By Masauko Alfred Mzongwe
In one of the world’s least-connected countries, Malawian university students are quietly embracing artificial intelligence to break through long-standing educational barriers.
Their institutions, however, are weighed down by chronic infrastructural deficits, tight budgets, and a lack of policy direction, leaving a widening gap between grassroots innovation and institutional inertia.
The country stands at a crossroads, its students charging ahead into a digital future while its universities struggle to keep pace.
At the University of Malawi, Peter Mvula has seen his study routine transformed. Instead of scouring crowded libraries for scarce textbooks, he now consults ChatGPT for quick summaries and detailed explanations.
“I understand subjects better, and my grades have improved,” he says, adding that free tools like Grammarly and Notion AI help polish his writing and keep his notes organized.
Mvula is hardly alone. From Mzuzu University in the north to the University of Livingstonia, students like Joy Shunga and Hastings Yobe are part of a quiet revolution.
Freely available AI tools are filling gaps in a higher education system crippled by resource shortages.
For these students, AI is more than a novelty; it is an academic accelerator, simplifying complex topics, generating ideas, and helping them manage time in environments where access to traditional resources remains limited.
Yet their grassroots adoption collides with the realities of Malawi’s fragile infrastructure and the hesitation of universities to act.
While students prove AI’s value in real time, institutions remain underprepared, creating a growing chasm between how education is consumed and how it is delivered.
The question is no longer whether students will use AI, but whether the nation can channel this movement before it slips into another story of lost potential.
The double-edged Sword of Infrastructure
AI’s promise in Malawi is tethered to two of the country’s most persistent challenges: unreliable electricity and the steep cost of internet access.
Every query is a race against the next power outage and a calculation against dwindling data bundles.
As of early 2024, internet penetration stood at just 27.7 percent, leaving over 15 million Malawians offline. While mobile connections are more common, costs are punishing.
A modest 2GB data plan averaged $6.40 per month in 2024, a heavy burden in a country where incomes remain low.
Electricity access is just as precarious. Government targets aim to expand coverage, but persistent outages are the norm.
In February 2025, reports estimated that reaching 70 percent electrification by 2030 would require $5.5 billion in investment, an enormous funding gap.
For many students, then, access to “free” global AI tools depends not only on curiosity and motivation but on whether the lights stay on and whether data remains affordable.
“The digital divide is no longer just about access to a computer,” says Moses Dossi, Vice-President of the ICT Association of Malawi (ICTAM).
“It’s about having the reliable power and affordable data to use the tools that are now essential for modern learning and business.”
In June 2025, ICTAM and the Institute of Marketing in Malawi co-hosted a landmark AI training program for professionals, signalling private-sector urgency to build local capacity.
“It is high time professionals across various disciplines…begin leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance business management,” Dossi stressed.
A Policy Vacuum in the Halls of Academia
While students experiment boldly, Malawi’s higher education institutions remain caught in cautious paralysis.
A January 2024 research paper observed that, with few exceptions, universities have yet to establish clear policies governing AI in academic work.
This vacuum leaves both students and faculty in a gray zone, especially when it comes to plagiarism and academic integrity.
The concerns are real. Universities worldwide are scrambling to balance AI’s benefits with the risk of misuse. In the United States, nearly 70 percent of institutions had adopted some form of AI policy by mid-2025.
In much of Africa, however, clear frameworks remain rare, often due to funding shortages and a lack of institutional expertise.
In Malawi, enforcement tools like Turnitin, which offer AI detection services, are prohibitively expensive for universities already struggling to meet basic needs.
Dr. Jessie Kabwila, the minister overseeing higher education, acknowledged the coming shift at an event in early 2025.
AI, she said, should “improve teaching and learning experiences” and “augment, rather than replace, human capabilities.” Yet her words have not translated into a concrete nationwide strategy.
The National Council for Higher Education (NCHE), Malawi’s regulatory body, has not issued formal guidelines on AI, though its 2021–2026 strategic plan emphasises innovation in line with the country’s broader development agenda.
For now, individual lecturers make their own rules, creating an inconsistent and often confusing landscape for students.
Aligning with a National Vision
Paradoxically, the student-led AI wave is in perfect harmony with Malawi 2063 (MW2063), the nation’s long-term development blueprint.
The vision seeks to transform Malawi into a “self-reliant, industrialized upper-middle-income country” by tapping technology, innovation, and human capital.
Partnerships to support this goal are emerging.
ICTAM is lobbying for stronger digital literacy programs and policy reforms to foster a competitive digital economy.
International collaborations, such as the World Bank–funded Digital Malawi Foundations Project, have also borne fruit, bringing nearly seven million new users online and supplying 83,000 students across 81 institutions with reliable internet access.
But these macro-level gains do not always filter down to lecture halls.
For students like Hastings Yobe, the lessons are more immediate. “AI is a guide rather than a shortcut, helping me think, not thinking for me,” he says.
His practice of cross-checking AI outputs against trusted sources is less a luxury than a necessity in a country where information access has long been constrained.
This highlights what universities have yet to formalize: the debate is not about banning or allowing AI. The challenge is to actively teach digital literacy, critical thinking, and ethical use.
The real risk is not that AI will replace human judgment, but that failure to adapt will leave a generation unprepared for a future defined by human–AI collaboration.
The Road ahead
For Malawi, progress requires more than student ingenuity. Universities, backed by government and private partners, must shift from debate to action.
That means crafting clear policies, investing in faculty training, and embedding digital literacy at the heart of curricula.
The grassroots revolution is already happening, in dorm rooms and study circles lit by flickering bulbs or battery-powered lamps.
The choice before institutions is stark: lead the charge into an AI-driven future, or trail behind the very students they are meant to guide.
