Lilongwe — "I try to persuade my children to go to school without eating, telling them that they'll have food after school, because things are difficult."
Just a few months into his new term, President Peter Mutharika is grappling with a triple crisis - a deep-seated food emergency, diminishing aid, and soaring debt.
With over four million Malawians - 22% of the population - facing the threat of acute malnutrition until the next harvest in March, Mutharika last month declared a nationwide state of disaster.
But the $119 million humanitarian response is underfunded. Although crucial to staving off the risk of hunger-related deaths, it has so far raised only $26 million from Malawi's aid partners - roughly 21% of the amount required.
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The trigger for Malawi's food emergency has been a 20% drop in maize yields last year as a result of drought and localised flooding. The harvest failure hit small-scale farmers especially hard - the backbone of food production.
The problem is not just food availability, but also its affordability. Reduced farm output, a severe foreign exchange shortage, plus perennial fuel scarcities, have pushed Malawi's inflation rate to around 28% - the highest in Africa.
Even though Monica Jasteni runs a small fish business in her home area of Salima, in central Malawi, the 34-year-old mother of four is struggling.
"The money I make is not enough [to buy the food we need]," she told The New Humanitarian. "I try to persuade my children to go to school without eating, telling them that they'll have food after school, because things are difficult."
She supplements what she makes from selling fish by also farming. But as she can't afford irrigation, her small plot is susceptible to dry spells.
An unsustainable debt burden
The experience of Jasteni - trying to make ends meet, yet failing - is why a coalition of 50 civil society organisations is demanding urgent action by the government.
"The hunger crisis is a huge national emergency," said Amon Lukhele, national coordinator of the Civil Society Social Protection Network (CSSPN). "We are calling upon the government to act now to protect the poorest households before the hunger situation worsens."
CSSPN wants the government to accelerate implementation of its National Social Protection Policy, a safety net programme that aims to provide relief to the most vulnerable.
But Mutharika, elected in September, has inherited public finances in a critical state. That has put pressure on what spending the government can afford, and the speed with which remedial programmes can be rolled out.
Malawi is heavily debt-distressed. Its total debt burden is around $9.25 billion - an unsustainable 86% of GDP. It also faces a looming debt service obligation of $1.8 billion.
That affects not only economic growth, but also the provision of essential social services. As a result, Malawi spends more on debt servicing than it does on health. The closure of the US Agency for International Development - a key health donor - has only made the government's budget calculations even harder.
Yet opportunities have been squandered. In 2006, Malawi had its debt cancelled under the Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC). But 19 years down the line, after years of heavy borrowing, it is back in arrears - and has been forced to swallow two painful currency devaluations, in 2022 and again in 2023.
"Too much debt erodes Malawi's capacity to strengthen food security," said Mavuto Bamusi, a prominent political analyst and anti-corruption campaigner. "Debt repayments to lenders, especially the IMF [International Monetary Fund], are taking out a lot of money that could have been used for agricultural commercialisation."
Malawi needs to urgently restructure its debt, and find domestic and international support for reforms to revive its economy after years of mismanagement, analysts suggest.
Joseph Mwanamvekha, the new finance minister, has announced new reform measures to stabilise the economy, and combat the food crisis. They include a commitment to improve public debt management and fiscal discipline, strict expenditure controls, and management of the wage bill.
Getting food security right
This is the fifth time in a decade Malawi has declared a food-related state of disaster. It not only signifies a deepening cycle of climate volatility, but also reflects the deep structural issues around food security.
The agricultural sector is central to Malawi's economy, accounting for almost a quarter of GDP and employing three quarters of the population - mostly through subsistence farming. But productivity gains have stagnated over the past decade, with an over-reliance on maize leading to soil degradation and micro-nutrient deficiencies in people's diets.
Successive governments have implemented input subsidy programmes, providing cut-price fertiliser and seeds. But historically they have suffered from logistical bottlenecks leading to late input deliveries, as well as targeting problems, fraud, and political interference.
Mutharika's government is trying again. He has launched the 2025/2026 Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) aimed at 1.1 million farming households. Each will receive two 50kg bags of subsidised fertiliser plus a 5kg pack of seed of their choice.
Political commentators suggest this will be a defining test for his administration. The goal for Mutharika is to deliver on his election campaign promises to provide farm inputs on time - and nationwide - avoiding favouring political constituencies. The rollout of digital registries and e-vouchers, backed by the World Bank, may help fix some of those problems.
Yet the FISP will reach only a fraction of Malawi's farming households. It also doesn't fully address the problem of farmers' preference for drought-vulnerable maize at a time of worsening climate volatility.
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Dominic Nyasulu, the national coordinator at the National Youth Network on Climate Change, argues that the new government needs to reframe food security policies to promote drought tolerant crops such as millet and sorghum - crops that were traditionally grown before the commercialisation of maize.
"This country has potential to defeat hunger, but our policies need to be reformed in view of extreme weather events and other climate impacts," said Nyasulu.
Tamani Nkhono-Mvula, a Malawian agriculture and food security expert, said a more far-reaching change will come with irrigation.
Only 4% of farming land is currently irrigated. The drawbacks are that it is expensive, there is a lack of rural financing, water management has historically been a problem, and women farmers are particularly disadvantaged.
The lack of government capacity is also a significant drawback, as is access to commercial markets, according to 2021 evaluation of a World Bank irrigation and rural development project.
However, Nkhono-Mvula argues that the potential "for Malawi to feed itself is there - the leadership just needs to be transformative".
Edited by Obi Anyadike.
Dingaan Mithi, Journalist and programme manager at Malawi's Journalists Association Against AIDS
