We, members from the civil society in Malawi, call on the NEPAD secretariat to halt the implementation of the NEPAD initiative until there is wider public endorsement and a sharper focus on fighting poverty in poorer African countries. We have met several times both at national and international levels to discuss the initiative and have found that NEPAD offers little prospects of benefit for the poorest in Africa.

Malawi's High Court on Monday ruled that President Muluzi Bakili cannot ban demonstrations over a controversial campaign urging him to stand for a third term in office. The court ruling came after influential religious groups, including the Roman Catholic church and the law society of Malawi, applied for an injunction against Muluzi's threat to stop demonstrations over the third term issue.

Malawi's existing health challenges of cholera, malnutrition, malaria and HIV/AIDS have been joined by another - the bubonic plague. Seventy-one cases of the medieval-sounding disease carried by fleas and rodents have been reported in the far south of the country since April, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says.

The Malawi Censorship Board has ordered the removal of a controversial condom advertisement that it has declared offensive and pornographic.

Lucy Susa sits outside the Mayani Health centre with twins Sainabu and Chemalenga sucking at her emaciated breasts. She's one of several hundred women who walk to the health centre, in the impoverished Dedza district in the centre of the country, for the babies' regular check up.

Radix has just begun to develop a page devoted to the current food emergency in southern Africa. We would welcome any materials (brief comments, reports on work-in-progress, suggestions of web links, electronic reprints of good background essays, etc.) from anyone and everyone. Web site: http://www.anglia.ac.uk/geography/radix/malawi.htm

Leader of the National Assembly Harry Thomson has said nobody in the United Democratic Front [ UDF] can force the party's MPs to support a bid to change the Constitution to allow an incumbent President to run for more than two term. He described UDF Regional Governor John Kapito statement that the party would fire MPs who did not support the amendment in Parliament as "emotional."
Thomson, who also noted that MPs have a right to speak their mind, was speaking in an interview. "I think it [Kapito's ] was an emotional statement. MPs will have to do their own soul searching and make their own decisions. You can say anything but you can't force everyone to think the same way," said Thomson.

RADIX has just begun to develop a page devoted to the current food emergency in southern Africa. We would welcome any materials (brief comments, reports on work-in-progress, suggestions of web links, electronic reprints of good background essays, etc.) from anyone and everyone. We are particularly interested, from both scholarly and humanitarian points of view, in the differences between 1991 and 2002. The earlier event amounts to a 'success story' in drought mitigation and prevention of famine. A preliminary analysis suggests three sets of differences:
Stresses: more numerous and severe in their interactions this time (HIV-AIDS, cholera, flood followed by drought, standing crops damaged by hungry mega fauna/ stolen by hungry thieves, mismanagement of stored food reserves, deterioration of democratic governance, level of corruption) Regional cooperation: possibly less vigorous SADC level activity (could this be because of tensions due to members taking different sides in the conflict in Congo?)
International response: slower (?) (Are there signs of 'compassion fatigue'? or distraction by Afghanistan and the Middle East? or reluctance to provide aid to regimes seen as corrupt?).
Among the countries currently included in WFP bulletins on the food emergency (Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Mozambique), there are very great differences in terms of history, political economy, political ecology, regime stability and credibility. Nevertheless, the composite factors give rise to concern that this time around more lives could be lost (400% rise in the price of maize in Malawi in the face of which many of the rural poor who have already sold off all assets simply starve). Another question is why Botswana appears to be escaping the current crisis. We are also particularly interested in what happened to the large number on NGO initiatives in this region in the early 1990s that were designed to build local capacity to cope with drought and other hazards. Have some been successful? Is the current crisis simply too large for these to provide much protection or resilience? Are women faring much better this time around? (Megan Vaughan's book on the 1949-50 famine in Malawi -- then Nyasaland -- provides an excellent baseline study of gender and famine: The Story of an African Famine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). We invite comments in this discussion list and also contributions of documents for posting on the RADIX web site addresses to [email protected] or [email protected].

Malawi has started implementing its controversial national land policy even though parliament hasn't ratified it. The controversial policy insists that foreigners owning land renew their residency every seven years, failing which the government will seize the land and give it to landless people. Critics say this will deter foreign investment.The ministry of land has bought Makande Tea Estate in the southern Thyolo district from the Lonrho Company and started registering landless people from neighbouring Mulanje district.

The United States is to provide Malawi with US $5.4 million in emergency food aid in response to the government's appeal for international assistance to help overcome the country's food crisis.

President Bakili Muluzi has maintained an official
silence over a controversial campaign to change the constitution to allow
him to run for a third term in 2004, but opposition leaders are demanding
that he make his position known.

Funding to fight famine in Malawi has begun to trickle in, but it is still nowhere near what is required to prevent a humanitarian disaster, said aid agency CARE International.

Save the Children and CARE today announced a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide emergency food aid for more than two million people -many of them children- who are suffering from starvation in the southern African country of Malawi.

Weighed down by a critical food shortage,
limited access to land, unemployment and poor education and health services,
Malawi is one of the world's poorest countries. In a bid to win international financial backing to reverse its dismal record, the government this week launched a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) - a first step to gain unqualified relief on its US $2.5 billion foreign debt under the controversial Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative.

When the Malawian government introduced a policy of free primary education in 1994, school enrolments soared from 1.9 million to about 3 million. This massive surge has placed severe constraints on the financing of the primary school system. How can Malawi deliver universal primary education? Where will it find the new teachers it needs?

Almost 1,000 people have died from cholera in Malawi since November and about 33,000 infections have been reported up to mid-April, the national health department told IRIN on Friday.

Malawi has to wait for IMF to review it's fiscal discipline prior to receiving US$47-million in Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility funding.

The Government has been named as the biggest violator of the freedom of expression in Malawi followed by the general public, politicians and then employers. Surprisingly, the Malawi Police Service is seen as the least violator, according to a recent survey conducted by Media Council of Malawi (MCM).

Over 40% of Malawi's national budget is dependent on aid, but international aid has dropped in recent years, due to concerns about the way the economy is run. The government now needs £10 million to tackle the crisis: only the UK, China and Japan have committed funds so far.

THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) has asked government to expedite and conclude long-standing corruption cases and intensify the fight against fraud in public institutions or lose donor confidence.