In a crowded hospital ward at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial capital, Rhoda Mumdelanji, a diabetic, lies helplessly on a bed. She is noticeably uncomfortable interacting with others. Her feet, including her toes, have chronic wounds that smell; the doctors have recommended amputation. Her condition is deteriorating as she waits for her turn in theatre. “Look …. my bed is infested with maggots from these wounds, yet I’m alive …. The smell is bothering others around me ….”, she tells one of the doctors making ward rounds. Mumdelanji is fed up. This is the third time…
Josephine Chinele
Josephine Chinele
Josephine Chinele is multi-award-winning international journalist. She has worked as a news, features and investigative journalist for newspapers, radio and television platforms in Malawi, Tanzania and South Africa. Josephine has also been awarded several prestigious journalism fellowships in the area of HIV and AIDS, health and human rights among others. She is also a biomedical HIV prevention advocate.
Despite becoming a beneficiary of Malawi’s subsided fertiliser scheme three years ago, Clement Kalonga of Nsanje district in southern Malawi has never been food secure. He is just one of Malawi’s subsistence farmers who has found the process of buying subsidised farm inputs chaotic and exhausting. “It’s been one issue after the other,” he wearily tells Africa in Fact. “Some years, I’ve had a problem with buying because the designated fertiliser stores were always full of people… In others, like last year, the fertiliser was not available on time, and when it came, the shop owners prioritised selling to vendors…
Malawi: unintended consequences Lengthy school closures to control the spread of the coronavirus have led to a surge in already appalling numbers of teen pregnancies and early marriages It’s a cold Monday morning and a normal working day for people employed in the central business district of Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial capital, and not only for staff of essential service institutions such as hospitals and the police. Businesses such as grocery stores and market places are also open, as are regulated and unregulated alcohol sales outlets and video showing rooms, where people go to watch movies. Many of these video showing…
Women in media: glass ceilings Too many African women media professionals find their advancement frustrated by traditional cultural roles and gender stereotypes Zambian journalist Ruth Kanyanga Kamwi has been in the journalism trade for 20 years and is all too familiar with the particular challenges that African women media professionals face from their own colleagues working in what is already a hostile environment. At times, she notes, women have to work twice as hard as men to be considered for top jobs. “Female journalists are made to believe that getting a job is a privilege and not their right,” she…
Malawi: the rural vote In Malawi, May is usually a cold month. The cold weather is at times coupled with chilly drizzle. In such weather, many Malawians would want to be indoors. But this year, on 21 May, the people will be voting for the politicians whose actions will determine the quality of their lives over the next five years. And it is likely that the turnout will be influenced as much by the weather as by voters’ confidence that there is any point in electing representatives. May will see a national tripartite election, in which Malawians aged 18 years…
