Malawi has dropped 67 places on the 2011/2012 press freedom index as a result of the 'totalitarian tendencies' of President Bingu wa Mutharika, French based media watchdog Reporters Without Boarders (RWB) has said. Malawi is now at position 146 alongside Indonesia out of 225 assessed countries.

Malawi's president says he has ordered police to arrest anyone who attacks women for wearing trousers in public. President Bingu wa Mutharika spoke out on national radio after several women were beaten and stripped on the street for wearing non-traditional dress.

Malawi is losing $28 million (about MK4.6 billion) worth of fisheries resources each year due to unsustainable fishing in natural bodies, an estimate which represents 0.8 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the Ministry of Finance and Development’s Economic valuation of Sustainable Natural Resource Use report in Malawi.

A group of vendors in Malawi's capital Lilongwe on Tuesday 17 January went berserk and started stripping naked women wearing trousers and miniskirts claiming they had President Bingu wa Mutharika’s consent to do so. It is said that President Bingu wa Mutharika on 15 January raised concerns on the way women were dressing singling those wearing miniskirts and trousers.

Lecturers in Malawi have resolved to return to work to end nearly a year of academic freedom protests during a long-running impasse with the government. But with tensions and mistrust persisting, lecturers have been firm about setting out the conditions under which they will resume classes. In an exclusive interview with University World News, the spokesperson of the Chancellor College Academic Staff Union, Jessie Kabwila, 'We are in talks with lawyers of opponents of academic freedom. They are still trying to intimidate and silence us but we are reminding them every day that this is a principle [and that] we have no problem reverting to the academic freedom impasse mode at any time and for longer than 260 days.'

Malawi police on 18 December stormed a stage on which a play was being performed, and led the play's main actor away into a waiting police van. According to posts on Facebook, the play is titled 'Semo' produced by Lions Theatre. The lead actor in the play is Thlupego Kaluli Mgawa Chisiza. According to Nyasa Times reporter, Semo is a Moses-like leader who saved a historic nation from oppression. The play is set in the increasingly undemocratic Republic of Kwacha which is plagued by learned advisors who praise an increasingly oppressive king to safeguard their positions.

Devaluation, fuel shortages and economic mismanagement have conspired to push staple food prices to 'alarming levels' in urban areas of Malawi, where even catching a bus to work has become an unaffordable luxury for many, according to residents and analysts. 'At the moment, we are only concentrating on finding enough money for food and water,' said father-of-four Francis Tambula, who walks 7km every day from his home in Blantyre’s Ndirande township to his shop in the Limbe trading centre because paying for public transport would consume half of his income.

In recent years, Malawian women have made significant gains in their struggle for full gender equality. Women are increasingly represented in national politics, for example. Malawi’s May 2009 federal election saw the proportion of female Members of Parliament rise from 14 per cent to 22. And though a minority, it is not difficult to find women’s names among the ranks of corporate board members.
Yet women in Malawi remain disproportionately affected by poverty.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has minced no words but directed the Malawi government to institute a liberalised exchange rate regime as a way to manage the overvauled local currency, the Kwacha. This is contained in a report titled ‘Liberalization of the foreign exchange regime for current account transactions and exchange rate flexibility’ on Malawi by IMF’s Mission chiefs Etibar Jafarov, Nadia Rendak and Kelly Eckhold with Morten Jonassen Norges Bank.

The world court has said it was referring Malawi to the UN Security Council over its refusal to arrest Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir who is wanted by the court for genocide. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir and as a signatory to the Rome statute that created The Hague-based world court, Malawi was obligated to detain the Sudanese leader on its soil. But on 15 October al-Bashir was among six heads of state attending a meeting of the 19-member Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) in the tiny landlocked nation and returned home later in the weekend unhindered.

Malawi will review a series of controversial laws, including a ban on homosexual acts, Justice Minister Ephraim Chiume has said. Chiume said the review was in response to 'public opinion'. Western governments criticised Malawi last year for jailing a gay couple on sodomy charges.
On Tuesday last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US would use foreign aid to encourage countries to decriminalise homosexuality.

Technical experts from global lenders the International Monetary Fund arrived in Malawi recently for a mission to offer technical assistance that seeks to revive a stalled programme meant to cushion foreign exchange shortages. Ruby Randall, an IMF resident representative told reporters the team, co-led by Etibar Jafarow and Nadia Rendak, comprises monetary capital markets and legal experts whose findings will be 'expected to help authorities implement key extended credit facility (ECF) programme commitments'.

Malawi is experiencing a drug shortage as the country’s international donors remain reluctant to release aid meant for the health sector. About 60 million dollars in funding has been withheld amid allegations of pilfering and corruption in the procurement of drugs at government’s Central Medical Stores. The Central Medical Stores procures and distributes drugs to government health facilities.

The University Council has announced that Chancellor College, the main constituent college of the University of Malawi, at the centre of a protracted academic freedom wrangle, will be finally re-opened 14 November. Zomba-based Chancellor College has been in a lock-down since 16 February when lecturers started protesting Inspector General of Police Peter Mukhito's summoning of associate political science professor Blessings Chinsinga on 12 February, to quiz him over a classroom example he gave his public policy class. The youthful lecturer had reportedly likened the insurrections that toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt to Malawi's current fuel and foreign exchange reserves shortages.

Reflecting on the fact that significant segments of the population are fundamentally excluded from society due to poverty and inequality, the 2010 Ibrahim Index of African Governance recently handed Malawi an abysmal score of two out of 10. There is legislation aimed at protecting families from falling on hard times, such as the Employment Act and the recently amended Pension Bill. However, according to a 2010 report by the International Labour Office in Geneva, 90 per cent of Malawians - more than 13 million people – work outside the formal economy.

Malawi has increased fuel prices by an average 27 per cent, a move likely to trigger broader inflation in the southern African nation that has already seen violent protests this year because of the dire state of the economy. Fuel shortages and the soaring cost of imported goods caused unprecedented demonstrations in July against President Bingu wa Mutharika, whose security forces killed 20 people in an ensuing crackdown.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has demanded an explanation from Malawi on why it failed to arrest and surrender Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited the country. Malawi has been given up to 11 November 2011 to clarify why it failed to act on the court’s request when the indicted leader visited the country for the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa) summit. The Registrar of the court had sent a letter to the Malawi Embassy in Brussels on 13 October, 2011 asking for its cooperation for the arrest and surrender of President Bashir in the event that the latter entered the southern African nation’s territory. The note was not answered.

Lecturers at Chancellor College, the main constituent college of the University of Malawi, were meeting Tuesday to decide whether the directive and assurances given by President Bingu wa Mutharika met their conditions in the eight-month academic freedom stand-off. In a surprise statement by the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC), Mutharika said he was guaranteeing academic freedom within the conditions of service of the lecturers and ordered that four lecturers that were sacked at the peak of the wrangle be reinstated without any conditions.

Malawi's fertiliser subsidy scheme, credited for transforming famine-prone Malawi into an exporter of maize, is in danger. The executive director of the Malawi Economic Justice Network, Dalitso Kubalasa, explained the government's woes in précis.'Fuel and fertiliser are scarce because the suppliers can't get the forex needed to pay for the stuff. There's no forex in Malawi's banks because Malawi has allowed itself to become dependent on a single forex earner, tobacco, and the tobacco price slumped last year. The freeze in Western aid tied Malawi's other hand, as it were,' he said.

'The Malawi Chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) is disturbed with reports that Nation Publications Limited (NPL) Journalist Phillip Pemba is receiving death threats over an article that revealed that Robert Chasowa had dealings with the police before he was murdered. We are also disturbed with reports that the police summoned Weekend Nation Editor George Kasakula and Malawi News Deputy Editor Innocent Chitosi of Blantyre Newspapers Limited - papers that carried detailed insights into Chasowa’s death and dealings with the police - for questioning over recordings of the articles.