One of the first things to strike a visitor to Malawi is the huge number of advertisements put up by mobile phone companies marketing their products.

"Muli bwanji? (How are you?)" reads one of the huge red billboards in the local language Chichewa.

Another colourful one shows the picture of a jet plane taking off, announcing cheaper call tariffs.

Everywhere you look across major towns in Malawi, you will see the attempt to entice consumers - from branding on umbrellas used by street vendors to T-shirts and even vans.

But mobile services are anything but low-priced in this country.

In fact, a report by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) says on average Malawians use more than $12 (£7.70) a month on mobile phones.

This is more than half of what an ordinary Malawian earns in a month.

Cheapest:
Macau, China - 0.11% of average monthly earnings
Hong Kong, China - 0.18 % of average monthly earnings
Denmark - 0.19% of average monthly earnings

Most expensive:
Malawi - 56.29% of average monthly earnings
Madagascar - 52.55% of average monthly earnings
Central African Republic - 51.63% of average monthly earnings

Cheapest in Africa:
Mauritius - 0.79% of average monthly earnings
Tunisia - 1.62% of average monthly earnings
Botswana - 1.64% of average monthly earnings

However, it is not just the cost of mobile services that is an issue in Malawi.

Many consumers also want the providers to give them value for their money by improving the quality of service they get.

"There are times when the services are very bad, even the internet is very slow, so it's very frustrating," a woman in Lilongwe told me.

"Sometimes you want to make a quick call but then you can't get through, so those are some of the things that I think they need to improve," she said.

But in order for the services to improve, the government says it needs to upgrade existing infrastructure, especially in rural areas.

The authorities admit this could take up to five years, meaning consumers will have to continue incurring high costs for some time to come.

Source: ITU: Measuring the Information Society Report 2014
[Additional reports]

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MALAWI has ordered police to shoot “dangerous criminals” who attack albinos in order to sell their body parts for witchcraft.

“Shoot every criminal who is violent when caught red-handed abducting people with albinism,” the country’s police chief Lexen Kachama told officers at the weekend, according to local media.

Six albinos have been killed in the poor southern African nation since December, according to the Association of Persons with Albinism in Malawi.

Kachama told officers in Machinga district in the south of the country, where most of the attacks have happened, that we cannot just watch while our friends with albinism are being killed like animals every day.”

He said he does not want to “hear of a police officer chasing dangerous criminals especially those abducting albinos carrying teargas or any other soft weapon.

“That is why I am ordering the police to use weapons in proportion to the gravity of the offence. We need to be secure from criminals,” he added.

Kachama, appointed last month by President Peter Mutharika, ordered his ill-equipped force of 12,000 not to be afraid to use “live ammunition” after criminals shot a police officer in the commercial capital Blantyre last week.

“We will not put down or hold back our weapons until Malawians are living and doing their business freely,” he said.

He said police were empowered by law “to use any weapon when discharging our duties.”

Albinos have been the victim of a surge of attacks across Africa in recent months, with the UN warning the situation was particularly acute in Tanzania, Burundi and Malawi.

It said the spike in violence against them in Tanzania may be linked to general and presidential elections in October 2015, as political campaigners attempt to win over influential sorcerers.

The UN Human Rights Council last month decided to appoint an expert to investigate abuses suffered by albinos across east Africa.

Credit: mgafrica

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Chisomo Daka, a student at the University of Malawi’s chancellor college, has created his own TV station, Paul Ndiho reports:

Innovation is happening across Africa, in all different sectors, from education to energy, banking to agriculture and in television broadcasting. In Malawi, a university student has created a community TV station called “Analog TV project” one that he hopes will transmit all social events taking place on campus.

Malawi TV Project

Chisomo Daka is a student at the University of Malawi’s chancellor college. He is pursuing a degree in education science and he is trying to make his mark in the television broadcasting industry. By his own admission, he says that he is not an engineer by training, nor does he claim to know much about engineering. But his love and passion for tele-communications has inspired him to build from scratch a community television station. Daka says he hopes to use this TV station to broadcast social events and student projects throughout the entire campus.

“We have been able to transmit a video signal and we have been able to capture that. But by the end of the day, we would want to finalize it and make it a full working television station for the campus.”

Before his first broadcasting test signal, he was just a normal student, and few students knew about his innovation.

Today, Chisomo Daka has created a name for himself as the new kid on the block. His community TV station is a hit on campus and everybody is talking about him. He says operating out of the norm is what is drove him to be innovative and creative.

Chisomo Daka is definitely one of the few young talented Malawians focused on changing the image of his beloved country. He argues that more and more viewers are asking for more content that reflect their realities – a quality that he says has been lacking in Malawi.

Television broadcasting is booming across the continent and young innovators are leading the way. But the industry is not without its challenges.

“We are also working on developing low-cost antennas for the clients or consumers for viewing on their televisions at home — particularly, if they have u-h-f band. We are also working on developing low-cost transmission antennas because transmission antennas are pretty expensive.”

Students at the Malawi university, chancellor college, hope that Daka’s Analog TV project will support teaching and learning by broadcasting course content for e-learning, by recording lectures, conference speakers, fine arts performances and special events on campus.

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[Source]

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