

Malawi: Poor designs cause market fires

Poor designs in the various markets in Malawi have been blamed for the recent spate of market fires, the Malawi Union for the Informal Sector has said. It said the inadequate space for fire brigades was the main reason more goods are lost to infernos.
The union said city and town assembly’s tendencies to choose cheap labour over quality workmanship was bringing uncertainty to most vendors plying their trade in the country’s markets. Most informal entrepreneurs in the informal sector were reducing their investments for fear of losing everything in case of fires.

The General Secretary of the union, Davies Chimombo, said local government officials were partly to blame because they continued to collect fees in markets that were poorly designed. He said this gives vendors false hopes that, should there be fire, they will be compensated.

“Why are town and city assemblies still collecting market fees in markets that are poorly designed? The case in point is Ndirande market where, we are told, fire brigade personnel failed to extinguish the fire in the early stages because of market impassability. This is reducing the level of investment on part of vendors and has implications on the national economy since vendors are living hand to mouths lives due to the little profits they get from the equally little investment they inject into their businesses,” said Chimombo.

Chimombo also blamed insurance companies for exacerbating post-fire losses, saying unfair insurance policies were discouraging non-formal players from insuring their goods. He said insurers favoured big players at the expense of small traders, thus increasing uncertainty for these vendors as they feel sidelined in most economic recovery programmes.

“But vendors should not be worried because we are starting an International Federation for Workers Education Association (Ifewa) programme, with funding from the British Department for International Development, aimed at linking vendors to insurance companies, as well as drilling them on their rights and how to avoid market fires. Some of the vendors keep combustible substances, which is bad for their business in case of fires,” added Chimombo.

His sentiments on poor market infrastructure designs comes barely a week after Malawi Bureau of Standards Acting Director General Davlin Chokazinga bemoaned the lack of such a policy in Malawi, saying the development was impinging on investment prospects.

He said it was time Malawi, like most of the Southern African Development Community member states, developed standards for buildings and other infrastructure to curtail the economic consequences of disasters like fires and earthquakes.

The recent spate of market infernos has also worried Local Government Minister George Chaponda, who said his ministry will embark on a programme of markets’ registration to ensure that vendors sell goods in safe markets, as well as helping in post fire recovery for affected people because it will become easy to compensate them.

The fire that gutted Ndirande market, located in the most populous township in Blantyre, is the forth within four months, raising questions over merchandise safety in Malawian markets.

Mutharika up for Malawi re-election

BLANTYRE - Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika, who is leading a minority government, has been endorsed as his party's candidate in next year's presidential elections, a party official said today.

"The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has unanimously resolved to present to the Malawi electorate Dr Bingu wa Mutharika as the party's candidate for the presidential race of May 19, 2009," Hetherwick Ntaba, the party's secretary general, told AFP.

The presidential poll is being held simultaneously with legislative elections.

Ntaba, who was a top aide to late dictator Kamuzu Banda, said Mutharika's nomination was unopposed.

He said the decision to endorse Mutharika was taken by the party's national governing council at its weekend meeting.

The party is scheduled to hold a convention later this year.

Mutharika, tipped by political analysts to win the race, will run against his arch-rival, former president Bakili Muluzi, and key opposition figure John Tembo of the Malawi Congress Party.

Mutharika, 76, turned against his one-time mentor by ditching Muluzi's United Democratic Front to form his own party soon after the 2004 elections.

Muluzi had ruled this impoverished southern African nation from 1994 to 2004, after wrestling power from Banda in the country's first democratic elections.

He reluctantly handed over power to Mutharika, after failing to change the constitution to allow him stand for a third consecutive term.

New Hanover High grad mapping spread of AIDS in Malawi

Cameron Taylor spent part of her summer mapping brothels in Malawi. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill junior was using mapping techniques to document how AIDS spreads among populations.

Malawi is a landlocked country in southern Africa. It’s slightly smaller than Pennsylvania, according to the CIA’s online World Factbook.

It is hard-hit by AIDS. The World Factbook cited a 2003 estimate that 14.2 percent of adults were infected with HIV/AIDS.

Taylor was staying next to an HIV clinic. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. Every morning she saw people lined up for medications.

She’s a geography major. I met with her at her parents’ home in Scotts Hill while she was home on break.

Why geography?

“I’ve always liked maps, and I always liked science,” she said.

“When I say I’m a geography major, people always ask, ‘What’s the capital of so-and-so?’ ” she said. “I’m like, ‘Aargh!’ ”

Geographers often work with people in other disciplines such as economy or public health.

UNC has a strong presence in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city. It operates a medical research facility and medical school in Lilongwe.

Taylor, a graduate of New Hanover High School, was part of a team of three that also included a graduate student and a geography professor.

“People were amazed at what we produced,” she said.

Social factors affect disease patterns. HIV is more prevalent in poor areas than in wealthier ones. “If you know how it spreads, hopefully you can contain it,” she said.

AIDS doesn’t just spread by sexual contact, she said. Many Malawian children get it from mother’s milk. But there’s little alternative to breast-feeding in such a poor country.

The team worked to train Malawian field workers how to use hand-held global positioning devices.

Early on, they were mapping brothels, mostly bars with beds in the back. Sex workers are likely to contract HIV and then to spread it.

When her van of workers wielding handheld devices pulled outside such a bar, they were often met by suspicion. She was amazed by how many drunk men she saw in the middle of the day.

Many of the prostitutes were widows in their 40s. She thought their husbands had died of AIDS, leaving them with no other way to get along.

Tobacco is a big crop in Malawi. The prostitutes follow tobacco trucks, servicing young drivers far from home. Thus HIV is spread up and down highways.

The demographics of Lilongwe were far different than Wilmington’s.

“We never really saw old people, but there were lots of kids,” she said.

The children were delighted to see white people, particularly a blond-haired, blue-eyed student. They would follow her party around, shouting, “azungo!” which means white person in the native language of Chichewa.

It’s fun being adored.

“I really missed that when I came back. I think people should bow at my feet,” Taylor joked.

The brothel project lasted a couple of weeks. Then Taylor began to work on mapping the “catchment area” for a clinic that treated kids under 5 years old with malaria.

She went to a health clinic in an outer district of Lilongwe and asked to see the medical records, to map out where the patients lived. She kind of expected shelves with file folders. Instead, she was shown a roach-infested cabinet stuffed with composition notebooks.

She asked for a chair and they brought her a potty. She washed it with antiseptic hand soap, put the lid down and went to work.

The records room was next to the maternity ward. Women assumed she was a doctor and pelted her with questions.

“I faint at the sight of blood,” she told me. “I said, ‘Please don’t show me anything.’ ”

She spent a week sitting on that potty chair, entering data into her laptop. It turned out women walk for miles to get to the clinic.

It’s hard mapping Lilongwe’s outlying areas. Most streets have no names. Slum neighborhoods miles apart share the same name.

A few weeks later she was mapping traffic accidents and injuries. Her team must have been getting a bit silly: They came up with the term “goat-induced panic attacks” to describe accidents where goats ran out in front of cars.

She had time to travel around the country. She went snorkling in Lake Nyasa, played with kids who’d never seen a Frisbee, sampled a foul, thick local beer that came in a milk carton, and mingled with elephants and zebras at wildlife preserves.

She loved being around children. She hopes when she returns next summer she can spend some time teaching classes.

In one clothing market, she found a Carolina Tar Heels cap.

When she tried to impress upon the vendor what an amazing coincidence that was, his response was simple: “Well, buy it!”

Si Cantwell covers the people and places that make Southeastern North Carolina unique.