An explanation has been demanded for a $235,700 payment from a firm that landed major oil and gas exploration concessions on Lake Malawi.

Malawi’s ombud, Martha Chimuza-Mwagonde, says she has received death threats because she is investigating graft in the government’s Green Belt Initiative, set up to buffer millions of peasant farmers from drought.

The scandal surrounding Malawi’s politically connected Sterling Timber International has deepened, with an insider alleging that the government settled the company’s large debt to the state-owned Malawi Savings Bank.

The country knows it needs to diversify its agriculture, but the vested interests of multinational giants is hampering its efforts.

For 33 years now, Reverend Levi Nyondo, as God’s anointed ‘shepherd,’ has watched HIV/AIDS decimate his ‘sheep.’ Although his homilies have urged sexual abstinence and fidelity, which should slow spread of the disease, he grudgingly admits that the heavy loss of his parishioners to the pandemic is a clear sign that these messages are falling on deaf ears.

Eighteen months after Cashgate hit the headlines in Malawi, only five of the 68 people arrested in connection with the scandal have been tried and convicted. About R2.1-million – less than one percent of the estimated loss to government – has been recovered.

By Collins Mtika For more than 15 years now, a syndicate comprising Malawi Police Service.

By Collins Mtika Abraham Siliwonde does not know what uranium is used for. But he.

What happened to the R54-million paid out for a timber mill that was never built? Malawi’s current finance minister, Goodall Gondwe, helped to facilitate a 1.8-billion Malawi kwacha (R54-million) state loan for a timber processing factory that, three years later, has still not been built.