The 2024 International Letter Writing Competition, which is organised by Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) -- in collaboration with the Universal Postal Union (UPU), has attracted over 440 competitors from across the country.
Winners of the 53rd edition, which ran from January to March 2024, are expected to be unveiled at an event to be held in Mzuzu this month.
Malawi is a member of UPU, which is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates postal policies and systems around the world.
The topic for this year's competition was; 'At 150 years old, the UPU has served people around the world for more than eight generations. The world has changed enormously since then. Write a letter to future generations about the world you hope they inherit'.
The marking team scrutinised and marked the entries assessing creativity, innovative thinking, knowledge and understanding as well as grammar and language skills.
The overall sentiment from the markers is that this year there has been a general improvement in the quality of letters received and an increased participation from learners in primary school.
Out of the total submitted, 184 submissions are from primary school learners. This year's competition had submissions from all the districts across the country from both private and public primary and secondary schools.
"This year there has been an increase in number of participants, and we have noticed that more primary school learners participated than previous competitions," said Joyce Munthali, who was the team leader.
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However, she added that some participants failed to write the required number of 1,000 words and there were also cases of poor layout and that some entrants were over aged which led to their automatic disqualification.
MACRA's Communications Manager, Bright Sonani said the best composition was submitted to UPU, to compete at the international level.
"The winning entry for this year has already been submitted to UPU and it is our hope that this time around Malawi will make it," Sonani said. "The entries were marked by experts from the Ministry of Education and we believe that the top three winners are a cream from the entries."
The Letter Writing Competition is aimed at encouraging young writers to express creativity and refine their language skills in the form of a letter that is written in line with the International Letter Writing Competition's annual theme.
The competition also aims to bring out innovative thinking in children about the way they perceive the world.
The prizes for the competition, whose awards presentation is set for June 28 2024, include laptops, dictionaries, mathematical instruments, writing materials and notebooks.
In the last year's edition, 14-year old Leadness Mbeye from Lilongwe Girls Secondary School emerged overall winner on the local level while 13-year-old Kenyan student was the overall winner at the international level.
