By Ephraim Mkali Banda

The road into Mzimba winds through gentle hills where maize and groundnuts once grew. Today the view is cratered, farmland torn open by excavators and promises that never materialized.

At the edge of one pit in Kaurira, seventy-two-year-old Trines Shaba watches children chase each other along the crumbling rim. The laughter is bright, the danger silent.

“They left without notice,” she says. “We tried to talk to them. They had agreements with our chiefs, but leaving the pits open is not good. Children and livestock are at risk. We never got jobs, no one benefited, and now the land is destroyed.”

Her words echo across northern Malawi, where mining was once hailed as a way out of poverty.

This landlocked country of 20 million has long depended on tobacco, tea, and sugar, but discoveries of uranium, bauxite, rare earths, and gold sparked hopes of transformation. Foreign companies pledged jobs, compensation, and community projects.

For villagers, the arrival of miners felt like a beginning.

Instead, the beginning ended in abandonment. What remains in places like Kaurira, Mchapasalu, and Thoza are open pits, polluted streams, and broken trust.

In Mchapasalu, residents recall Chinese companies who promised 15 million kwacha (about $9,000) to cover losses for the entire community, plus seedlings to restore the soil. Nothing came.

“The only thing we have is the warehouse they used to store their stones,” one man says, laughing without humor.

In Thoza, farmland was swallowed, rivers muddied, livelihoods erased. Crops that once fed families vanished, leaving only dust.

The collapse of trust stems not only from false promises but from institutions that stood silent. Reverend Moses Nkhana, Executive Director of the Mzimba Youth Organization, has spent years documenting these struggles.

His group, with support from the Pulitzer Center, recently produced a documentary amplifying villagers’ voice.

“The lack of transparency and accountability has opened the door for exploitation,” he says. “Communities are left in the dark about who is mining, under what terms, and what obligations these companies have.”

The darkness runs deep. The M’mbelwa District Council, the local authority, keeps no records of mining operations. The District Environmental Office has no files either.

Even the Northern Regional Mining Office lacks a full list of miners.

On paper, the data is public. In practice, it is buried, reachable only with time, money, and connections. For villagers staring into abandoned craters, it might as well not exist.

“This information needs to be decentralized and made available to all councils,” Nkhana insists. “Without access to it, communities cannot protect themselves from environmental damage or hold companies accountable.”

In this regulatory void, unlicensed and informal mining flourishes. Gold Panners, some with crude tools, others with small machines, work rivers and hillsides.

None of it is monitored, measured, or taxed in ways that could support the state or the villages bearing its costs.

The results are visible: unsafe land, polluted water, depleted soil. Less visible, but just as corrosive, is the erosion of faith in government. For many, the state’s absence cuts as deep as the companies’ exit.

One leader in Thoza puts it plainly: “The government must step in. If mining is to benefit Malawians, then companies must respect agreements and restore the land.”

The story of Mzimba is also the story of Malawi’s uneasy relationship with its mineral wealth. The deposits are real. So is the potential.

In 2019, the country updated its Mines and Minerals Act, promising transparency and benefit-sharing. Officials in Lilongwe speak of mining contributing 20 percent of GDP by 2030, up from less than 1 percent today.

Yet the gap between paper and practice gapes wide. Local councils lack resources to monitor mining.

Environmental officers are underfunded and underequipped. Chiefs, often the first point of negotiation, have little protection or bargaining power.

In this vacuum, foreign firms cut deals with little scrutiny, and when they leave, they leave nothing.

Malawi is not alone. From Ghana’s gold fields to Congo’s cobalt pits, the pattern repeats: extractive industries promising prosperity, weak institutions failing to enforce safeguards, and land left scarred when companies depart.

But in Malawi, where expectations of mining’s role in development run so high, the disillusionment cuts deeper.

GDP targets are easy to tally. Human costs are not. In Kaurira, it is children playing at the edge of a pit. In Mchapasalu, it is seedlings that never arrived. In Thoza, it is silent fields where maize once grew.

The documentary by the Mzimba Youth Organization captures these losses with unflinching clarity.

“Communities suffering from unregulated mining show us the urgent need for accountability and policies that prioritize people and the environment,” says Nkhana.

For now, villagers wait. They watch children balance on dangerous ground. They look at the holes where food once grew. They remember the words of company men who promised prosperity.

Mining was meant to lift Malawi into a new era. In Mzimba, it has instead pulled communities backward, into the pits carved out of their land and their trust.