‘I tell my children not to play so we save money on soap’
Suzanna Kathumba, a domestic assistant in Malawi, goes every day to think about the ways she can save to make her salary of 80,000 kwacha ($ 46; £ 34) per month to support her family.
As she tries a cloth wet of a bucket of water in the living room and begins by wiping the tables and the chairs, she considers her last ploy to save money.
“I told my youngest children not to get dirty while playing so that we can save on soap,” said BBC, 43.
“But it’s difficult because children are children, they want to play.”
In recent months, Ms. Kathumba, a divorced mother of four children, working in the capital, Lilongwe, has trouble surviving her salary due to the growing prices of goods on the market.
With little financial support from her ex-husband, she is the only household employee. Most of his money goes to her four children, who live in their hometown of Kasungu, about 130 km (80 miles) in the northwest of the capital. The two youngest children are still in school and the two older ones are unemployed.
In May, the annual inflation rate in Malawi was 27.7% – one of the highest in Africa – a drop of 29.2% in April.
“What is surprising is that wages remain the same, but the price of raw materials continues to go up daily,” said Kathumba.
“Money ends even before he comes. We live a very difficult life.”
Malawi buyers find that prices continue to increase [BBC]
A recent report by Ernst & Young said Malawi was one of the few countries in the world he considered as what he called a “hyperinflationist economy” – with Burundi, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. It is then that there is cumulative inflation over three years of approximately 100% or more.
The accounting firm said that according to the Global Database of Economic Prospects, compiled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Malawi had a cumulative inflation rate over three years of 116% in December 2024 and it provided for cumulative inflation rates of 102% for 2025 and 66% for 2026.
World Bank data also show that the country is one of the poorest in the world. He estimates that 70% of the population of the nation of southern Africa lives with less than $ 2.15 per day.
The current cost of living crisis has left many citizens, such as Ms. Kathumba, without any economy.
“I would lie if I say that I save money at the end of the month. I have absolutely nothing left,” she said.
“I pay 50,000 kwacha [$29] in school fees every quarter. Then you have to buy exercise books, food, soap – all of the same salary. Sugar [1kg] is now 4,500 kwacha [$3]. “”
“We are really affected, we are supposed to obtain a profit from our businesses. But as things are, we fail” “, Source: Steve Magombo, Source Description: President of the Tsooka flea market, Image: Steve Magombo
Economists have posed the current inflation problems of Malawi in part to the shortage of foreign silver – known as “Forex” – in banks.
Malawi has often fought with Forex because the country matters much more than it exports it.
“We are not exporting high -value products,” the BBC of the University of Malawi and the BBC president of Dr Bertha Bangara Chikadza, Macroeconomics of Malawi and president of The Economics Association of Malawi, told the BBC.
“We export products like corn, soy beans and sugar, but import expensive products such as fertilizers, medicines and furniture, so we need a huge amount of forex for that,” she said.
Companies wishing to import goods say that when they apply to banks for Forex – especially US dollars – they are often refused because there is none.
This forces some to search for US dollars on the black market, where the exchange rate is higher than the official rate of 1,750 kwacha for $ 1.
Traders can pay between 4,000 and 5,000 kwacha for $ 1 – which has a training effect for consumers.
Business owners, such as Mohammed Hanif Waka, who has a stationery workshop in the capital, says he has lost many customers since implementing prices.
“Sales have dropped considerably. We had to make redundancies,” he told the BBC.
Although it generally matters for its shops, such as desktop supplies, pens and notebooks, the lack of currencies means that it is now trying to access goods locally.
“I don’t remember when our banks gave us a Forex,” he said.
Desperately of the change, informal merchants went down to the street to protest in February, hundreds blocking the entrance to the Parliament of Malawi.
“We are really affected, we are supposed to get a profit from our businesses,” Steve Magombo, president of the Lilongwe tsoka, told BBC Steve Magombo.
“But as things are, we fail. Malawians fail to buy our products.”
Earlier this year, it was announced that an $ 175 million loan agreement with the IMF had been temporarily suspended. The four -year loan was approved in November 2023, with $ 35 million paid so far.
“Under IMF policy, if the opinions are not completed over an 18 -month period, the program expires automatically and no review has been successfully completed,” Justin Tyson, the IMF mission for Malawi,, said to the BBC.
Tyson added that the “budgetary discipline” had “proved to be difficult to keep in the current environment due to high spending pressures”.
Last November, there were demonstrations in Lilongwe on the rarity of the fuel [AFP/Getty Images]
However, Malawi’s Minister of Finance, Simplex Chithyola Banda, said it was the government’s decision to suspend the loan because there was a disagreement on the conditions.
“When you are told that you have to create reserves, but at the same time, the country is dry because you do not have fuel – you choose to get fuel [rather] What to constitute reserves, “Banda told the World Business Report of the BBC last month.
“We were told to stay in the program, you need to adjust fuel prices, but it could have a negative impact on basic products prices.”
The Malawi national elections scheduled for September, the government said it was taking a number of measures to reduce prices.
The Minister of Commerce Vittumbiko Mumba has recognized that Forex must be rationed, but says that registered companies can request essential elements via the reserve bank or the Ministry of Finance. But he also blames merchants to have inflated the prices.
“We create an economic sabotage invoice and there will also be an essential invoice of goods and services to regulate this,” he told the BBC.
Meanwhile, the main opposition blamed inflation at the feet of those in power.
Whatever the cause of pricing, the cost of living is probably a huge campaign problem.
Malawians hope that their daily difficulties will be softened by government plans – and everyone wants a solution that brings sustainable stability to the economy.
“We depend on the government to get help,” said Kathumba.
“I hope politicians will remember the least privileged Malawians when they make their decisions.”
Additional Jack McBrams report in Lilongwe.
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